Human Futures - OCT 2025 - THRIVING TOGETHER

Erik F. Øverland

President

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear colleagues and friends,

IT is with great pleasure that I write this final letter as Editor-in-Chief for this special conference edition of our magazine Human Futures, aligned with the theme of our 26th World Conference – “Thriving Together. ” This is not just a slogan but a shared commitment: to flourish collectively across disciplines, cultures, and generations.

Once again, we have brought in new voices from advocacy communities who are shaping the future side by side with futurists—facilitating conversations across sectors where scholars, practitioners, activists, and emerging leaders join forces to imagine more inclusive, sustainable, and just futures.

Serving on the WFSF Board for sixteen years—eight of them as President—has been one of the great privileges of my professional life. Together we strengthened the Federation’s scholarly core while widening our global community of practice, proving that rigor and openness can, in fact, travel well together.

This is not a farewell. I am not leaving WFSF; I am simply stepping into a new role as President Emeritus so that others may lead while I continue to serve. Titles change; commitment does not. Our task remains: to cultivate futures literacy and long-term thinking as democratic competencies for a turbulent century.

The wider context calls us forward. With the UN’s Pact for the Future now adopted, the conversation has shifted from aspiration to implementation. The Pact’s promise—linking sustainable development, peace and security, science and digital cooperation, youth and future generations, and better governance—needs translators, bridge-builders, and practical experiments. That is precisely where futurists excel.

WFSF has already lent its voice to this agenda—arguing for decisive, long-term investment in human development and a win-win outlook that resists zero-sum thinking. I am proud of our contributions alongside kindred networks in the futures field.

As President Emeritus, I will continue working with you to convene across disciplines and cultures, to ask better questions, to test responsible methods, and to mentor the next generation. Let us remain a Federation that listens deeply, questions courageously, and acts with care.

My closing wish is simple and audacious: may futurists everywhere help usher in a new world order of thriving—one that is more peaceful, more just, more ecologically sound, and profoundly inclusive. The future is not something that happens to us; it is something we learn, together, to shape.

With gratitude and resolve,

Erik F. Øverland President

World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) wfsf.org president@wfsf.org

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

Erik Øverland

Editor-In-Chief

Claire Nelson Editor-At-Large

“Until we see the value of sharing the future, we will not achieve the future we most value”

Hank Kune

Features Editor

The future is not what it used to be

Amy Fletcher

Features Editor

Mohsen Taheri News & Events Editor

Kevin Jae

Copy Editor

Historia abscondita. Every great human being exerts a retroactive force... There is no way of telling what may yet become part of history. Perhaps the past is still essentially undiscovered! So many retroactive forces are still needed!” - Nietzsche

Cristophe Bisson

Copy Editor

“Future that is sustainable requires to hybridize Human and Machine”s

Leopold Mureithi

Review Room Editor

Rosa Alegria

PR & Marketing

“Hope is the fuel that drives the engine of the desired future”

Elissa Farrow

Features Editor

The future requires us to be comfortable with uncomfortableness. Love, listen and respect each other on our way to the future.

By Fabrice Nguiffo Teuguia

DANCING WITH A LIVING PLANET

Kishan Khoday

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF

William E. Halal

Colleen McLeod Garner

By Rebecca Hardcastle Wright

By Victor Motti

Rosa Alegria

Edna Chepkurui

FOREMOST

ENLIVENING ZOETIC FUTURES: TOWARDS A GLOBAL ETHIC OF THRIVING FUTURE MATTERS

By Claire A. Nelson

IN an age defined by accelerating technological revolutions and planetary uncertainty, humanity faces a question more urgent than any algorithm can solve: How might we thrive together? This is not a question of optimization or efficiency. It is an inquiry into the deepest meaning of what it means to live well—as individuals, as communities, and as a species sharing one fragile biosphere.

Thriving is more than survival. It transcends mere prosperity or comfort. It is the dynamic state of flourishing—a holistic integration of physical vitality, mental clarity, emotional balance, social harmony, and spiritual fulfillment. Thriving represents coherence between being and becoming, between our inner compass and the external conditions that sustain life. In a thriving world, creativity blossoms, justice prevails, and interdependence is honored.

Unlike growth, which can be extractive and uneven, thriving implies regeneration—the capacity to renew and restore. From

ecosystems that replenish themselves to communities that nurture mutual care, thriving involves cycles of reciprocity. It integrates biospheric wellbeing with psychosocial fulfillment, inviting us to ask not merely “How do we live?” but “How do we live well together?” in ways that uphold dignity, equity, and planetary balance.

The Planetary “Together”

When we speak of thriving together, we invoke a radical inclusivity. The “together” extends beyond the human family to encompass the more-than-human world—the ecosystems, species, and life-support systems upon which our existence depends. In our interconnected world of digital communications and transnational flows, “together” must also recognize the power asymmetries that shape global participation. Who decides the rules of engagement—how we move, trade, worship, or govern— determines who thrives.

Therefore, “together” must become an ethical construct rooted in justice and inclusion. It must evolve from a metaphor of shared space to a mandate for shared responsibility. Planetary society is emerging, but it is not yet equitable. Thriving together demands a social contract that transcends nationalism and embraces planetary citizenship—a recognition that our survival and flourishing are interdependent across borders, generations, and species.

Yet even as we speak of planetary citizenship and shared responsibility, we must also confront the hidden assumptions that shape our understanding of progress. For too long, there has been an unstated belief woven into the dominant narrative of sustainable development — that to have much is the same as to have contentment. Yet happiness and wellbeing are not necessarily prevalent in the so-called WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) societies that have defined the metrics of success. Increasingly, it is evident that peace and prosperity do not always go hand in hand.

The time has come to craft a new definition of thriving — one that draws on the wisdom traditions of the past and decolonizes our images of the future. Such a reframing invites multiple

civilizations, cultures, and faiths to contribute their own visions of fulfillment, belonging, and harmony with nature. Only by weaving these diverse threads can we form a truly zoetic fabric of futures that honors all life.

Navigating the AI Revolution

Artificial Intelligence presents humanity with both profound promise and existential peril. When harnessed ethically, AI can enhance thriving by optimizing access to essentials—food systems, healthcare, shelter—through predictive analytics and precision design. It can expand learning opportunities and amplify human creativity rather than replace it. At the collective level, AI might help achieve planetary homeostasis: managing energy systems, regenerating ecosystems, aligning economic flows with sustainability metrics.

Yet AI also poses grave threats if misaligned with human values. Its capacity to automate labor could displace millions, deepening inequality and social unrest. Algorithmic bias may replicate existing prejudices across justice, healthcare, and employment. Surveillance capitalism threatens privacy and autonomy, converting human attention into commodified

resources. Perhaps most troubling, AI’s ability to manipulate narratives may erode trust in truth itself, destabilizing democracy and shared meaning.

On a deeper level, AI challenges the foundations of human identity—what it means to think, feel, and create. If we mistake machine efficiency for human flourishing, we risk becoming servants of our own inventions. The question is not whether AI will change us—it already has—but whether humanity can evolve the moral intelligence necessary to ensure technology serves life rather than controls it.

Existential Crossroads

Humanity now faces a convergence of self-created existential risks that threaten the very possibility of thriving. Climate change, nuclear proliferation, biodiversity collapse, and unregulated biotechnologies form a web of potential catastrophes. These are not acts of nature, but outcomes of human ambition untempered by foresight. The Anthropocene has turned human power into a geological force, altering planetary systems faster than life can adapt.

Thriving, therefore, cannot be separated from survival. It

depends on shifting from dominance to stewardship. The logic of short-term profit and geopolitical rivalry must give way to longterm planetary governance grounded in precaution and justice. Yet within crisis lies opportunity—the potential for a planetary awakening to our shared fate.

The tension between human security and human wellbeing defines the moral crossroads of our age. Security focuses on protection from harm, while wellbeing centers on the positive realization of life’s potential. Too often, societies pursue security through control, surveillance, and militarization, undermining the very freedoms that constitute wellbeing. A paradigm of thriving demands that security be redefined—not as the absence of threat, but as the presence of conditions that allow people to flourish: health, education, equity, belonging, and meaning.

Beyond Policy: A Spiritual Evolution

The United Nations Summit of the Future and its Pact for the Future represent a milestone in global dialogue, outlining commitments to strengthen multilateralism, safeguard future generations, and harness digital breakthroughs for the common good. Yet while the Pact articulates visionary goals, it remains

constrained by institutional inertia. It calls for sustainability while global economic structures still prioritize GDP growth over ecological balance. It speaks of digital inclusion while AI governance remains fragmented.

What is missing is the moral and spiritual awakening necessary to translate policy into practice—a recognition that thriving is not just a development target but a civilizational ethos. If we accept that humans are spiritual beings having a material existence, then thriving together must be understood not only as a social or economic aspiration, but as a spiritual evolution.

Across traditions—from Buddhism’s embrace of impermanence to Christianity’s vision of redemption, from Indigenous reverence for interconnection to Sufi surrender to unity—there is a common thread: life’s imperfections are not obstacles but initiations. They are the forge through which consciousness ripens. If thriving is seen merely as freedom from pain, it will always elude us. But if thriving is the capacity to find harmony within imperfection—to love, create, and serve even amid struggle, then it becomes the essence of our humanity.

Spiritual intelligence, the awareness that all life is interconnected and sacred—becomes the compass that can

guide humanity toward collective understanding. It invites us to see thriving not as personal gain but as relational balance, not as conquest but communion. Thriving together, then, is not a utopian endpoint but a spiritual practice—a conscious cocreation of conditions where compassion, justice, and joy can coexist with suffering.

Toward Zoetic Futures

This is why I speak of Zoetic Futures—futures grounded in life, not illusion. The word zoetic derives from the ancient Greek zoē, meaning “life” in its most sacred and universal sense— the animating force that breathes vitality into all existence. Unlike bios, which refers to the physical or temporal life of an individual, zoē represents the eternal, spiritual essence of being alive. It is the pulse of creation itself—the divine current connecting all living things.

Utopia is not possible, for perfection denies the dynamism that makes life real. Nor is dystopia inevitable, for despair is a choice we need not make. Between these poles lies the living terrain of the possible—where humanity must learn to navigate the badlands of the AI and synthetic biology revolutions without losing its soul.

In this century, we are being seduced by transhumanist dreams of transcendence through technology—of uploading consciousness, rewriting genes, escaping mortality. But thriving cannot be measured by how fast or far we can digitize the human spirit. Thriving means remembering that to be alive is itself a sacred act. It is not about optimizing the body or augmenting the mind but about awakening the heart.

The real revolution we need is not artificial intelligence but authentic intelligence—the wisdom to use our tools in service of life, not as substitutes for it. A Zoetic Future is one in which our economies serve ecology, our science honors sentience, and our technologies amplify compassion rather than control. It is a civilization that recognizes aliveness—in people, in nature, in the planet itself—as the highest form of value.

Sensing the Flourishing Pulse

Can we truly measure flourishing? For much of modern history, the automatic response was yes—through indices. We identified indicators, quantified them, and assembled them into neat composites promising to tell us how well we were doing. Yet as soon as we begin this exercise, something feels off. Life is not an equation. It moves, breathes, evolves—its vitality woven through relationships too complex to be captured in a single score.

Perhaps the question is not can we measure flourishing but how might we sense it without diminishing its aliveness? What if instead of measuring static outcomes, we sought a proxy that could capture the interdependencies and resonances of living systems—a way of perceiving balance, coherence, and renewal as they happen?

This inquiry led me beyond traditional metrics to new metaphors: a Zoetic Futures Flourishing Compass, a Resonance Gauge, and finally, a Flourishing Pulse. The Compass points us toward balance, regeneration, and care—yet it implies a fixed destination, as though flourishing were a point on a map rather than continuous becoming. The Resonance Gauge captures harmony and dissonance among human, ecological, and technological systems—but its elegance risks abstraction.

And then there is the Pulse—immediate, visceral, universal. Every living being understands a pulse. It does not instruct or judge; it tells us whether life is present, strong, and connected. This is why the Zoetic Futures Flourishing Pulse feels right for our time. Before we can design policies or systems, we must first share a common feeling for what it means to thrive. The Pulse offers that—transforming measurement into attunement, and data into empathy. It invites us not merely to count what matters, but to feel the rhythm of life.

Such a pulse might integrate multiple dimensions: ecological health through biodiversity and planetary boundary compliance; human flourishing through wellbeing indices, equality, and time wealth—the freedom to rest, relate, and create; social vitality through trust, belonging, and cultural diversity; and spiritual depth through measures of meaning, purpose, and planetary consciousness. Even technology can be assessed through a

Tech-for-Life Ratio or Digital Ethics Index to ensure innovation remains life-serving rather than life-threatening.

Who Will Inherit Thriving?

The kingdom of thriving will not be inherited by the powerful alone, but by those who learn to live wisely within planetary limits—the communities, innovators, and dreamers who turn compassion into systems and imagination into policy. Thriving futures will belong to those who embrace interdependence as strength: youth who code for justice, elders who share ancestral wisdom, nations that act as guardians of the commons.

The Futures We Want must be regenerative, inclusive, and spiritually grounded—where progress is measured by how well life in all forms can flourish. The next generation must inherit not scarcity and fear, but courage and care. This requires education for foresight, ethics for technology, and empathy as infrastructure. To inherit thriving, we must live as ancestors of the future, designing institutions that reflect love for those yet unborn.

A Planetary Ethic

Ultimately, a Global Ethic of Thriving calls us to weave these insights into a living tapestry. It challenges the myth of progress divorced from purpose. It demands a planetary consciousness that recognizes the interdependence of all beings. To thrive

together is to awaken collectively—to understand that our survival depends not on what we can control, but on what we can care for.

In embracing the ethic of zoē, we affirm that the future worth building is not one of synthetic perfection but of living wholeness. The measure of our civilization is how fully life itself can flourish through us. In a time when machines learn to imitate us, humanity must remember what cannot be replicated: empathy, imagination, and awe.

To thrive together is to live zoetically—choosing life, always, as the measure of our future. It is to remember that we are not separate entities competing for survival, but cells in a living planetary body. Especially as humanity becomes a space faring civilization. The kingdom of thriving is thus no utopia but a praxis—a daily commitment to align our systems with the song of life itself. The pulse of this possibility beats within us now, inviting humanity to awaken to what we have always known in our deepest being: that we are made for connection, not conquest; for reverence, not dominance; for the sacred work of thriving together.

The author acknowledges the use of generative AI tools, ChatGPT and Claude, as creative and analytical partners in the process of research and drafting. All ideation, content, structure, and interpretation reflect the author’s original vision, with AI employed as a catalyst for refinement.

NOTES:

n Maslow’s hierarchy (1943) identifies five human need levels: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

n The Anthropocene marks humanity’s transformation into a geological force capable of altering fundamental planetary systems.

n Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness measures wellbeing across nine domains including ecology, culture, and psychological health.

n The UN Pact for the Future (2024) commits nations to multilateralism, digital governance, and safeguarding future generations.

n Greek zoē means universal life essence; bios refers to individual biographical existence and qualified living.

n Surveillance capitalism commodifies human experience and behavior, threatening autonomy and democratic governance in digital age.

n Planetary Boundaries Framework identifies nine Earth system processes regulating planetary stability, including climate and biodiversity.

SENSING THE RHYTHM OF LIFE THROUGH THE ZOETIC FUTURES FLOURISHING PULSE

CAN we measure thrival — human flourishing, or the flourishing of life itself?

This is one of the most profound questions of our time, sitting at the heart of the Zoetic Futures Flourishing Pulse (ZFFP) — a new way of sensing rather than scoring how well life is thriving.

The old instinct has been to create an Index — to quantify and rank the vitality of societies. But indices, however elegant, freeze life into data points. They measure fragments, not flow. What we now need is a new kind of proxy: one that reflects the complex interdependencies of living systems — human, ecological, technological, and spiritual.

The Flourishing Pulse does not aggregate; it attunes. It listens for the heartbeat of thriving — through signals of balance, coherence, and renewal. It shifts the question from “How do we measure life?” to “How do we know when life is alive and well?”

Below are the five core Pulses — the rhythmic dimensions that together form the living field of a Zoetic Future.

1. Ecological Vitality – The Living Earth Pulse

Measures the integrity and regenerative capacity of the biosphere — the foundation of all thriving.

n Key Signals:

• Biodiversity richness and ecosystem integrity

• Soil and water health, pollinator vitality

• Planetary boundary coherence (climate, nitrogen, freshwater)

• Renewable energy ratio and carbon balance

Possible Data Sources: UNEP, IPBES, FAO, NASA, Global Footprint Network

2. Human Wellbeing – The Living with Dignity Pulse

Reflects the material and emotional conditions for individuals to flourish.

n Key Signals:

• Expanded Human Development (HDI+) including equality and civic trust

• Mental health and emotional resilience

• Time wealth — freedom for rest, care, and creativity

• Healthy lifespan and wellbeing economy measures

Possible Data Sources: UNDP, WHO, OECD, Gallup World Poll

3. Social and Cultural Vitality – The Living Together Pulse

Tracks the strength of relationships, belonging, and cultural resilience.

n Key Signals:

• Social trust and civic participation

• Cultural and linguistic diversity

• Gender and generational equity

• Intercultural cohesion and inclusion

Possible Data Sources: UNESCO, World Values Survey, OECD Social Capital Index

4. Technological Alignment – The Living Wisely Pulse

Evaluates whether innovation and digital systems enhance life or diminish it.

n Key Signals:

• Tech-for-Life ratio — proportion of R&D advancing regeneration or health

• Digital ethics and AI transparency metrics

• Data sovereignty and access equity

• Ecological footprint of ICT systems

Possible Data Sources: ITU, UNDP Digital Public Goods Alliance, WEF, AI Now Institute

5. Spiritual and Existential Wellbeing

– The Living Consciously Pulse

Measures meaning, purpose, and planetary awareness.

n Key Signals:

• Meaning and purpose indices

• Connection-to-nature and awe indicators

• Planetary consciousness and intergenerational trust

• Prevalence of contemplative or spiritual practices

Possible Data Sources: Gallup Global Emotions Report, Pew Religion & Public Life, Earth Charter Initiative, Inner Development Goals

From Index to Pulse — A Shift in Consciousness

The Zoetic Futures Flourishing Pulse represents an evolution in how we understand progress. The Index belongs to an era of control and comparison; the Pulse belongs to an era of consciousness and care. An index measures outputs; a pulse reveals vitality.

Each pulse carries equal weight — 20 percent — forming a Flourishing Signature when visualized on a Zoetic Vitality Dashboard. Unlike rankings, this living map shows where energy flows freely, where systems are coherent, and where life calls for renewal.

This Pulse serves as:

• A Policy Compass guiding nations from GDP toward wellbeing economies.

• An Innovation Sensor ensuring technology remains life-serving.

• A Moral Barometer reminding humanity that progress is the deepening of aliveness, not the acceleration of consumption.

A Living Measure for a Living World

A Zoetic Future envisions societies where vitality, creativity, and compassion are the currencies of development. It stands in contrast to the mechanistic logic of transhumanist dreams that promise perfection through code or control. Thriving is not the escape from humanity but its fulfillment — the awakening of authentic intelligence that values life over optimization.

We may never “measure” flourishing precisely, but we can sense it — through the coherence of ecosystems, the joy in communities, the wisdom in technology, and the peace in our collective spirit.

The Zoetic Futures Flourishing Pulse weaves these signals into a planetary rhythm — a heartbeat reminding us that the true wealth of nations is the vitality of life itself.

To thrive in the 21st century is to keep that rhythm alive — to measure less, and to feel more. To sense not how much we have, but how well we live.

For the future worth building is not one of synthetic perfection, but of living wholeness — a future guided by the pulse of thriving together.

TAKE OUR POLL

Sensing the Future: Public Perspectives on the Zoetic Futures Flourishing Pulse

INTRODUCTION

This poll explores how people feel about these ideas — how useful, meaningful, and applicable they are to our shared future. Please answer honestly. There are no right or wrong responses. Your responses will help shape the next stage of the Zoetic Futures research.

KEY EVALUATION CRITERIA (MAUD FACTOR)

For each of the five Pulses, we will rate perceptions along the MAUD criteria:

Criterion Definition What it Measures?

M —

Measurability

How possible it is to track or observe this Pulse through real-world data or indicators.

A — Applicability How relevant the Pulse is to people’s lives, communities, or work.

U — Usability How easy it would be to use this concept in policy, education, or decisionmaking.

D

— Desirability How appealing or inspiring the Pulse feels as part of a thriving future.

Is it tangible or too abstract?

Does it feel practical or remote?

Can it guide action?

Do people want this vision to succeed?

Each will be scored on a 1–5 Likert scale, where:

1 = Very Low, 2 = Low, 3 = Moderate, 4 = High, 5 = Very High.

Understanding the Zoetic Futures Pulse

The Zoetic Futures Flourishing Pulse (ZFFP) is designed to sense the rhythm of thriving — across ecological, human, social, technological, and spiritual dimensions — rather than rank countries or people.

1. How well does this description make sense to you?

(1 = Not at all; 5 = Very clearly)

2. How relevant do you think this kind of framework could be for your country or community?

(1 = Not relevant; 5 = Highly relevant)

The Five Pulses Evaluation

For each Pulse, include a short descriptor and 4 MAUD questions using the 1–5 scale.

1 = Very Low, 2 = Low, 3 = Moderate, 4 = High, 5 = Very High.

Ecological Vitality – The Living Earth Pulse

Measures biodiversity, soil and water health, and planetary balance.

1. Measurability: How easily can this be tracked through indicators like biodiversity or carbon data?

2. Applicability: How relevant is this dimension to everyday life and policy?

3. Usability: Could governments or organizations realistically act on this Pulse?

4. Desirability: How important is ecological vitality to your vision of thriving?

Human Wellbeing – The Living with Dignity Pulse

Captures physical, mental, and social health.

1. Measurability: Can wellbeing be measured reliably (e.g., through health or happiness data)?

2. Applicability: How much does this resonate with what matters most to you personally?

3. Usability: Could wellbeing metrics replace or complement economic growth measures?

4. Desirability: How central should human dignity be in future development goals?

Social & Cultural Vitality – The Living Together Pulse

Reflects trust, belonging, and cultural resilience.

1. Measurability: How well can we track social trust or cultural continuity?

2. Applicability: Does this feel relevant to your community or workplace?

3. Usability: Could this be integrated into education, planning, or local governance?

4. Desirability: How essential is social harmony for a thriving future?

Technological Alignment – The Living Wisely Pulse

Evaluates whether innovation enhances or undermines life.

1. Measurability:: Can we assess if technology truly serves life (e.g., Tech-for-Life Ratio)?

2. Applicability: How relevant is this to your experience with technology?

3. Usability: Could ethics-based metrics guide tech design or policy?

4. Desirability: How important is aligning technology with human and ecological wellbeing?

Spiritual & Existential Wellbeing

– The Living Consciously Pulse

Measures meaning, purpose, and connection to the greater whole.

1. Measurability: Can we meaningfully measure meaning, awe, or consciousness?

2. Applicability: How relevant is spiritual wellbeing in public or personal life?

3. Usability: Could this be included in education, governance, or leadership development?

4. Desirability: How much do you want future societies to cultivate planetary consciousness?

Overall Reflection

1. Which of the five Pulses feels most important to you personally? (Pick One)

2. Which Pulse feels most difficult to measure? (Pick One)

3. Do you believe it is possible to create a shared global “Flourishing Pulse” that respects cultural diversity?

(Yes / No / Unsure)

Please take the Futures Barometer @ https://bit.ly/ZoeticFuturesPulse

Thank you for contributing to this exploratory study on the Zoetic Futures Flourishing Pulse. Your responses will help shape how we measure and feel the rhythm of life across our planet — a step toward a shared vision of thriving together.

Weaving the Web of Interdependence - Futures of Flourishing and Solidarity

The articles in this theme cover areas including:

The Ethics of Interdependence: Reimagining Human and More-than-Human Relations

From Ruin to Renewal: Post-Conflict or Post-Disaster Recovery as Collective Rebirth

Sharing the Commons: Mutual Aid, Commons Economies, and Community-Led Innovation

Reclaiming Trust: Social Cohesion in an Age of Polarization

Empowered Futures: Futures Literacy as a Tool for Collective Agency

FUTURE IS PHILOSOPHY!

CORE PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS FOR

FUTURES STUDIES’

By Sirkka Heinonen and Veli Virmajoki

AGREAT number of deep philosophical questions are related to futures studies. Our claim is that addressing these questions will help efforts towards thriving futures. In this text, we tackle some of those questions. For the sake of clarity, we have chosen six sub-fields of philosophy that contain central questions that futures studies must take into account or (ii) define how futures studies is conducted.

We chose to present three questions about each subfield of philosophy that are related to futures studies. With regards to each subfield, one of the questions concerns philosophy of futures studies (how we think about future possibilities) and two of the question concern philosophy in futures studies (what we think about future possibilities). In other words, in each subsection that

follows, one of the questions is about us as futures researchers and two of the questions dig into the assumptions and ideas or thoughts we have about the future itself.

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Philosophy of science studies how different fields systematically produce knowledge.

Futures studies as a field:

1. How can claims about the future (that futures studies produces) be justified?

Unlike in most sciences, we cannot actually conduct experiments about the future or think that we are systematising observations about some phenomenon we focus on. We must

make different types of inferences concerning possible futures, and these inferences can rely on many different methods, such as the Delphi method, trend extrapolation, or identification and analysis of weak signals. How do these inferences proceed and how can we distinguish between good and bad inferences or find errors?

FUTURES OF SCIENCE:

2. Can we study the future of science at all, especially when we are interested in the possibility of a radically different science?

The problem is that thinking about a different kind of science would already be doing that science: If we say that reality could perhaps be conceived in this or that way, we must already be able to tell what that science would say. And saying that would already be creating the new science. According to a famous example, imagining a wheel requires a detailed description of a wheel, how it would be used, and so on. In that case, however, the wheel has already been invented through that imagination.

3. Will future science produce understanding or merely predictive power?

If artificial intelligence can accurately predict and systematise information based on data, but its operating mechanisms remain opaque or incomprehensible to us, can we still think of science as an activity that aims at providing understanding?

It is a common thought that science is not only a useful machinery that works but also something that provides understanding, and that this understanding-providing function is a central part of its value. (See e.g. de Regt 2017.) Scientific understanding and the ability to change the world also have a deep connection (Woodward 2003), which could be lost in a future scenario where scientific results are – at least in certain respects – opaque and incomprehensible to us.

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY

Philosophy of technology studies the ethical and moral aspects that arise in designing, applying, and developing technology, as well as the relationship between humans and technology. This is a relatively new sub-field of philosophy, although already in antiquity Aristotle and Seneca, for example, contemplated the subject.

Futures studies as a field:

1. How do technological changes affect the practice of futures studies?

The role of technology as a shaper of society has always been one of the distinct areas of interest in futures studies. However, technological change has also affected how futures are studied. With big data and artificial intelligence, technology is utilised today more than before in futures studies, not only in anticipating changes in the operating environment but also in the form of strategic choices. Futures studies has begun to reflect the role

of new powerful technologies such as digitalisation, artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, neurosciences, and synthetic biology. They are perceived not only as engines of economic growth and producers of good life but also as creators of new geopolitical power structures.

Technological innovations grow the economy and possibly provide ingredients for a good life. However, technology is also about power – the pursuit of power as well as the use of power, which is linked to the logic of economic growth and the creation of geopolitical power positions. As an example, the current power struggles over becoming the world’s leading AI nation between the United States, China, India, and the EU show the intimate relationship between technology and power.

FUTURES OF TECHNOLOGY:

2. Will technology exceed human capacities?

Automation and robotics have already surpassed human capabilities of physical performance. Now artificial intelligence has also defeated humans in chess. The existential risks created by technological development are closely linked to the development of artificial intelligence. What happens when Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) develops into Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that operates independently? (Kuusi & Heinonen 2022; Glenn 2025). Such a major technological change shatters the illusion of us being in control of technology. Ultimately, the question is about the relationship between humans and technology and the

changing nature of this relationship. Does technology serve humans or do humans serve technology (Heinonen 2001)? Will technology replace humans or will there be a fusion of humans with artificial intelligence and other technical artifacts? Another key question related to the interaction between humans and technology is whether technology forces us to choose between freedom of choice and privacy protection (Brin 1998). Our openness towards the use of technology can make us vulnerable.

3. How does technological change affect the future of humanity, nature, and the planet?

Estimating and assessing the impacts of technology is a suitable task for futures studies, because technology is present everywhere and strongly shapes the development of culture and society. Clarifying the causal impacts of technologies is important for decisionmaking, which utilises the assessment of positive and negative effects (i.e., opportunities and threats). Some of the deepest questions are whether technology will help humanity flourish or drive the entire planet toward destruction (Niinluoto 2021). In the philosophy of technology, views toward the future of technology’s potential are often dichotomous: either they are excessively techno-optimistic, trusting that technology will solve all problems, or techno-pessimistic, criticising techno-scientific development (see e.g. von Wright 1986).

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Social philosophy studies the structures of society, values, and the foundations of justice, as well as the relationships between people in the light of these issues.

Futures studies as a field:

1. How can futures studies be conducted justly –who gets to have a voice, for whom is knowledge produced, and on what grounds?

Futures studies is undeniably tightly connected to the surrounding society. Thus, questions about who conducts research and for whom are even more relevant in it than in many other fields (on the connections between research and society in general, see Longino 1990).

FUTURES

OF SOCIETY:

2. What society is a just society?

This is the fundamental question against which questions about the goals of futures knowledge and the desirability of futures must be reflected without exceptions. However, there are multiple perspectives on justice (see Sandel 2009).

3. What kinds of new social structures can be envisioned?

Structures, such as a national state, through which people are governed, do change and are changeable. We

can ask what different kinds of social structures could exist and how we might create those structures. However, the question is not only what is possible, but what would be a just structure, as mentioned in relation to the previous question.

PHILOSOPHY OF MODALITY

The philosophy of modality studies different concepts of possibility and the nature of ‘what-if’ questions (Prelević & Vaidya 2023).

Futures studies as a field:

1. What different concepts of possibility are used in the field – and how and why these concepts?

In futures studies, we speak of alternative, probable, plausible, desirable, etc. futures. What do these concepts ultimately mean? We can also ask which of them are epistemic modalities (i.e., possibilities defined by the limits of our knowledge) and which (if any) are ontological modalities (i.e., possibilities that exist in the reality itself). A clear example of an epistemic modality is a situation where we try to guess which card is next in the deck. The card is already there, but we often cannot be certain what that card is. An example of an ontological modality is a seed from which a plant can develop. The possibility of the plant is a modal property of the seed.

FUTURE POSSIBILITIES:

2. Which possibilities are within the limits of conceivability?

It is clear that we cannot, even with the best and broadest methods, understand all possibilities. It is of utmost importance to try to understand the limits of what is conceivable to us. (Virmajoki 2022.) We may be limited, for example by our concepts, (as in the situation mentioned above where the wheel has not yet been invented: without the concept, we cannot imagine wheels), or by historically inherited structures (as when conceptions of the future rely on belief systems of a limited group of people).

3. How can we answer ‘what if’ questions?

In many situations in our lives, we imagine some change to actual conditions and try to tell what would follow from it. What can such thinking be based on? How do we avoid speculations that go off the roof and define reasonable ‘what-if’ thinking (see Woodward 2003)? What kinds of chains of reasoning should we form to control our ‘what-if’s, and what do meaningful chains of reasoning regarding ‘what-if’s look like? The question is about counterfactual reasoning, where the starting point of the reasoning is contrary to facts. The reasoning must then assume that some things are different (the starting point) and some remain the same (those that tell what would have happened, given the starting point).

ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Environmental philosophy studies the relationship between human and nature as well as values that are not dependent on humans (Schmidtz & Shahar 2018).

Futures studies as a field:

1. Can we think about the future in ways that include non-humans?

The question once again concerns who produces knowledge and for what purpose. An endangered species’ conception of the future might be – if it could be heard – quite different from some corporation’s strategic decision tree.

THE FUTURE OF THE ENVIRONMENT:

2. Is the environment merely a resource (in economic or in some other sense) or does it have intrinsic value?

The traditional question has been whether the environment would have value if humans did not exist – is its value dependent on humans and our ability to use the environment for different purposes? This does not have to be just about economic purpose; we can also talk about, for example, aesthetic experiences we have in nature.

3. If we can radically change the basic building blocks of life and the environment, does the natural–artifact dichotomy lose its meaning?

What is natural if nature itself becomes something fundamentally constructed? How should values related to nature be defined in such a situation – for example, is a species that has evolved through evolution in a different position, ontologically or axiologically speaking, than one that has been synthetically created?

NORMATIVE ETHICS

Normative ethics studies what is good, right, and valuable; or more concisely: what should be.

Futures studies as a field:

1. What values should be followed in futures studies?

It is obvious that research always has certain fundamental principles and codes of integrity that cannot be compromised. However, this does not answer all questions related to values, such

as the selection of collaboration partners, which is particularly relevant in futures studies.

THE GOODNESS OF THE FUTURE:

2. What kinds of futures are good?

This simple question relates to justice (see above) but also to a broader set of values and principles according to which we act. In futures studies, the question of desirable futures and finding them is often central. The question is broad, but it is the clearest and most central of all philosophical questions related to the future. Each time the topic of desirable or valuable futures are discussed in futures studies, it should be clearly stated from whose perspective desirable futures are being discussed.

3. How can we think about the change of values?

Values and norms, like everything else, change (Danaher 2021). We must ask how values can change and how this change can be estimated and assessed. The ethically more significant question is what our attitude toward this change should be. For example, is a future where people have different values a bad future? Or are we allowed to assume that what we now consider as a good future will be a good future also for the future generations?

Concluding Remarks

The discussion above concerning philosophical questions in futures studies is by no means exhaustive, but it, hopefully, provides the reader with an idea of what questions even a limited number of philosophical sub-fields opens up about futures studies. Different approaches in futures studies as well as different objectives associated with them always involve different questions with different emphases. It is important, even necessary, to consider philosophical questions about futures. Already Wendell Bell (1996) defined the task of futures studies as building a better world. From this perspective, the future is a thoroughly philosophical entity – the future is philosophy.

The future must be created, built, and shaped, and it is simultaneously uncertain and beyond us fully comprehending it. This makes the future a kind of playground for the human mind. This play must then be managed, and philosophy has responded to this task throughout its history.

THE AUTHORS

Veli Virmajoki is futures studies scholars who has received his Ph.D. in philosophy of science. He has studied futures of science, higher education, work, among other topics. Sirkka Heinonen is Professor Emerita of futures studies at Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku. She is also Member of the Club of Rome and Honorary Member of the Finnish Society for Futures Studies, and of Futures Finland.

Bibliography:

n Amara, Roy (1991). Views on futures research methodology. Futures, July/August, 645-649.

n Arthur, W. Brian (2009). The Nature of Technology. What It Is and How It Evolves. Free Press: New York.

n Bell, Wendell (1997). Foundations of Futures Studies. Volume 1: History, Purposes, and Knowledge. New Jersey.

n Brin, David (1998). The Transparent Society. Will technology force us to choose between privacy and freedom? Addison-Wesley, Massachusetts.

n Danaher, John (2021). Axiological futurism: The systematic study of the future of values. Futures 132. de Regt,

n Henk W. (2017). Understanding Scientific Understanding. Oxford University Press

n Glenn, Jerome C. (2025). Global governance of the Transition to Artificial General Intelligence: Issues and Requirements. De Gruyter Brill: Berlin. https://millenniumproject.org/new-book-addresses-critical-challenges-of-governin/ Gordon, Theodore J. & Todorova, Mariana (2019). Future Studies and Counterfactual Analysis. Seeds of the future. Palgrave Macmilian.

n Heidegger, Martin (1977). The Question Concerning Technology, 3-35. In: Heidegger, M. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York.

n Heinonen, Sirkka (2001). Teknologian yhteiskunnallisesta merkityksestä eli tarina siitä, heiluttaako ”teknologiahäntä ihmiskoiraa” vai päinvastoin. Futura 2/2001, 4550. (On the impacts of technology on society – is the ‘technology tail’ wagging the dog i.e. humans or vice versa? In Finnish).

n Kuusi, Osmo, & Heinonen, Sirkka (2022). Scenarios from Artificial Narrow Intelligence to Artificial General Intelligence—Reviewing the Results of the International Work/Technology 2050 Study. World Futures Review, 14(1), 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/19467567221101637

n Longino, Helen (1990). Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton University Press.

n Niiniluoto, Ilkka (2021). Tekniikan filosofia. Gaudeamus, Helsinki. (Philosophy of technology. In Finnish)

n Prelević, Duško & Vaidya, Anand (ed.) (2023). Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology. Routledge.

n Sandel, Michael J. (2009). Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

n Schmidtz, David & Shahar, Dan C. (2018). Environmental Ethics, What Really Matters, What Really Works, 3rd Edition. Oxford University Press. Seppälä, Yrjö (1984). 84 000 tulevaisuutta. Gaudeamus: Helsinki. https://www. tutuseura.fi/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/84_tuhatta_tulevaisuutta.pdf (84.000 Futures. In Finnish).

n Virmajoki, Veli (2022). Limits of conceivability in the study of the future: Lessons from philosophy of science. Futures, 142.

n Virmajoki, V. (2023). Frameworks in historiography: Explanation, scenarios, and futures. Journal of the Philosophy of History, 17(2), 288-309.

Woodward, James (2003). Making Things Happen. A Theory of Causal Explanations. Oxford Uni-versity Press von Wright, n Georg Henrik (1986). Vetenskapen och förnuftet. Ett försök till orientering. Söderströms, Helsingfors. (Science and Reason. An attempt towards understanding. In Swedish).

BULLYING AS SIMULACRUM: REIMAGINING VIOLENCE DIGITAL LIVES OF

SIMULACRUM: VIOLENCE IN THE OF CHILDREN

By

Dr. Hidar Amaruddin, Dr. Taufan Jannat, Dr. Murdiano and Dr. Risda Nur Widia – Lecturer at Elementary Teacher Education, Faculty of Education, Universitas Nahdlatul Ulama Yogyakarta

THE boy doesn’t hit—he performs a hit. A flick from a game clip, a smirk borrowed from a meme. In the crowded corridor, the gesture lands before the meaning does. What we witness is not cruelty in its raw grain, but a sign of cruelty—portable, repeatable, strangely frictionless. In a culture where images outrun events, children do not simply imitate; they inhabit simulacra, acting out tokens of harm whose origins are already lost in the scroll (Merrin, 2001; Kellner, 2008).

This essay proposes that much of what we name “bullying” in contemporary childhood is better read as bullying-as-simulacrum: a choreography of signs, optimized for visibility, that precedes and shapes conduct. The line between “online” and “offline” is no longer a border; it is a seam that keeps being stitched and unstitched by platforms, peers, and publics. In that seam, violence travels as a representation before it consolidates as an event. Children learn a repertoire of gestures—pushes, taunts, exclusionary poses—not only from classmates or siblings but from the spectacle economy that packages attention as reward (Armano & Briziarelli, 2017; Bunyard, 2022; Kaplan, 2012).

THE ECONOMY OF SEEING

Debord’s insight that modern life is mediated by spectacle— by the rule of images over relations—feels eerily domestic in a school hallway (Debord, 1990). What counts is not truth but traction. A sign that travels—because it is legible, remixable, meme-able—accrues value, and so do those who perform it. In this attention-market, children learn that certain gestures “work.”

A shoulder-bump paired with a catchphrase, a short video that frames humiliation as a prank—these are not merely bad acts; they are media objects that invite more viewership.

Platforms amplify this logic. Algorithms render visibility calculable, gamified, and contagious. Even when children are not filming, they are inhabiting a space in which action is constantly imagined for a potential audience. The result is a hyperreal environment: the sign of harm becomes more consequential than the harm itself, because the sign travels further and recruits more witnesses (Merrin, 2001; Kellner, 2008). Here, cruelty may begin as citation—a reference to a clip—rather than intention.

FROM MIMICRY TO IDENTITY

Digital hyperconnectivity does not merely connect children; it curates their sense of what is sayable and doable (Brubaker, 2020). School is no longer distinct from “the feed.” Tweens bring rhythms, cuts, and challenges from TikTok-like spaces into classrooms and canteens, calibrating their moves to a grammar of attention learned elsewhere (Dennen, Choi, & Word, 2020; De Leyn, De Wolf, Vanden Abeele, & De Marez, 2022). In this ecology, bullying behaviors often surface as performances of identity— proofs of belonging enacted through humor edged with harm. This is why adults sometimes misread the scene. What appears

as spontaneous aggression may actually be iterative: a gesture performed because it has been performed before, and rewarded. The “joke” is not fully owned by the child; it is a script embedded in a wider media habitus. The point is not to excuse the act but to recognize its mediated genealogy.

HABITUS, POWER, AND THE SCHOOL AS STAGE

Bullying has never been only individual pathology; it is relational and contextual. Research on school bullying has long documented the roles of group dynamics, social norms, and defending behaviors (Menesini & Salmivalli, 2017; Zych, Farrington, Llorent, Ribeaud, & Eisner, 2021). In the age of simulacra, these dynamics intersect with a habitus formed across home, school, and media—dispositions to act and perceive that feel natural because they are practiced daily (Bourdieu, 2018; Reay, 2004).

Within this habitus, symbolic power operates through visibility. Who gets looked at—and how—matters. A child who can reliably generate laughs, gasps, or views holds leverage. The school, then, is not only a site of discipline; it is a stage where attention is the currency and humiliation can be monetized in social capital. Adults who speak only the language of “rules” miss the more subtle economy of recognition and display that shapes what children dare to do in front of others.

THE LOCAL FACE OF A GLOBAL SCRIPT

When the sign of harm travels faster than our capacity to contextualize it, statistics become the blunt instrument we reach for. Reports of rising complaints, police notes, and school memos begin to saturate our sense of crisis. In Indonesia, media and institutional data have chronicled the presence—and public anxiety—around youth violence and school incidents in recent years (Dihni, 2022; Bappeda DIY, 2022). Yet these numbers rarely capture the semiotic drift in which a shove is also a reference, and a taunt is also a clip. Policy cannot treat such acts as purely local failures of character if their forms are global and their motives distributed across attention systems.

SO WHAT DO WE TEACH?

If bullying is, in part, a grammar of signs, then schools must teach how to read signs. Not just “media literacy” in the familiar sense, but an ethico-semiotic literacy: how to notice when representation starts to govern our conduct; how to trace where a gesture comes from; how to distinguish between play and domination when both wear the same smile.

This work begins with dialogue—the slow, difficult practice of understanding that refuses to reduce the other to a role (Gadamer, 2020). In classrooms, this can look like replaying scenarios and asking: What did we think was funny here, and why? What script were we quoting? Who gets to write

the ending? Educators can cultivate relational ethics, inviting students to consider the face and voice of the other as irreducible to a clip or comment (Freeman, 2019). The aim is not to moralize images away, but to denaturalize them—to loosen the hold of scripts that arrive already staged as “normal.”

THREE FUTURES FOR 2050

Looking ahead, we can sketch at least three plausible arcs— cooperation, competition, and collapse—not as predictions but as orienting stories:

1 .Cooperation: Schools, families, and platforms co-design safeguards that privilege care over clickability. Futures literacy becomes common sense; students learn to build peer publics of care that reward repair and inclusion as much as wit. Platform policies and school practices align to demote humiliation as content. In such a world, visibility is redirected

toward witnessing—making space for the other—rather than watching (Gadamer, 2020; Freeman, 2019).

2. Competition: Attention remains king. Children grow more adept at gaming visibility; schools respond with surveillance and zero-tolerance policies that often miss the underlying semiotics. The result is a cat-and-mouse escalation: better filters, savvier performances. Harms persist but mutate into subtler forms—micro-gestures that evade detection yet wound.

3. Collapse: Hyperreality spirals with (mis/dis)information, making it ever harder to agree on what happened, let alone what should be done about it (van Kessel, Manriquez, & Kline, 2025). Exhausted adults outsource judgment to automated systems; children learn that only what is recorded “counts,” so they perform harder. The school becomes a brittle stage where everyone plays to the camera and no one can tell when the acting stops.

Our present choices nudge us toward one arc or another. The decisive factor will be whether we can reclaim attention—not by policing it into silence, but by reframing what deserves to be seen.

PRACTICES FOR NOW

What might that reframing look like on Monday morning?

n Image-reading circles: Once a week, students bring a clip

or meme they love. Together they unpack its source, script, and stakes. Who laughs? Who pays? What would make the joke punch up rather than punch down? (Dennen et al., 2020; De Leyn et al., 2022)

n Counter-spectacle assignments: Invite students to create short pieces that flip harmful tropes—turning exclusion into creative invitation, or one-upmanship into one-lift-up sequences. The assignment grades for careful seeing, not virality.

n Witnessing > watching: Borrowing from relational ethics, classes practice naming the moment when a peer crosses from play into harm—and repairing it in real time (Freeman, 2019). The emphasis is on response-ability: the capacity to respond, not simply react.

n Attunement to habitus: Teachers map the “little rules of place” that make certain jokes travel in their classroom. What are the reward signals? Who sets them? Small changes—re-seating, ritualized check-ins, new forms of recognition—can shift the field in which signs gain power (Bourdieu, 2018; Reay, 2004).

n Platform dialogues: Where possible, schools partner with local tech hubs or youth groups to surface children’s own design principles for safer attention economies. Even absent formal agreements, students can draft class charters that set norms for filming, sharing, and asking consent.

These practices do not pretend to dismantle the spectacle;

they aim to reshape its incentives. In place of humiliation-as-content, they cultivate care-ascontent—not sentimentality, but the craft of noticing and repairing.

THRIVING TOGETHER

To thrive together by 2050, we cannot ask children to renounce the worlds that make them intelligible to one another. We can, however, teach them to speak back to those worlds—to pause the script long enough to ask who wrote it, and who bleeds when it is played. Bullying as simulacrum is not an excuse; it is a diagnosis that points beyond individual blame toward the infrastructures of attention that choreograph our gestures.

If we want solidarity, start with shared seeing. If we want sustainability, start with sustainable attention—not attention that never wavers, but attention that returns, that holds, that is willing to be changed by what it meets. In the end, to thrive together is to learn the ethics of looking in a time when looking is a market. And to teach that ethics is to trust that children can become not the objects of spectacle but its authors—makers of signs that heal as they travel.

Bibliography:

n Armano, E., & Briziarelli, M. (2017). The Spectacle 2.0. University of Westminster Press. n Bourdieu, P. (2018). Habitus: Sebuah Perasaan Atas Tempat. Jurnal Kajian Ruang Sosial-Budaya, 1(2), 153–159.

n Brubaker, R. (2020). Digital hyperconnectivity and the self. Theory and Society, 49(5–6), 771–801.

n Bunyard, T. (2022). Spectacle and strategy. Selva, 1(4), 103–127.

n De Leyn, T., De Wolf, R., Vanden Abeele, M., & De Marez, L. (2022). Tweens, TikTok & privacy. Journal of Youth Studies, 25(8), 1108–1125.

n Debord, G. (1990). Comments on the Society of the Spectacle.

n Dennen, V. P., Choi, H., & Word, K. (2020). Social media, teenagers, and school. ETR&D, 68(4), 1635–1658.

n Dihni, F. A. (2022). KPAI: Aduan Anak Korban Kekerasan Fisik Mendominasi. Databoks.

n Gadamer, H.-G. (2020). Kebenaran dan Metode. Pustaka Pelajar.

n Kaplan, R. L. (2012). Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 15(4), 457–478.

n Kellner, D. (2008). Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007). Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies, 5(1), 88–92.

n Menesini, E., & Salmivalli, C. (2017). Bullying in schools. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 22(S1), 240–253.

n Merrin, W. (2001). The evil demon of the simulacrum. Economy and Society, 30(1), 85–111.

n Reay, D. (2004). “It’s all becoming a habitus.” British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(4), 431–444.

n van Kessel, C., Manriquez, J. D., & Kline, K. (2025). Baudrillard & (mis/dis)information. Theory and Research in Social Education.

THE WATER METAPHOR: RIGID, CHAOTIC, OR FLOWING FUTURES?

By Safaa Mataich

WE live in an age of walls. Political walls, cultural walls, ideological walls. Everywhere we look, humanity seems determined to divide itself into rigid camps, each convinced of its righteousness, each afraid of the other. Yet this polarization, this endless construction of barriers, may be the very thing preventing us from creating the futures we desperately need.

While sociologist Zygmunt Bauman warned us about “liquid modernity” as a source of instability and loss of solid foundations (Bauman, 2000), I want to propose a different perspective: that liquidity, when consciously cultivated, might be exactly what humanity needs to thrive together.

What if instead of walls, we built bridges? What if instead of freezing into opposing positions, we learned to flow? There’s an ancient wisdom in water that humanity has forgotten: only in flow can we truly thrive together.

FROM POLARIZATION TO DUALITY: THE DANCE OF OPPOSITES

Polarization is static death. It splits the world into rigid camps

and forces us to choose sides, creating a zero-sum game where one’s existence denies the other. Polarization freezes complexity into conflict, transforming the rich spectrum of human experience into harsh binaries: us versus them, right versus left, progress versus tradition.

But nature teaches us a different story. In living systems, opposites are not enemies. They are partners in an eternal dance. Day needs night to define itself. Sound requires silence to have meaning. The heart beats through expansion and contraction. These are not contradictions but dualities: dynamic tensions that create life, movement, and possibility.

Duality is fertile tension. Where polarization builds walls, duality builds bridges. Where polarization excludes, duality includes. Where polarization freezes, duality flows. The shift from polarization to duality is the shift from surviving apart to thriving together.

In polarized futures, we are trapped in rigid fortresses of our own making. In dual futures, we dance on bridges of connection, recognizing that our differences are not threats but gifts that make the whole more beautiful, more resilient, more alive.

THE THREE STATES OF SOCIETY: A CLIMATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Water exists in three states, and so do human societies. The relationship between physical and social climate has intrigued thinkers for centuries. Montesquieu famously argued in “The Spirit of Laws” that climate shapes the character of peoples (Montesquieu, 1748). But rather than seeing this as geographic determinism, I propose we view it as a metaphor for understanding the different ways societies can organize themselves and evolve.

Solid societies emerge where structure and distance become survival strategies. Like ice crystals, people are organized in rigid patterns: clear hierarchies, defined roles, structured relationships. Everyone knows their place, boundaries are respected, and individual particles maintain careful distances. These societies can be remarkably stable, but they’re also brittle. The Nordic countries, parts of Northern Europe, even aspects of Japanese society reflect this crystalline organization: beautiful, ordered, but with limited fluidity between the particles that make up the whole.

Gaseous societies bloom where heat creates energy and movement. Here, like molecules in steam, people move freely, collide frequently, and generate intense interactions. There’s warmth, spontaneity, and emotional expressiveness, but also instability and friction. Think of the vibrant chaos of a Mediterranean market, the passionate discussions in a North African café, or the explosive creativity of Latin American communities. Energy is high, connections are immediate, but sustaining coherent structures becomes challenging when everyone is moving in different directions.

Liquid societies exist in that perfect middle state: temperate, flowing, adaptive. Here, people are close enough to connect meaningfully but free enough to move and change. The particles dance together, responding to pressures and opportunities while maintaining their essential relationships. They can flow around obstacles, find new paths, and adapt to changing conditions without losing their fundamental identity or breaking apart. This state aligns with what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called “flow”: that state of deep focus, effortless action, and joyful engagement we experience when challenge meets skill, when we’re fully present in a meaningful task (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

Where Bauman saw liquid modernity as a source of anxiety and rootlessness, I see liquid societies as humanity’s path to conscious evolution. Not the chaotic dissolution of all boundaries, but the mindful cultivation of adaptive flow.

THE GREAT WESTERN PARADOX: FROZEN INDIVIDUALISM

Here lies one of the most fascinating contradictions of our time: the West has built its identity around celebrating the individual while simultaneously creating systems that freeze people into rigid roles.

We speak endlessly of personal freedom while constructing increasingly bureaucratic institutions. We celebrate

entrepreneurship while demanding conformity to market logic. We promote self-expression while sorting people into demographic categories. We worship individual achievement while reducing humans to their economic productivity.

The cruel irony is that the more “individualistic” a society claims to be, the less space there often is for genuine individual expression. In truly solid societies, those crystalline structures where everyone has their designated place, the individual doesn’t emerge. They simply fill their assigned slot in the schema.

Think about it: in the cold, structured environments we associate with high organization, people may be physically separated but emotionally constrained. They have privacy but not freedom. They have roles but not authentic choice. The individual becomes less visible precisely in the system that claims to protect them.

Real individuality, the capacity to discover and express your authentic self in relationship with others, requires the liquid state. It emerges not in isolation but in flow, not in rigid separation but in dynamic connection. When people are free to move, adapt, and find their unique position in relation to others, that’s when true individual agency becomes possible.

The future of thriving together isn’t about choosing between individual freedom and collective harmony. It’s about creating the conditions for liquid societies where both can flourish simultaneously, where the individual and the community dance together in ever-changing, ever-beautiful patterns of mutual recognition and support.

FLOW ACROSS CULTURES

Different cultures naturally embody different states of being, and this isn’t a hierarchy, it’s a spectrum of human possibility. Some cultures, like those in Germany or Japan, tend toward the solid: structured, respectful of tradition, emphasizing duty and

order. Others, like many in North Africa or Latin America, lean toward the gaseous: warm, expressive, emphasizing relationship and spontaneous connection.

Neither approach is better or worse. Both offer gifts that humanity needs. The solid cultures provide stability and depth; the gaseous cultures provide vitality and innovation. The magic happens when we learn to move fluidly between these states, when we develop what we might call intercultural fluidity: the ability to adapt our way of being to what the moment requires. This isn’t about uniformity. A liquid future doesn’t mean everyone becomes the same. It means everyone becomes more adaptable, more capable of connecting across difference, more able to flow together while maintaining their unique essence.

FUTURES LITERACY AS FLOW PRACTICE

How do we learn to flow? This is where futures literacy becomes essential. Not as an academic exercise, but as a practice of fluidity itself. Futures literacy is the ability to move gracefully between different possible tomorrows, to hold multiple scenarios in mind without becoming attached to any single one.

When we practice futures thinking, we’re training ourselves to be liquid. We learn to see uncertainty not as a threat but as a resource. We develop the capacity to imagine multiple pathways forward, to adapt our plans as conditions change, to remain resilient in the face of the unexpected.

Futures literacy teaches societies how to flow. It transforms the fear of change into excitement about possibility. It helps communities navigate between the rigidity that kills innovation and the chaos that prevents coordination.

THE ART OF FLOWING TOGETHER

The future we need is neither the solid ice of authoritarian control nor the scattered vapor of fragmented individualism. It’s the flowing river of conscious collaboration: humans learning to move together while respecting each other’s unique currents.

This liquid future embraces complexity rather than trying to simplify it away. It finds strength in diversity rather than uniformity. It builds resilience through adaptability rather than resistance. It creates unity through flow rather than force.

In this future, polarization melts into duality. Walls transform into bridges. Fear becomes curiosity. And humanity discovers what it has always been capable of but rarely achieved: thriving together.

Conclusion

We stand at a crossroads. We can continue building walls that divide us, creating ever more solid barriers between human communities. We can dissolve into chaos, each pursuing our own direction without regard for others. Or we can learn the ancient wisdom of water and discover how to flow.

Polarization freezes us in place. Chaos scatters us to the winds. But duality, the dance of differences, teaches us to flow together, each unique stream contributing to a greater river of human possibility.

The choice is ours, and it’s being made every day in every interaction, every decision, every moment we choose connection over separation, curiosity over certainty, flow over force.

Like water, humanity must learn to flow.

THE AUTHOR

Safaa Mataich is a foresight consultant and systems thinker working between Europe and Africa. Founder of Mata Link Strategies and curator of Foresight in Africa, a bilingual platform mapping and connecting the continent’s emerging futures ecosystem. She designs transformative processes that empower communities to navigate uncertainty and imagine resilient futures.

REFERENCES

Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row. Montesquieu, C. de S. (1748). The spirit of laws (T. Nugent, Trans.).

DESIGNING STRATEGIC CONVENINGS: A FOR COLLECTIVE

By Lisa Kay Solomon

WE’RE living through a moment that demands we imagine together. Climate, AI, democracy, equity— the challenges we face aren’t just complex, they’re interconnected. They require a different kind of discovering and building together—not through meetings and conferences that feel performative, but through creative conversations and convenings where people feel brave enough to imagine genuinely new futures with—and for—each other.

Yet too often, our convenings fall short of this promise. We gather with good intentions but default to familiar formats— panels that prioritize performance over dialogue, presentations that inform but don’t transform, conferences that connect us briefly but fail to catalyze lasting change.

There’s a growing recognition that we need something different. Across sectors, leaders are questioning why we keep convening the same way when the challenges we face demand new approaches. The dissatisfaction is palpable: strategic convenings that could unlock collective imagination too often become missed opportunities for genuine transformation.

This gap between what our moment requires and what our gatherings deliver is urgent. Getting people to give you

STRATEGIC FUTURES FRAMEWORK

IMAGINATION

permission to imagine and build together—especially in these times—feels both necessary and hard. But it’s also possible.

I’ve spent years exploring how to design strategic conversations and collaborative convenings—work captured in my book Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change and more recently in The Futures Happening Playbook on Civic Imagination. I believe that learning how to design these gatherings is one of the most important leadership skills of our time.

What gives me hope is that these skills are teachable and learnable. They’re essential for any leader or organization wanting to bring people together to solve complex challenges. What follows is a framework for effective futures facilitation, grounded in three essential elements: Context, Content, and Craft.

CONTEXT: SETTING THE STRATEGIC ALTITUDE

The first moments of any futures convening are critical. Context is about setting the purpose intentionally, balancing stretch and relevance in a way that orients people to both “why” and “why now.” This requires systems thinking—the ability to

position the experience and conversation at a strategic altitude that resonates.

Effective futures work must frame imagination itself as infrastructure, not as a soft skill or luxury, but as the foundation that empowers movement. We have to be ready to build what we haven’t seen.

Everyone already has the superpower of prospection, the ability to imagine multiple futures. Most of us only use it when we’re lying awake anxious about everything that could go wrong. The facilitator’s job is helping people recognize and intentionally redirect this capability toward transformation rather than worry.

Setting context at the right altitude goes beyond intellectual framing. It’s about using metaphors, phrases, and images that capture people’s hearts and energy, not just their heads. Language that is both poetic and political.

The message must be both urgent and empowering. Recently I heard my colleague Aisha Bain talk about traveling into the future not as escaping reality, but as transforming it together. “We are the bridge between memory and possibility, between what has been and what must be.”

Perhaps most importantly, effective context-setting reminds participants that futures are plural, not singular. We can share direction like a compass while acknowledging multiple pathways forward. More than one thing can be true at the same time.

CONTENT: GROUNDED IN INTEGRITY AND DEPTH

Context without substance is just inspiration theater. The content of futures work must be grounded in integrity, depth, and concreteness.

Strong content requires masterful questioning that moves participants through a carefully designed arc of inquiry. This begins with establishing baseline understanding: What do participants need to comprehend about the current moment of transformation? From there, the inquiry moves toward action by exploring how power can be used to strengthen opportunities and what will enable systems change. Finally, it cultivates hope by asking what participants want future generations to say about what was done in this pivotal time and what gives hope now. Each question should build on the last, creating a bridge between present challenges and future possibilities.

Effective facilitation doesn’t shy away from difficult questions, but creates space for generative and expansive reflections that invite the group to build on what they hear. Content should fuel questions that surface new thinking and prompt further inquiry, rather than confirm existing beliefs.

The depth of content comes from rigorous preparation, deep subject matter expertise, and the courage to ask questions that might not have easy answers but open new possibilities for thinking and action.

CRAFT:

THE DETAILS THAT BRING IT ALL TOGETHER

Context and content won’t land if the craft isn’t there. Craft

is about paying attention to every detail that creates the conditions for transformation.

Can you stitch together planned and emergent content? Can you hold space without commandeering it? Can you inspire authentic connection? This requires knowing your own strengths and staying attuned to every detail including your presence, your energy, what you’re wearing, what music is playing as people enter the room, and more.

Masterful facilitation means conducting high-stakes interviews and panels to surface new perspectives, building psychological safety with strangers, delivering content and context while managing timing and logistics—all with equal grace and gravitas.

It’s the ability to frame the conversation with intent and purpose, communicate authentically and connectedly, and move a room of people through a journey that honors both what has been and what could be. This level of craft doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from deep preparation, selfawareness, and attention to the full experience.

Conclusion: The Imperative of Intentional Futuring

The question isn’t whether we’ll shape the future. It’s whether we’ll do it with the intention, wisdom, and masterful facilitation that the work requires.

As we face increasingly complex and interconnected challenges, the ability to design and facilitate strategic futures convenings becomes not just valuable, but essential. These are the spaces where we move from anxiety to agency, from isolated thinking to collective imagination, from predetermined outcomes to improbably good futures.

The framework of Context, Content, and Craft offers a foundation for this work. But ultimately, effective futures facilitation is an art and a discipline—one that requires continuous learning, deep empathy, and the courage to help others imagine what they haven’t yet dared to believe is possible.

The future is calling us to do better. And we can.

THE AUTHOR

Lisa Kay Solomon is a bestselling author, strategic foresight designer, speaker, podcast host and award-winning innovator who believes we’re all capable of imagining and designing better futures. She is currently a Designer in Residence and Lecturer at the Stanford d.school, where she leads their futures work and teaches popular classes like “View from the future” that help leaders and learners learn applied skills of anticipation, imagination and design to navigate increasingly complex futures. She co-authored the bestselling books Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change, and Design A Better Business: New Tools, Skills, and Mindset and Strategy for Innovation, which has been translated into over a dozen languages. She created the popular LinkedIn learning class, “Leader as Futurist,” and contributed a chapter of the same name for Des Dearlove’s Certain Uncertainty: Leading with Agility and Resilience in an Unpredictable World.

Honoring Many Ways of Knowing - Plural Worldviews and Indigenous Wisdom

This theme highlights: Visions from the Margins: Feminist, Indigenous, Afrofuturist, and Decolonial Futures Sacred Belonging: Spiritual and Cultural Dimensions of Becoming Living Legacies: Intergenerational Governance and Ancestral Knowledge Systems

WELLBEING: BEYOND ONEWORLD FUTURES

UNIVERSAL WELLBEING AND ITS COLONIAL FOUNDATIONS

By Karina Vissonova, PhD

WHEN we envision sustainable wellbeing societies in possible futures, we typically imagine a world where balance has been achieved across all human needs globally. In these futures, today’s widely condemned consumer lifestyles have become stories of the past, environmental integrity has been restored, production follows circular economy principles, and goods are distributed justly around the globe. More often than not, these notions surface as the main recipe for a global ‘wellbeing society’.

Such a portrayal of possible futures recognises a seemingly homogenous world. However, it denies the different realities and coexisting lifeworlds that our planet is home to – or what Arturo Escobar1 calls its pluriversality. The concept of wellbeing, as it has come to dominate our thinking, reflects a reductive worldview that permeates the futures.

This prevailing worldview is in itself a retrospective legacy of human collectives shaped by their particular value frameworks, interactions, and technological affordances. In our contemporary world, this worldview has framed wellbeing as unvaryingly reliant on utilitarian principles. These principles aggregate what has ‘worked’ best for the majority. But wellbeing may only loosely correspond to universal anthropological constants or fixed notions of human needs across diverse geographies. In the pluriversal worlds that Arturo Escobar describes, the conditions of wellbeing vary greatly. They depend on spiritual practices, modes of contributing to social progress, family structures, climate, and relationships with other life-forms and nature – or simply put, the

diverse ways we perceive and practice livingness. Through colonialism and historical relations of power, the peoples of the global North have adapted to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls a ‘sociology of absences’2. Meaning, in the name of progress and growth during the times of rapid industrialisation, and in upholding the legacy of colonialism, frontrunning nations, and the values that have defined them, have actively undermined the life-practices, knowledge systems, and the ways and preferences of livingness of others, treating them as non credible alternatives. These alternatives have been rendered invisible or absent from the accounts of the world that matters. As a result, the concept of wellbeing has become streamlined and funnelled into utilitarian ways of seeing and making the world. What we now accept as universal definitions of wellbeing are perhaps to be perceived more accurately as particular (and, on occasion, imposed) cultural constructions which may, or may not, have a common place in our human futures.

IS THERE A ONE-WORLD SUSTAINABILITY?

As colonial legacies continue to shape how we imagine sustainable futures, we must ask: what might material wellbeing look like from a non-homogenised world perspective? This question emerges alongside an anticipation of a change of the economic system, which currently serves as the social contract for almost our entire globe. In this system, relatively unevenly, unjustly, and with varying degrees of success3, individuals exchange their labour and time for goods and services provided by public and private spheres.

In parallel, propositions for transitioning toward an economic system with sustainable collective practices are as obvious as they are urgent – to rethink the meaning of ‘goods’ and their geographical placements, while decoupling our production from solely capital interests that have caused ubiquitous environmental degradation. Such a transition, however, would radically alter the very foundations on which the quality of life is built for some, while reconfiguring lives for others.

In hindsight, we see how early industrialisation may have suggested that humanity would eventually share one needswants-based world. However, considering today’s stark geographical divisions between consumerism and extractivism, how can the public and private spheres uphold the present-day social contract and the life qualities it grants, while simultaneously continuing their geographical segregation?

SOCIAL CONTRACTS FOR PLURIVERSAL FUTURES

Notions that every human would desire and, with time, be able to participate in a needs-wants based economy now seem somewhat absurd. We have a more comprehensive understanding that not only are we not physically able to dress the world in an industrialised outfit, due to a shortage or maldistribution of resources, but that the world is in fact a world of many worlds where, in some, needs and wants mean little and carry other meanings entirely. Views of wellbeing, therefore, are more likely to be pluriversal, mirroring the multiple, in-parallel-lived worlds.

As we transition towards sustainable wellbeing societies,

REFERENCES:

perhaps most importantly, we must see to it that the new economic system, whatever that might be, is in service to social contracts that justly align with the various realities of livingness. Thus, in our visions for sustainable wellbeing societies, we may first dismantle the expectations of merging multiple ontologies into merely a single, albeit possibly well intended, needs-wantsbased world. Instead, we may embrace visions of wellbeing from a pluriversal worldview.

This leads us to question which life qualities may be among the building blocks for wellbeing in new economies of sustainable futures? A question follows: how justly these life qualities are shared among all global citizens, and hence: how can we build socially just pluriversal worlds of wellbeing for everyone intra- and inter-generationally?

In seeking recognition of the multiple, coexisting realities we challenge the worldview that enforces homogeneity not only in modernity but also in visions of the future. This recognition demands new approaches to sustainable transition – methodologies that honour ontological diversity. Rather than defaulting to universal solutions dependent on a consensus what wellbeing in itself may mean, the sustainable wellbeing societies of the futures may be as diverse as the coexisting realities of today.

Acknowledgement:

This essay is based on a working paper in preparations for a series of “Future Material Wellbeing” workshops. The working paper is part of the “Design Futures” research sub-project within the Future Potentials Observatory of MOME Foundation.

1 Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.

2 Santos, B. de S. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Routledge.

3 The injustice and different levels of success here is simply meant as the visible gap between social classes, and between the peoples of nation states of global South and North.

By Samar Younes

DURING my recent speaking circuit: Venice, Doha, Beirut, New York, online, everywhere in between… I’m often asked if I’m worried about AI taking our jobs. My answer: I’m far more worried about humans becoming machines. Over-optimization, overimplication, efficiency worship under capitalism that funnels up, never both ways.

AI can become the ultimate colonization cherry. Hypercontrol, hyperdomestication, hypercapitalization masquerading as progress. Or it can be something else entirely when cultivated through human, ecological, indigenous intelligence. The choice isn’t between humans and machines. It’s between domestication and the wilder possibilities that emerge when we refuse to behave like code.

THE DOMESTICATION THEATER

Watch how “AI ethics” conversations unfold. The Global South positioned as recipient of technological solutions developed elsewhere, never as originator of technological wisdom. Meanwhile, my grandmother’s kitchen operated through more sophisticated intelligence networks than most machine learning systems. Ancestral knowledge, seasonal patterns, material intuition, social systems keeping communities fed across scarcity and abundance.

Silicon Valley didn’t patent her methodology, so it doesn’t exist in the innovation discourse.

The same extractive logic that created plantation economies now drives AI development. Massive datasets scraped from cultures worldwide, processed through Western frameworks, sold back to us as “artificial intelligence.” Except there’s nothing artificial about the intelligence. It’s concentrated cultural memory, repackaged as product.

What if computational collaboration could excavate transcultural futures instead of reproducing colonial hierarchies?

Silk Road Intelligence vs. Extraction Protocols

My Brooklyn-Beirut Future Ancestors series experiments with this possibility. Each portrait emerges through negotiation between Lebanese spatial memory, New York material culture, computational pattern recognition, ancestral aesthetic intelligence. No system dominates. AI doesn’t replace cultural knowledge. It collaborates with it.

This is Silk Road logic applied to computational collaboration. Cultural exchange that enriches all participants rather than extracting value for centralized accumulation. The merchants connecting Damascus to Beijing didn’t erase local knowledge. They cross-pollinated it. Ideas accumulated without assimilation.

Quantum Craft methodology operates similarly. When I prompt AI systems, I’m not just generating images. I’m performing cultural archaeology, excavating aesthetic patterns that colonial frameworks typically flatten into “exotic” or

“traditional” categories. Each collaboration becomes small insurgency against computational domestication.

But this requires systematic approach, not just good intentions. You can’t hack colonial programming through individual creativity alone. You need methodologies that hold multiple intelligence systems simultaneously without forcing synthesis.

DISCIPLINARY APOPHASIS: WORKING IN THE CRACKS

I operate in what I call disciplinary apophasis: productive spaces between established categories where new forms emerge without institutional antibodies attacking them immediately. Art history can’t contain what I do. Computer science can’t categorize it. Anthropology can’t study it without changing it.

This isn’t accident. It’s strategy.

The most transformative cultural work happens in institutional blind spots, where multiple knowledge systems cross-pollinate before being domesticated into academic disciplines or corporate frameworks. Like mycorrhizal networks connecting forest ecosystems underground, transcultural

intelligence spreads through spaces that official knowledge production doesn’t monitor.

By 2050, these spaces may be the only territories where cultural biodiversity survives computational monoculture. Not through nostalgic preservation, but through systematic approaches treating culture as living ecosystem requiring both ancient root systems and emergent possibilities.

REALITY-COMPOSING TECHNOLOGY

Future Ancestors artifacts function as speculative protection protocols. Cultural technologies designed to maintain transcultural connections across temporal disruption. They document patterns that refuse domestication while pointing toward possibilities that haven’t crystallized yet.

This is what solidarity technology could look like: computational tools serving cultural complexity rather than reducing it. AI systems collaborating with multiple knowledge traditions rather

than replacing them. Cultural frameworks holding both ancestral wisdom and speculative futures without forcing compatibility.

But it requires rewilding our relationship to technology itself. Refusing the domestication that turns us into inputs for someone else’s optimization. Reclaiming wild intelligence that emerges when humans, nature, and machines collaborate rather than compete.

THE QUESTION WE’RE NOT ASKING

Everyone wants to know if AI will replace human creativity. Nobody asks whether human creativity was ever individual in the first place. My ancestors didn’t create in isolation. They worked through collective intelligence networks that included other humans, natural systems, spiritual technologies, material collaborators.

The computational revolution might just be forcing us to remember what we forgot: intelligence is always collaborative,

creativity is always transcultural, and the future belongs to those who can accumulate wisdom rather than accumulate capital.

The choice isn’t between humans and machines. It’s between domestication and the quantum possibilities that emerge when we refuse to behave like code while learning to collaborate with computational systems.

What kind of ancestors do we want to become?

VISUAL REFERENCES:

Brooklyn-Beirut Reverse Archeology Series (Future Ancestors) Quantum Craft methodology: computational collaboration with ancestral intelligence, 2024 Image 1 Image 2 Image3

THE AUTHOR

Samar Younes is a Beirut-born, Brooklyn-based Quantum Craft™ artist-theorist, and founder of SAMARITUAL, actively mutating craft into a reality-composing insurgent technology, transforming organizations through cultural archaeology and strategic insurgency. Previously, Younes studied architecture and visual communication and holds degrees in scenography from Central Saint Martins. With 25+ years as artistic director at the intersection of art, commerce, and culture, her Future Ancestors series and IMAGINAOLGY Quantum Craft™Lab guide practitioners in developing kaleidoscopic intelligence as essential future literacy. International speaking circuit: CSM, Parsons, NYU, Dubai Future Foundation, Doha Debates. Featured in Wired, GQ, WGSN, Frame, and more. Mentor at the New Museum of Contemporary Art incubator: NEW INC. Recently published: AI Art Magazine’s Critical Intelligence issue and Compass APF ‘Futures of Creativity’ issue. She publishes Quantum Culture Substack, exploring postdisciplinary approaches to cultural production that challenges binary categorization and monoculture.

Samar Younes @samaritual www.samaritual.com | samaritual. substack.com

RETHINKING THE IDEA OF STRONG AFRICAN WOMEN THROUGH THE EXAMPLE OF QUEEN MAKEDA

STRONG AND INDEPENDENT

HISTORICAL MEMORY: MAKEDA

By Fabrice Nguiffo Teuguia Cabinet Riding-Up, Programme PCP-ACEFA, Cameroun

THE figure of the “strong and independent woman” has often been misunderstood, both in contemporary debates and in the way historical narratives are framed. Too frequently, independence is perceived as a threat to traditional family structures or as a catalyst for rebellion against marital harmony. Yet, the historical legacy of Queen Makeda of Sheba—one of Africa’s most revered female leaders—offers a profoundly different perspective. Her leadership demonstrates that strength and independence in women can, in fact, reinforce family stability, cultural continuity, and community well-being.

1. LEADERSHIP ROOTED IN COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING, NOT INDIVIDUALISM

Queen Makeda’s power was not centered on personal ambition or confrontation with male authority, but on ensuring the prosperity, dignity, and security of her people. Her legitimacy came from collective well-being—land stewardship, economic prosperity, spiritual authority, and cultural continuity. Her reign reflects a model of leadership where independence is a tool for protection and elevation of the family and the nation, not its fragmentation.

This is particularly visible in her approach to diplomacy with King Solomon: rather than submitting or rebelling, Makeda engaged as an equal partner in intellectual and diplomatic dialogue. She used her independence to create bridges, not walls.

2. INDEPENDENCE STRENGTHENING FAMILY AND DYNASTIC CONTINUITY

One of the most remarkable aspects of Makeda’s legacy is the stability of her dynasty. Historical and legendary accounts associate her reign with the foundation of the Solomonic line in Ethiopia—an enduring royal lineage that lasted for centuries.

This reveals a critical lesson: a woman’s independence does not threaten family structures when it is anchored in responsibility, wisdom, and shared purpose. On the contrary,

In contemporary Africa, this lesson is critical. Empowering women intellectually, economically and socially does not mean dismantling marriage or family – it means strengthening their role as equal contributors to shared prosperity. A strong woman is not a rival to her partner but a pillar of resilience, continuity and wisdom.

“ ”

Makeda’s leadership secured her family’s place in history and ensured a stable succession. Her strategic governance protected her people and preserved the dignity of her household.

3. INTELLECTUAL AND ECONOMIC AUTONOMY AS TOOLS OF EMPOWERMENT

Makeda’s power came from her intellectual curiosity and economic acumen. She was known as a seeker of wisdom, a skilled diplomat, and a master of trade and technological advancement. These capacities did not isolate her from her cultural and familial responsibilities—they elevated her capacity to lead and protect.

By controlling trade routes, managing irrigation systems, and forging international partnerships, she strengthened the economic foundation of her kingdom and, by extension, the security of her household. Independence, in her case, was synonymous with responsibility and foresight, not rebellion.

4. BALANCING TRADITIONAL ROLES AND STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

Makeda neither entirely conformed to traditional gender expectations nor rejected them outright. She balanced her traditional role as queen mother with unprecedented diplomatic and intellectual autonomy. This balance illustrates a powerful truth: strong women do not need to abandon their roles as mothers, wives, or cultural anchors to lead—they can expand those roles to include strategic influence and governance. Her leadership model aligns with many African traditions where women historically held both domestic and political authority—as queen mothers, priestesses, and mediators— playing a central role in sustaining the social fabric.

5. SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY AND HARMONY

Makeda’s reign was also marked by spiritual integration rather than religious conflict. She navigated multiple belief systems— Sabaean traditions, Judaic and Abrahamic narratives—while preserving her spiritual independence. Her leadership thus fostered social harmony and moral authority, reinforcing family and community bonds.

This spiritual grounding shows that independence need not lead to fragmentation or alienation; it can deepen shared values and reinforce collective identity.

6. A MODEL FOR CONTEMPORARY GENDER DEBATES

Today, discussions around gender equality often face resistance from those who fear it may undermine family unity or traditional values. The example of Queen Makeda directly challenges this misconception. Her legacy shows that a strong and independent woman can be a stabilizing force, not a disruptive one. Her independence amplified her capacity to care, protect, and lead— not as an opponent of men, but as a partner in leadership.

Resume

Queen Makeda’s leadership exemplifies that independence in women is not an act of rebellion, but of responsibility. Through wisdom, diplomacy, and economic leadership, she preserved her dynasty, strengthened her community, and became a bridge between cultures. Her legacy demonstrates that strong women can be—and have always been—foundational to family strength, cultural survival, and collective prosperity.

In reclaiming such narratives, modern societies can reframe the meaning of female strength: not as a threat to marriage or tradition, but as a force that protects, uplifts, and unites. fteuguia@pcpacefa.org, nguiffo@riding-up.com

Dancing with a Living Planet - Thriving on a Changing Earth

This section examines matters related to our planet through: Blue Horizons: Ocean and Island Futures in the Climate Age Regenerative Pathways: Adaptation, Restoration, and Healing Ecosystems Planet as Project: Terraforming Earth and the Ethics of Engineering Nature

EARTH 2050: A NEW ETHIC ON THE HORIZON

NEW PLANETARY HORIZON

By Kishan Khoday

THE world is entering a new era of complexity and instability, with carbon dioxide at levels today not seen in three million years, alongside the likely onset of the sixth mass extinction in the Earth’s history, growing severity of climate-induced disasters and zoonotic pandemics affecting billions of people. No longer a dystopian tale of the future, a planetary crisis is upon us. As noted by the world’s top planetary scientists, whether humanity has the wisdom to navigate the crisis and “to sustain a liveable biosphere for people and civilizations, as well as for the rest of life with which we share the planet, is the most formidable challenge facing humanity 1”

Looking to the future, beyond a focus on enhanced implementation of multilateral agreements, scaled up finance and technology transfer, our ability to overcome this existential challenge will require first and foremost a transformation in values. Today’s planetary crisis is in many ways based on an epistemic crisis in cultural norms and values. Modernity’s extractive-based development pathways and anthropocentric values need to be remade, moving instead towards a renewed balance with nature2. In doing so, an imperative has emerged to break through epistemic boundaries and inherited paradigms of progress and go beyond the tired and the worn-out utilitarian, extractive ethos that stands at the base of modernity and the planetary crisis.

A new planetary ethic is needed, a “system of values, a moral story, an ontological master narrative within which the ecological crisis becomes not only visible but also relevant and meaningful3”. In exploring avenues for such a future direction, a view to the horizon provides inspiration. The cosmic vista has been the most universally experienced feature of our natural environment, a common denominator shaping the creative imagination, and emergence of narratives on the balance of people and planet.

For millennia, communities around the world have looked upwards to the cosmos to understand both nature and

the existential human dilemma, with diverse socio-cultural narratives and mythologies arising to express an evolving cultural understanding of the nexus between cosmic and planetary cycles and their relationship to shifting landscapes, ecosystems, and implications for human trajectories. 4Such narratives came to express collective fears and visions for the future, as a means of collective memory on ways to adapt and remain resilient in the face of dramatic shifts in Earth systems. These cultural narratives had a systemic role, serving as a form of ecological intelligence to create order and balance within and between society and nature. But far from a thing of the past, the process of imagining and reimagining the nexus of cosmos, people and planet remains just as vital today. With the existential threat of planetary change upon us, we need to once again delve into the creative spirit to transform paradigms and generate a new planetary ethos fit for purpose into the future. One example was the ‘Earthrise’ moment in the 1960s, whereby humanity first saw the Earth from above. This had revolutionary impact with the image of Earth serving as a symbol of oneness and coalescing what was at the time an embryonic form of modern environmentalism. 5This spirit was taken to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, with the

REFERENCES:

1 Folke C, Polasky S, Rockstrom J, Galaz V, Westley F, Lamont, M., Scheffer M, Osterblom H, Carpenter SR, Chapin III FS, Seto KC, Weber EU, Crona B, Daily GC, Dasgupta P, Gaffney O, Gordon LJ, Hoff H, Levin SA, Lubchenco J, Steffen W, Walker BH (2021), ‘Our Future in the Anthropocene Biosphere: Global Sustainability and Resilient Societies’ (paper for the Nobel Prize Summit: Our Planet, Our Future), AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, 50, 834–869.

2 J. P. Marshall and L. H. Connor, Environmental Change and the World’s Futures –Ecologies, ontologies and mythologies (New York: Routledge, 2017), 96.

Stockholm Declaration serving as a call to action under the theme of ‘only one Earth’, and setting the stage for the first multilateral environmental agreements in the decades that followed.6 However, what was hoped for as a new appreciation of the Earth ultimately succumbed to hubristic tendencies, where the anthropocentric control the planet and its assets was extended.

Beyond the introspective ‘only one Earth’ vision that emerged with Earthrise and late twentieth century environmentalism with its limitations and inability to bend the curve of ecological decline, the road to 2050 could well be shaped by new revelations that reopen the human imagination and potentials for a new possibly more impactful planetary ethic. This started in the mid-1990s just after the Rio Earth Summit and passage of landmark UN conventions on climate change and biodiversity, at which time the first ‘exoplanet’ was discovered, a planet outside of our own solar system. Today, 5,000 exoplanets have been detected, a rapid rate of discovery. While a very limited understanding of these planets exists, it is now clear that planetary emergence in the universe is common, not rare. This profound revelation is already transforming our understanding of the cosmos, Earth and our place in it.7 Experts

3 V. Argyou, The Logic of Environmentalism: Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005) 48.

4 See generally A. Avanti, Star Stories: Constellations and People (New Haven: Yale University Press 2019), and J. Marchant, The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020).

5 S. Jasanoff, Image and Imagination: The Formation of Global Environmental Consciousness, in Changing the Atmosphere, eds. P. Edwards and C. Miller, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 309-337.

now estimate that one in four stars in the universe could well host Earth-like planets (ELPs), rocky planets found in the habitable zone of their respective Suns, at a distance where temperatures might allow Earth-like prerequisites for ecological life such as water, atmospheres and biochemistry to emerge. With billions of stars in our galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the universe, this could translate int o millions of habitable ELPs on the horizon. 8

This expanding cosmic horizon may well coalesce into an ‘Earthrise 2’ moment, not centred on the view of our planet from above, but rather the recognition of countless ELPs and a diverse cosmic ecosystem. With a view to the future, this creative process will only expand, with the Earth in 2050 best understood as one ecosphere in a vast comic ecosystem. An expanding cosmic horizon of ‘other-Earths’ might reshape our collective imagination and sense of values, not just about the cosmos, but about the future of Earth and ourselves. As our outward view of the cosmos expands, the multiplicity of planetary systems will reflect back on us, providing Earth and the global community a sense of otherness and futurity. By reimagining the planetary, the nature of humanity and our position on the planet are also thrown into a state of flux.9

One of the most prominent examples is the Trappist-1 system, a group of seven ELPs orbiting a red dwarf star forty light years away from us. 10 Other recent examples include planet GJ 1252 b identified by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), Pi Mensae c, TOI 270b and Teegarden b and c. Beyond the detection of exoplanets and ELPs, this process is also provoking speculation about planetary life cycles and

ways in which the triple signature of carbon dioxide, water and oxygen, along with forces of geology and attributes of host stars, come together to enable planetary ecosystems to emerge and adapt.11

Closer to home, Venus and Mars are good examples of how planetary analogues can help catalyse better understanding and creative thinking about the state of the Earth. Known as Earth’s twin sister, our closest neighbour Venus is about the same size as our planet and emerged at about the same time within the habitable zone of our solar system. But Venus suffered the ravages of a runaway greenhouse effect leading to its current

REFERENCES:

6 See S. Jasanoff, Heaven and Earth: The Politics of Environmental Images, in Earthly Politics ed S. Jasanoff and M. L. Martello (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 31-51.

7 S. J. Dick, Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 209-239.

8 Steve Bryson et al, The Occurrence of Rocky Habitable Zone Planets Around Solar-like Stars from Kepler Data, The Astronomical Journal (2020) (https://arxiv.org/ abs/2010.14812).

9 A. Elias and C. Moraru, The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century (Evenston: Northwestern University Press, 2015), xvi

10 Paul Scott Anderson, Clouds for some Earth-sized TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets, 7 March, 2019, Earth Sky (https://earthsky.org/space/trappist-1-exoplanets-hazy-cloudy-atmospheres)

11 P. Ward and J. Kirschvink, A New History of Life:The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth, (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 14-27. See also Ethan Seigel, Is Alien Life Hiding Beyond Earth 2.0?, 14 June 2019, Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/ sites/startswithabang/2019/06/14/is-alien-life-hiding-beyond-earth-2-0/#33d788ba2966)

12 See Roger Launius, Venus-Earth-Mars: Comparative Climatology and the Search for Life in the Solar System, Life (2012) Sep; 2(3): 255–273. See also The Venus Code” –Unknown Unknowns of Climate Change, https://dailygalaxy.com/2019/04/the-venuscode-unknown-unknowns-of-climate-change-earth-day-feature/

harsh environment. Today its atmosphere is 96.5 per cent carbon dioxide, with average temperatures hot enough to melt lead and clouds raining down not water but sulfuric acid. Venus provides an example of the end-state of planetary habitability for life, triggering creative speculation on the future of the Earth should carbon footprints continue to expand unabated. Mars, the red planet, likewise serves as a key analogue in the emerging narrative around ecological futures. Permanent polar ice caps have recently been found to have existed on Mars, possibly alongside deep-water systems. Before the mass desertification of the planet, Mars had large rivers with water flowing across its terrain, possibly even hosting Earth-like ecosystems in its deep history.

In imagining the abstract ecosystems of other planets are we envisaging a possible future for the Earth, or perhaps its past, or alternatives? A comparative view of planetary ecosystems shifts our conventional sense of space and time, encouraging us to connect our existence with the infinite breadth and depth of cosmic cycles, and providing fresh scale, perspective and context for ecologically disruptive behaviour here on Earth. The more we learn about the nature of other planetary ecosystems, the more this inevitably drives speculation, understanding and eventually cultural narratives about the nature of Earth and ourselves.

What a planetary consciousness might look like remains for now a speculative endeavour. But it has already sparked a surge of creative thinking about potential innovation in socio-cultural narratives. Artists for example are translating emerging sensibilities around our new cosmic horizon into symbolic code, and as society’s mythmakers they provide a glimpse into future ethical dilemmas and scope for a new collective ethic around the planetary. Importantly, they also explore the risks posed by our dark sides as we explore the cosmos, including the risk of positive potentials becoming subsumed by hubris, and colonial ventures for resource exploitation.

Alongside these risks, a new creative process is emerging, with potential for new cultural narratives that recontextualise “our place and time in the cosmos” as we reconcile a greater appreciation of our expanding cosmic context alongside their fears and hopes for the future of the Earth. 17As in eras past, such knowledge provides an opportunity for changing how we understand the relationship between people, planet and cosmos. Each time we look to the night sky we are reminded of the mystery that generated our planetary ecosystem, preserves it, and determines our collective destiny.

Might a new and expanding story of the heavens help us to reimagine the Earth and our global community in a way that reverses the sharp human/nature divide at the base of today’s planetary crisis? A radically different understanding of the cosmos and the Earth has the potential to destabilise inherited, conventional principles on which modernity and anthropocentrism currently rest, leading to greater solidarity and commonality. 18A repositioning of Earth and humanity within an expanding cosmic ecosystem has the potential to re-energise our imagination, re-enchant the connection between humans and nature, re-valorise eco-cosmologies from around the world and remind us of the mysterious forces that generated our planetary ecosystems and to which our individual and collective destiny remains closely connected. A new planetary ethic may well be on the horizon.

13 G. Arney and S. Kane, Venus as an Analog for Hot Earths, (New York: Cornell University, 2018). See also Stephen R. Kane, Giada Arney et al, Venus as a Laboratory for Exoplanetary Science, JGR Planets, Volume 124, Issue 8 (2019), 2015-2028.

9 A. Elias and C. Moraru, The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century (Evenston: Northwestern University Press, 2015), xvi

14 Nathalie A. Cabrol, The Coevolution of Life and Environment on Mars: An Ecosystem Perspective on the Robotic Exploration of Biosignatures, Astrobiology, Volume 18, Number 1 (2018).

15 See L. Preston, Goldilocks and the Water Bears: The Search for Life in the Universe (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 121.

THE AUTHOR

Kishan Khoday is a planetary scientist, international lawyer and career UN diplomat. He has served with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for 25 years, leading sustainability initiatives across Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa and currently in the Caribbean. The options herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the UN, UNDP or its Member Statescategorization and monoculture.

16 The most widely known examples are in popular filmmaking such as Ad Astra (2019), Arrival (2016), Interstellar (2014), Oblivion (2013), Prometheus (2012), Another Earth (2011), Melancholia (2011), Avatar (2009), Moon (2009), Sunshine (2007), The Matrix (1999), Star Trek IV (1986), Blade Runner (1982), Star Wars (1977) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

17 P. Ward and D. Brownlee, The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the new science of astrobiology charts the ultimate fate of our world (London: Paitkus Books, 2003), 9. 18 G. Chakravorty Spivak, Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet (Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 1999). See also B. Latour, Facing Gaia (Cambridge: Polity, 2017) and W. Connolly, Facing the Planetary: Entangled humanism and the politics of swarming, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017)

REWILDING FUTURES PRACTICE: ATTENTION AND RECIPROCITY

FUTURES IN ATTENTION RECIPROCITY

By Dana Klisanin

BEFORE you read a word further, look at the photo beside this essay.

Follow the threads of the web with your eyes— how the silk catches light, how the geometry holds over water, how it’s fragile yet strong.

I noticed the awe-inspiring web crossing the downtown square after lunch and snapped the image you’re seeing now.

In my Rewilding Futures work (Klisanin, 2023, 2024), I’ve noted how rising anxiety and depression often parallel rising deforestation. Today, I want to slow down and get personal. Take a few moments before reading on and recall the last thing you noticed in nature. Was it a flower? The yellow hue of an autumn leaf? Was that today, yesterday, last week? If you live in an urban area, what flora or fauna catch your eye on the way to work? If you live in a more rural setting, what delights you when it appears—a hummingbird, a butterfly, a deer?

Hold the image in mind as you read. It’s a reminder of what’s at stake as permanent land-use change accelerates—and a cue that rewilding our futures begins with rewilding our attention.

By the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s definition, deforestation is the conversion of forest to another land use—a long-term or permanent loss that includes conversion to agriculture, infrastructure, and urban areas (FAO, 2023). In 2023, the world permanently cleared an estimated 6.37 million hectares of forest—about a Sri Lanka each year, or a Washington, D.C. each day (Forest Declaration Assessment, 2024).

If that single-year pace simply flatlines to 2050, we erase on the order of 160 million hectares; using the recent historical benchmark of 10 million hectares per year (2015–2020), losses push toward 250 million hectares—roughly Alaska plus Texas combined (Forest Declaration Assessment, 2024). Forests harbor a disproportionate share of terrestrial life, and land-use change is the leading global driver of biodiversity loss; once a living landscape becomes roads and rooftops the species that made it sing rarely return within a human lifetime (IPBES, 2019; UNEP, 2020).

This isn’t alarm for its own sake. It’s a design brief.

THE INNER DEFORESTATION

Outer loss has an inner analogue. As living places are cut away, our felt relationship with the more-than-human world thins. Psychologists call this the extinction of experience: fewer everyday encounters with nearby nature dampen attention, awe, patience, and care (Soga & Gaston, 2016). In my Rewilding Futures work, I see three recurring symptoms: attentional fragmentation (we can’t linger), ecological numbness (lack of feeling for the morethan-human world), and displaced belonging (loss of a sense of a shared home). The good news is that antidotes exist and are teachable. Research suggests, for example, that brief contact with nearby nature helps restore directed attention and steady cognition (Kaplan, 1995); that moments of awe widen care and prosocial choice (Rudd et al., 2012; Piff et al., 2015); and that even

micro-restorative exposures—five minutes at a window, a step outside—reduce stress and refresh working memory, including in cities (Hansen et al., 2017; Weber et al., 2018).

If sustainable design asks how to endure and regenerative design asks how to restore, rewilding design asks how to belong. It grows from an ethic of interdependence long taught in spiritual and Indigenous lineages and convergent in systems scholarship— from Macy’s mutual causality to Laszlo’s systems philosophy—and it resonates with physics that challenges separateness, including Bohm’s undivided wholeness (Macy, 1991; Laszlo, 1972; Bohm, 1980/2002). Here, I build on those by sharing two practical, repeatable protocols—attention and reciprocity—that bring relationship more fully into how we imagine, decide, and act.

1) Attention Protocol (5 minutes)

Before any session, step outside (or to a window). Note four sensory observations (sound, scent, texture, light), one pattern, and one question the place suggests. This is a disciplined way to arrive in relationship before decisions get made. It draws on the evidence above: nature contact restores attention and steadies mood (Kaplan, 1995; Hansen et al., 2017; Weber et al., 2018). It brings us into a place of

relationship with the more-than-human world.

Facilitator cue (20 seconds): Look, listen, breathe. Name four sensory details. What pattern is emerging? What question is the place asking of us?

Practices like this develop belonging and bring the lived experience of interdependence into our decisions. Over time, they tilt choices toward human and ecological well-being.

2) Reciprocity Ledger (one page, one promise)

This practice is inspired by Indigenous teachings on reciprocity—what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls the Honorable Harvest, a set of relational guidelines such as ask permission (and heed the answer), never take the first or the last, take only what you need, take only what is given, harvest with minimal harm, use everything you take, be grateful, share, and give a gift in return— sustaining the ones who sustain you (Kimmerer, 2013).

The Reciprocity Ledger is an applied adaptation: a simple, auditable way to bring those principles into everyday decisions. On one side, list benefits we take (cooling shade, flood absorption, stable soils, beauty, pollination). On the other, list benefits we return (canopy gains, soil-health investment, rain-garden or riparian repair, dark-sky hours, support for local stewardship). Then pick one nearterm return. Name it, fund it, schedule it within 90 days, and set a date to walk the site and report back—outside, on site.

This is not only ecological repair; it is psychological repair. Making a specific, place-based promise tends to lift agency, coherence, and awe—the very states that restore attention and support prosocial, long-horizon choices (Kaplan, 1995; Rudd et al., 2012; Piff et al., 2015).

Facilitator cue (30 seconds): “Name three benefits we take from this place. Now name three we’ll return. Which one starts in 90 days? Who owns it? When do we report back— outside, on site?”

Attention and reciprocity help us remember who we are in the web of life. Practiced, they make futures work a practice of flourishing with the more-than-human world—shifting design from managing decline to learning how to thrive.

REFERENCES:

n Bohm, D. (2002). Wholeness and the implicate order. Routledge. (Original work published 1980)

n FAO. (2023). Terms and definitions: FRA 2025 (Working Paper 194). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://openknowledge.fao.org/ server/api/core/bitstreams/a6e225da-4a31-4e06-818d-ca3aeadfd635/content

n Forest Declaration Assessment. (2024). Forests under fire: 2024 Forest Declaration Assessment. https://forestdeclaration.org/

n Hansen, M. M., Jones, R., & Tocchini, K. (2017). Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) and nature therapy: A state-of-the-art review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(8), 851. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14080851

n IPBES. (2019). Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services (Summary for policymakers).Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.https://files.ipbes.net/ipbes-webprod-public-files/inline/files/ipbes_global_assessment_report_summary_for_ policymakers.pdf

n Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(3), 169–182. https://doi. org/10.1016/0272-4944(95)90001-2

n Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions. Klisanin, D. (2023, April). Why futurists must consider rewilding. Compass (Association of Professional Futurists), 80–84. https://rewildinglab.co/s/Klisanin_ Rewilding-Futures_APF.pdf

n Klisanin, D. (2024, December). Rewilding futures: Reimagining our relationship with the more-than-human world. Compass (Association of Professional Futurists), 88–91. https://rewildinglab.co/s/Rewilding-Futures_CompassFinal.pdf

n Laszlo, E. (1972). Introduction to systems philosophy: Toward a new paradigm of contemporary thought. Gordon and Breach.

n Macy, J. (1991). Mutual causality in Buddhism and general systems theory: The dharma of natural systems. State University of New York Press. Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(6), 883–899. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000018

n Rudd, M., Vohs, K. D., & Aaker, J. (2012). Awe expands people’s perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1130–1136. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612438731

n Soga, M., & Gaston, K. J. (2016). Extinction of experience: The loss of human–nature interactions. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 14(2), 94–101. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.1225

n UNEP. (2020, May 22). UN report: As the world’s forests continue to shrink, urgent action is needed to protect them.United Nations Environment Programme. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-reportworlds-forests-continue-shrink-urgent-action-needed

n Weber, A. M., & Trojan, J. (2018). The restorative value of the urban environment: A systematic review of the existing literature. Environmental Health Insights, 12, 1178630218812805. https://doi.org/10.1177/1178630218812805

LISTENING WITH LAND: REGENERATIVE PARTICIPATION AS A PATH TO SHARED FLOURISHING

By Amalia Deloney

“WHY do you forget me?”

The words emerged in response to an opening prompt at What If the Park Dreamed Back?, a community futures lab Point A Studio held in Baltimore. We had asked participants to listen for a whisper from the park. One person wrote this note—not to the land, but from the land. In a single moment, the frame shifted: the park wasn’t backdrop. It was speaking.

Most civic processes treat parks as problems to fix or amenities to manage. Residents are invited to vote on features, provide feedback on plans, or endorse someone else’s design. The future becomes transactional, reduced to projects and checklists.

Our lab worked differently. We began from another premise: that parks are living archives of memory and possibility, capable of co-authoring the futures we imagine.

We started with rocks—local river stones chosen as billionyear-old companions. Not objects, but partners to consult like elders. Each had outlasted ice ages, floods, tectonic shifts. To hold one was to sit beside a witness with more perspective than humankind itself.

Participants were invited to notice the weight, the silence, the coolness, and to let those qualities stretch their sense of time. Grounded in scales larger than a single lifetime, they spoke their names into the circle, paired with a word for arrival: curious, open, not knowing. The rocks traveled with us through the rest of the lab—companions across memory, release, and futures.

The practice spiraled outward. At the center, participants

named what the park carries: displacement, broken families, lost graves, the legacy of enslavement, erasure, genocide. Alongside grief came gifts: seeds, trees, black walnut, earth, ancestors, wildlife. Memory surfaced as heavy, but also insistent—reminding us that even in loss, land continues to give.

In the next turn, participants laid down what they were ready to release: fear, segregation, food insecurity, the smallness that comes from shrinking ourselves or our communities. The act was simple but serious, like clearing ground before planting.

At the edge, conditions for thriving appeared: memorials that

Workshop participants fill out personal Spiral Maps, at TEN Baltimore

tell the truth, skating paths alive with joy, greenspace valued as deeply as homes, belonging on equal footing. One participant offered a vision that distilled the whole: “The park should feel like your favorite aunt’s house.”

The spiral was not consultation disguised as creativity. It was a portal. Thriving together stopped being abstract. It became something you could feel in the body.

Before we closed, participants spoke from the future. Using a simple phone number—the Futures Line—they dialed in and left messages from the year 2075. The recordings were alive and insistent: “I am that future. I am what changed.” “I see children skating, safe and free.” “I hear the languages of everyone who belongs here.” These were not predictions. They were rehearsals of solidarity—glimpses of what flourishing could sound like, spoken as if already real.

The lab ended with a small ritual. A wooden bead, pressed into each hand, symbolized a seed. Participants named one action they would carry forward. Belonging was no longer distant or abstract—it became tangible, something neighbors could plant immediately.

Across these practices, patterns of learning emerged. Memory is futures data. Release is design. Belonging is systemic—not about inclusion at someone’s table, but about reshaping conditions so that everyone, and the land itself, are already part of the circle. This is not community engagement as usual. It is regenerative participation: a way of practicing foresight that treats land and community as co-authors of futures worth inheriting.

By 2050, if practices like these were woven into civic life, neighborhood parks could become laboratories of flourishing. Designers and planners might anchor technical expertise in seasonal rituals—spiral sessions at solstice, seed pledges at planting time—so strategy is inseparable from living context. Community development could measure success not only in projects completed but in conditions strengthened: shade equity,

clean water, multilingual welcome, youth stewardship, everyday joy. Foresight would no longer arrive as an external report but live as a civic habit.

And by 2075? Perhaps what participants voiced in Baltimore could be spoken anywhere: the end of war, and belonging on equal footing. Not because one master plan declared it so, but because thousands of neighborhoods kept practicing—honoring memory, releasing harm, rehearsing futures, tending seeds.

The truth is, we don’t hold the answers. We make them together. Each spiral, each bead, each whispered message from the land is part of a larger choreography of becoming. To thrive together is not to manage the future, but to practice it—in right relationship with each other and with the ground beneath our feet.

The park is not backdrop. It is a partner. To dream with the land is to remember we are never planning alone.

THE AUTHOR

Amalia Deloney is a futurist, community strategist, and founder of Point A Studio, a regenerative futures practice based in Baltimore. Born in Guatemala and trained as a lawyer, she has spent decades working at the intersections of law, human rights, philanthropy, and design. Her practice blends foresight with participatory methods, treating land as partner and lifting community wisdom as the seedbed of futures worth inheriting.

Collaborative Futures Timeline

Participants work in groups to fill out their Spiral Map at TEN Baltimore Symposium

ISLANDS OF THE FUTURE: HOW SATELLITES CAN HELP SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES FLOURISH BY 2050.

By Kaveri Shaili Sookoyee

IOFTEN find myself thinking: how might a small island build a resilient future alongside others in 2050? For islands like Mauritius, surrounded by the vast ocean yet highly vulnerable to climate change, the solution may lie thousands of kilometres above—in satellites orbiting the Earth. While often viewed as high-tech tools owned by spacefaring powers, satellites can also become tools of solidarity, sustainability, and resilience for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). By visualising how vulnerable nations adopt spacebased technologies, we can see how they might not only survive but truly flourish by 2050.

SIDS like Mauritius face some of the world’s most pressing global challenges. Rising sea levels threaten coastal areas, whilst stronger and more frequent cyclones disrupt livelihoods and infrastructure (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery [GFDRR], 2024). Ocean health, vital to food security and the blue economy, is growing ever more fragile, with mangroves, seagrasses, and coral reefs under strain (Sunkur et al., 2024). With limited land, resources, and local data collection capacity, these islands risk being left behind in a fast-paced world. For some us, this is a reality. Yet, their geographical location also gives them a unique advantage. Strategically situated in vast

oceans, islands are well placed to receive and process satellite signals, making them potential hubs for space-based monitoring and innovation (Rughooputh et al., 2002).

Satellite data already supports global climate science, disaster response, and sustainable development and its potential is especially transformative for SIDS. High-resolution imaging and radar satellites can track cyclone formation, floods, and storm surges in near real-time, giving communities days of advance warning rather than hours (Munasinghe et al., 2023; Tarpanelli et al., 2022). Satellites can also observe coral bleaching, map coastal erosion, monitor mangrove health, and detect illegal fishing across vast Exclusive Economic Zones (Surrey Space Centre et al., n.d.; Sunkur et al., 2024). Additionally, food and water security can be reinforced, as remote sensing guides precision agriculture, monitors drought stress in crops, and maps water resources (Lobell, 2013; ICIWaRM, n.d.). Even public health can benefit from it, as we can track communicable diseases such as malaria ,dengue and Covid-19 (McMahon et al., 2021; Louw et al., 2022).

The importance of satellites has been made clear in recent crises. In 2020, the U.S. National Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provided technical assistance to Mauritius during the Wakashio oil spill, while Sentinel-1 and -2 data were used to track and map the extent of the disaster (Rajendran et al., 2022; NOAA, 2020). These cases highlight how satellite data can be key for longterm planning, as well as for emergency response. The image of the black ocean is a constant reminder for Mauritius of the importance of remote sensing tools.

Beyond Mauritius, small islands across the Pacific already illustrate how satellite data is a lifeline. Fiji, Samoa, and Vanuatu rely on Earth observation for cyclone forecasting, early tsunami alerts, and coastal monitoring (Rasmussen et al., 2009; Pacific Community, 2025). Regional initiatives supported by the UN and Pacific Community use satellites for marine resource management and sea-level rise assessment, offering valuable lessons in solidarity and resilience that Mauritius and other Indian Ocean islands can adopt (United Nations, 2015).

By 2050, futures diverge. In a fragmented scenario, satellites remain monopolized by powerful countries, and SIDS remain dependent and reactive. In a technocratic scenario, the benefits might reach only some, widening the gap. But in a solidarity future, satellites are treated as

part of a shared global resource. Proactive steps such as Mauritius’ partnership with India on joint satellite development (Government of Mauritius, 2025) and regional projects like NEREUS for battling illegal fishing (Surrey Space Centre et al., n.d.) become models of cooperation. In this light, satellites symbolise solidarity, helping humanity flourish together rather than apart.

Technology alone cannot help in securing flourishing futures; instead, it must go hand in hand with local knowledge, inclusive governance, and the imagination to envision what’s next. Mauritius’ First Biennial Transparency Report (Ahmed et al., 2024) highlights the urgency of capacity building and the need to share knowledge and responsibility across generations. SIDS communities are known to be highly adaptable and resilient. Rather than replace them satellites can hence amplify these strengths. If Mauritius invests in education, training, and regional partnerships today, then by 2050 young Mauritians will be more than just users of satellite data—they will be co-creators of the solutions the world needs (Doorga, 2022; World Bank, 2017).

For Small Island Developing States, satellite data offers a pathway to a resilient 2050. By 2050, Mauritius stands as an example of how satellites guide smarter decisions, protect fragile ecosystems, and support sustainable development. But for this vision to be real, islands must overcome today’s challenges—capacity gaps, lack of awareness, and weak coordination. With investments in education, training, regional partnerships and with governments, researchers, and international allies working side by side, SIDS can unlock the full potential of satellites. By doing so, they will not only boost chances of their survival, but they will have been naturally selected to flourish. As a space enthusiast, I can’t help but hope that this is the path we choose.

REFERENCES:

n Ahmed, S., Sharma, A., Deshmukh, V., & Esambadi, N. G. (Lead Authors). (2024). Mauritius’ first biennial transparency report. Department of Climate Change, Ministry of Environment, Solid Waste Management and Climate Change. https://unfccc.int/sites/ default/files/resource/BTR1_Mauritius_Final%202.pdf

n Doorga, J. R. S. (2022). Climate change and the fate of small islands: The case of Mauritius. Environmental Science & Policy, 136, 397–408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. envsci.2022.06.012

n GFDRR. (2024). Disaster risk profile of Mauritius. Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery. https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/default/files/mauritius.pdf

n ICIWaRM. (n.d.). Training course on applying satellite remote sensing for water resources management in Africa. https://iciwarm.info/training-course-on-applyingsatellite-remote-sensing-for-water-resources-management-in-africa/

n JAXA. (n.d.). Earth view. https://earth.jaxa.jp/en/earthview/2020/08/28/1629/index.html

n Lobell, D. B. (2013). The use of satellite data for crop yield gap analysis. Field Crops Research, 143, 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2012.08.008

n McMahon, A., Mihretie, A., Ahmed, A. A., Lake, M., Awoke, W., & Wimberly, M. C. (2021). Remote sensing of environmental risk factors for malaria in different geographic contexts. International Journal of Health Geographics, 20, 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/ s12942-021-00282-0

n Munasinghe, D., Frasson, R. P. de M., David, C. H., Bonnema, M., Schumann, G., & Brakenridge, G. R. (2023). A multi-sensor approach for increased measurements of floods and their societal impacts from space. Nature Water, 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s43247-023-01129-1

n National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2020, August 21). Updated: NOAA continues to provide remote technical assistance in Mauritius oil spill response. https:// response.restoration.noaa.gov/updated-noaa-continues-provide-remote-technicalassistance-mauritius-oil-spill-response

n Rajendran, S., Vethamony, P., Sadooni, F. N., Al-Kuwari, H. A.-S., Al-Khayat, J. A., Seegobin, V. O., Govil, H., & Nasir, S. (2022). Detection of Wakashio oil spill off Mauritius using Sentinel-1 and 2 data: Capability of sensors, image transformation methods and mapping. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 174, 113173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. marpolbul.2021.113173

n Rasmussen, K., May, W., Birk, T., Mataki, M., Mertz, O., & Yee, D. (2009). Climate change on three Polynesian outliers in the Solomon Islands: Impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 109(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00167223.2009.10649591

n Rughooputh, S. D. D. V., Rughooputh, H. C. S., & Fagoonee, I. (2002). Space science and technology in Mauritius: Current status and future opportunities. Acta Astronautica, 50(12), 747–754. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0094-5765(02)00023-2

n Sunkur, R., Kantamaneni, K., Bokhoree, C., Rathnayake, U., & Fernando, M. (2024). Mangrove mapping and monitoring using remote sensing techniques towards climate change resilience. Scientific Reports, 14(6949). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-57511-z

n Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, Mauritius Research and Innovation Council, & UNDP Ocean Innovation Challenge. (n.d.). NEREUS: A satellite-based tool for the fight to illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. United Nations. https://sdgs.un.org/ partnerships/nereus-satellite-based-tool-fight-illegal-unreported-and-unregulated-iuufishing

n United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. United Nations. https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda

n World Bank. (2017, August 23). Using satellites to monitor progress toward the SDGs. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2017/08/23/using-satellites-to-monitorprogress-toward-the-sdgs

n Louw, A. S., Fu, J., Raut, A., Zulhilmi, A., Yao, S., McAlinn, M., Fujikawa, A., Siddique, M. T., Wang, X., Yu, X., Mandvikar, K., & Avtar, R. (2022). The role of remote sensing during a global disaster: COVID-19 pandemic as case study. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, 27, 100798. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2022.100798

n Pacific Community. (2025, September). The Pacific Community and the Pacific GIS & Remote Sensing [News release]. Secretariat of the Pacific Community. https://www. spc.int/updates/news/joint-release/2025/09/the-pacific-community-and-the-pacific-gisand-remote-sensingCouncil’s Space Unit.

THE AUTHOR

Kaveri Shaili Sookoyee is a first-year Computer Science student at the University of Mauritius. She gained hands-on experience in satellite data applications through her internship with the Mauritius Research and Innovation Council’s Space Unit.

WORN AGAIN, BORN AGAIN

[Direct quotes from interviews have been translated from Filipino.]

By Zoe Davad

BEFORE dawn in the cool mountain city of Baguio, people huddle around piles of clothes, searching for hidden gems. The warm yellow streetlights of Manila shine down on a string of thrift stores just beginning to open their doors. Across the country, such a practice is constant: garments discarded are given new life elsewhere.

In many parts of the world, secondhand clothing walks a thin line between survival and stylistic choice. The Philippines knows thrifting by the word ukay-ukay – from halukay, meaning “to dig” – and it has long been more than just a way to clothe oneself cheaply. Before it became trendy among influencers or was rebranded as vintage, it was a lifeline for families who could not afford hauls from global fashion chains.

Today, as thrift culture spreads online and acquires new labels like “curated” or “eco-conscious,” it faces a dilemma that resonates far beyond the Philippines: will the future of thrifting be one of shared flourishing—or of exclusion and gentrification?

FRAGILE LIVELIHOODS

On a scorching afternoon in Taytay – the Garments Capital of the Philippines – 54-year-old Nanay Ludy is unpacking several kilos worth of womenswear. From her cramped stall, she sells blouses, dresses, and pants to keep her family afloat — on good days. In the last seven years, there have been more bad days than good days.

“Usually, mothers come here with their daughters. They’re all shopping secondhand now, though, and I see why. The thrift store also has nice clothes, for cheap too.” She shows me the logbook where she records her sales. Each day has four or five sales, usually a single item.

The two of us barely fit inside the stall alongside all the clothes, having to stand almost perfectly still to avoid bumping into each other. “I hope you understand,” Nanay Ludy tells me. “I can’t leave the stall, in case I miss a customer.” A cracked plastic stool is the only place for her to sit. This tiny space costs P500 a day, about 9 USD.

It is a lot, considering that Nanay Ludy’s sales average about P700 (12 USD). Despite experimenting with other styles and even trying to set up an online shop, she’s realized that the trend cycle moves too fast for a single person to keep up. “I don’t know what’s next. [...] Maybe I’ll end up like that.” She nods toward nearby stalls shuttered with dark cloth or cardboard.

LOCAL SURVIVAL & ITS DEPENDENCE ON GLOBAL EXCESS

The story of Filipino fashion is one full of contradictions. Just a few streets from stalls like Nanay Ludy’s, glossy malls burst at the seams with fast fashion. Starting in the late 1990s and exploding in the 2000s, mall staples like Uniqlo, Zara, H&M, and Forever 21 brought international trends to the Philippines at shockingly low prices and quantities in obscene excess. Outsourced manufacturing in China, Taiwan, and

Bangladesh kept prices low; weekly “drops” and social media hype turned clothing into near-disposable commodities.

By 2014, Vinculum Group data (2022) showed Filipinos buying 60 percent more imported garments than in 2000, and discarding many after only one or two wears. #haul videos on Instagram and TikTok only fueled this throwaway mindset, while online shopping platforms delivered the latest trends straight to doorsteps nationwide.

On the other hand, a parallel “alternative” economy of thrifting gained momentum in the 2020s, driven by environmental, financial, and economic concerns. However, they’re not as separate as we may think. The sheer quantity of fast fashion often makes it so that there’s an abundance of it even in thrift shops.

REINVENTION IN THE DIGITAL BOOM

Ironically, as fast fashion boomed, it also gave new legs to the thrifting scene. In the late 2010s and especially after 2020, a new generation of Filipinos – wealthy youth, fashion enthusiasts, influencers – rediscovered ukay-ukay not just as a money-saver but as a statement. In creative districts of Manila or Cebu, you could find curated racks of “handpicked” ukay finds, each labeled with carefully styled price tags and hashtags. Thrifting was rebranded as cool, eco-conscious, and even aspirational.

The digital boom accelerated this reinvention. With little capital, students, stay-at-home parents, and workers began reselling thrift finds on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok Live.

Mhikaela, a single mother and full-time office worker, runs an online thrift store from her apartment. She notes that her sideline has been profitable enough to help her with the expenses of raising a toddler. “Convenience is definitely the appeal for most people. It’s difficult to thrift, if I’m being honest. I couldn’t thrift as often when I was pregnant because it was so hot, so dusty [...] Online thrifting combines budget-friendly with stylish and also lessens the effort involved for the buyer.”

This digital-age thrifting is partly economic. The barriers to starting an online thrift business are low, so anyone can spin a profit by reselling their closet or wholesaling bales of secondhand clothes.

But as thrift culture scales up, it risks pricing out its original base. In Instagram thrift stores, a dress that might cost ₱150 (3 USD) can now go for thousands under the label of “vintage” or “curated.” Occasionally, outright bidding wars for outrageous prices ensue.

For many longtime thrifters, this shift stings. Kathleen Rose Macayan, a Bulacan-based thrifter for over a decade, believes that this recent trend of overpricing is deeply alarming. “My classmates used to tease me before. They used to say that it’s the morgue supplying the thrift stores with clothes off corpses. It’s so ironic and disappointing for

me that some sellers are being overly greedy just because thrifting became trendy.”

Here, ukay-ukay becomes more than a story about fashion. It becomes a lens for futures thinking. By 2050, the world will face deeper scarcity of resources and sharper inequality.

There is more than enough clothing to clothe several generations to come, yet it seems that we only consume more and more. The same is true of food, housing, and energy. We have abundance, but who really benefits when that abundance is so unevenly distributed?

As idealistic as it might seem, one must believe in a better world for it to exist.

Perhaps by 2050, the notion of waste itself will feel outdated. Clothing will be used to its fullest — shared, repaired, repurposed. Nobody deserves to be priced out of dignity, and thriving should not depend on the exclusion of others.

This vision is not utopian. It is necessary. Thriving together requires that sustainability be inseparable from solidarity. Without fairness, sustainability risks turning into just another status symbol.

Back in Taytay, Nanay Ludy arranges her wares and prepares to face the next day. She has no other choice. It is for her, and all those like her, that this article has been written.

REFERENCES:

n Bengzon, J. A., Concepcion, M. D., Mijares, M. C., & Tayzon, H. M. (2022). Filipino gen z consumer behavior towards ukay-ukay and their role in a circular fashion economy. DLSU Senior High School Research Congress. https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/conf_shsrescon/2022/ bus_research/14

n Cervantes, R. Y., Cruz, A. E., Fidel, A. G., & Lazarte, L. N. (2022). The capitals of ukay-ukay through the lens of pierre bourdieu’s forms and theories of capital. DLSU Senior High School Research Congress. https://animorepository.dlsu.edu. ph/conf_shsrescon/2022/paper_mps/12

n Johnsen, V. (2021, July 28). “SHOP ’TIL YOU DROP” Or until we destroy the planet, whichever comes first. Curious Earth. https://curious.earth/blog/shop-til-you-dropor-until-we-destroy-the-planet-whichever-comes-first/

n Vinculum. (2022, June 8). Fast fashion in the philippines retail market. Vinculum Group. https://www. vinculumgroup.com/fast-fashion-in-the-philippinesretail-market/

n What fast fashion is and how it impacts retail (2024)— Shopify philippines. (n.d.). Shopify. Retrieved September 15, 2025, from https://www.shopify.com/ph/retail/fast-fashion

THE AUTHOR

Zoe Davad is a writer currently studying BA Journalism at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Her work has been previously published in Philippine Graphic, Business Mirror, and Tinig ng Plaridel.

Crossing the Threshold of Tomorrow - Emerging Technologies and Existential Dilemmas

Finally, this section looks at the various dimensions of the merge of technologies and humanity from different perspectives including:AI and Us: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Human Dignity Code and Control: Cybersecurity, Algorithmic Power, and Digital Sovereignty

The End of Work: Automation and the Reimagining of Labor and Purpose Cosmic Citizenship: Space Exploration, Off-World Living, and the Commons Beyond Earth Rewriting Life: Synthetic Biology, Biohacking, and the Fabric of Being Weathering the Future: Geoengineering, Climate Intervention, and Moral Boundaries Beyond the Body: Transhumanism, Immortality, and the Question of Limits

GETTING PAST DOOM AND GLOOM: THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION AND GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS

By William E. Halal, PhD

George Washington University and The TechCast Project

WORRIED about the great crises of our time?

That climate change, autocrats, polarization, wars, AI, and the morass of other problems have shattered faith in the future? You have lots of company as a sense of despair grips the globe. The UN warned, “Societal collapse is likely unless a major decline in carbon emissions is made soon” (UN (2023) and a PEW poll finds only 17 percent of people in other nations see the US as a role model of democracy. A global survey summed it up when finding that “a majority think “humanity is doomed (Galer, 2021). I know many young couples are reluctant to have children for fear of leaving them in a dismal world.

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR A MORE COMPLEX WORLD

This article offers an antidote to the prevailing pessimism. I draw on academic research, journalism, and public media, as well as the TechCast Project. TechCast is a virtual think tank that forecasts technology breakthroughs and their social impacts using collective intelligence to pool the judgment of CEOs, scientists, futurists, and other thought leaders. We find that gathering knowledge from diverse sources increases clarity, understanding and agreement. It exemplifies the more powerful form of communal thinking needed for a more complex world. Three prominent scientists (Perlmutter, 2024), one a Nobel Laureate, put it this way:

Our collective challenge—possibly the grand challenge of our times—is to invent techniques for constructive, large-scale collective thinking… to build the foundation for a thriving planet… Indeed, we have no choice.

The goal of all this collective intelligence is to present a plausible vision for where the world is evolving, supported by a well-founded theory and abundant evidence. As we will see, a unified world seems the logical next stage in social evolution. Anything could happen, obviously, but simply thinking about some sort of mature civilization offers hope for a better future that is not only possible, but most likely. And it is happening now, despite raging crises.

First let’s clarify the meaning of the following key concepts:

n Consciousness This article focuses on a pragmatic definition of human consciousness that can be studied scientifically: the behavior and content of the mind. Human consciousness forms an objective/subjective dichotomy. Perception, data, and knowledge are inherently the objective domain suited to AI and machines. Emotions, beliefs, purpose, and free will are subjective functions. They form the unique “human spirit” each person embodies. This “higher” consciousness is the source of humanity’s ability to act independently. To command the power of human agency over our lives. Consciousness is the stuff of our very identity.

n Beyond Knowledge Because objective mental functions are being automated by AI, attention moves up into the subjective realm of “higher consciousness.” By the above definition, then,

everything beyond knowledge is higher consciousness, often shortened to simply “consciousness.”

n Age of Consciousness (AoC) As we will see, I estimate the world passed beyond the Knowledge Age about 2020 and is now entering an advanced stage in civilization built on intelligent digital systems wired into a conscious global community – an Age of Consciousness. The major challenge facing this new era requires building a collaborative Global Consciousness able to resolve the existential threats that block a sustainable world.

n Global Consciousness (GC) GC is a consciousness that understands the world as a fragile, complex, and

interdependent single system. Like ties to city and nation, GC would commit allegiance to safeguarding global order while also embracing freedom and diversity. A good way to grasp GC is to see it in terms of the overview effect that astronauts experience in space: a sense of awe at the interconnectedness of life. With more people taking space flights, this awareness of Earth as a home for humanity could soon help make GC the dominant mindset in an integrated planet.

n One World One World is envisioned as a global system of independent nations and corporations collaborating on common problems, supported by international bodies like the UN, but retaining autonomy and freedom. Environmental threats, crime, conflict, poverty, and other disorders are minimized through a global order and by a culture that embraces diversity and celebrates together as a global community.

SOCIAL EVOLUTION IS IN CHARGE—NOT US

Beneath the surface of current disasters, long-term forces drive progressive change that surpasses short-term problems.

Steven Pinker at Harvard (Pinker, 2018) noted that the Industrial Revolution led to a “Great Escape from poverty, disease, hunger, and illiteracy.” Poverty, for instance, fell from 90 percent of the world population in 1820 to ten percent in 2020. He finds “spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being.”

In similar way, I have done pathbreaking studies of social evolution showing this same drive for progress is creating a technologically connected, unified world. (Halal, 2022) The figure below presents historic data charting the entire Life Cycle of Evolution (LCE). I have worked on this model for decades, and I consider it a breakthrough in understanding how civilization has evolved and where it is going. The interesting thing about the LCE is it shows that the rise of civilization follows a precise life cycle characteristic of all life

forms, in this case, the life of civilization on planet Earth.

Like all life cycles, the LCE shows that the growth of civilization is marked by three common inflection points: take-off, pivot, and maturity. After thousands of years in an agricultural stage, civilization reached its take-off point when the world’s great religions took off during 500 BCE to 600 CE to begin the ascent into modernity. The second inflection point occurred about 1975 when the rate of population growth peaked, signaling the pivot from growth to stability. Since this is a model based on historic data, it can be projected to estimate the saturation point when the LCE begins to mature. As I explain below, there is strong evidence to think we entered the beginning of the maturity phase about 2020.

The LCE reveals how the path of progress is not comprised of random events in a meaningless universe. We always

retain our freedom, but the collective result of individual choices follows a well-ordered path of social evolution. It may not be obvious, but there is a precise direction to this evolutionary process. The LCE is moving inexorably from the most material stages (tilling the soil) to the most ethereal stages (knowledge and consciousness today).

The current crises may seem daunting, but from the overview of social evolution they’re mere blips in a well-ordered path toward global maturity. No, we can’t know what global maturity would look like in any precise way, but the LCE logic logically suggests that a mature civilization is the apex of a civilization’s power. A mature world would attain the heretofore unknown ability to govern the world as a unified whole … while enhancing autonomy and freedom. It would be the culmination

of progress toward stability, understanding, and peace.

We should take comfort in knowing that all systems mature in time, and our world seems to be maturing now. We don’t usually think about it, but we are part of a large process that governs the ups and downs of life in a way we barely understand. Rather than torture ourselves over the angst of human failings, we should recognize that social evolution is in charge—not us.

The same evolutionary process can even be seen in our own lives. During a long career, I have witnessed profound change moving from the industrial work of the 1950s, to the service economy of white-collar jobs, and now to an era of abstract knowledge. This happened despite World War II, the Great Depression, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, nuclear weapons, Civil Rights riots, the stagflation crisis, the Arab oil embargo, Nixon’s Watergate crisis, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, all the while suffering occasional economic crises. If life can overcome those dangers so dramatically, the LCE suggests we can overcome the crises that seem insurmountable today.

THE LCE IS MATURING INTO AN AGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

After moving through the Industrial Age in 100 years and the

Service Economy in 50 years, the Knowledge Age is maturing into a new stage of development beyond knowledge. And, by definition, everything beyond knowledge is consciousness.

Like any scientific model, the LCE can be used to estimate the transition to consciousness as the next stage of evolution. The graph shows an accelerating trend: The Industrial Age lasted 100 years from 1850 to 1950, and the Service Age took 50 years to reach the Knowledge Age in 2000. Projecting this trend suggests the Age of Consciousness (AoC) would most likely arrive 20 to 30 years after 2000. That is precisely what we see happening today.

Recent political events suggest that 2020 marked this crucial transition point. Today’s wave of post-factual madness has been rising for decades, but its peak occurred when the US experienced its only political insurrection. The storming of the Capitol represented an attempt to block the outcome based on the false belief that the presidential election was “stolen.” One rioter said, “We weren’t there to do damage. We just want to overthrow the government.”9 It is difficult to be precise about historic turning points, but I feel confident in noting that when half of the nation believes in the “big lie,” we

have entered subjective (higher) consciousness.

This remarkable display of mass delusion makes it clear that a new era is upon us in which emotions, values, beliefs, free will and other subjective thoughts supersede facts – an Age of Consciousness. Consciousness is not the same as “goodness,” as is often thought by New Age enthusiasts. Like knowledge, consciousness encompasses all in its domain, including hate, conflict, and delusion.

Many other scholars have also anticipated this nebulous frontier. Most notable is the Jesuit anthropologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (de Chardin, 1955), who long ago fascinated us with his vision that the world would evolve into a “noosphere,” a great web of consciousness enveloping the Earth. It seemed a lovely but distant ideal, yet the Digital Revolution has now made that dream a reality. The noosphere is here today, and it promises to transform our lives, our work, social institutions, the global order, and our very minds and souls.

We once relied on telephones and newspapers to communicate. Now, we use two billion PCs, 14 billion cell phones and laptops, and two billion TVs. Information flows through 30 million internet servers, 3,500 space satellites, and

one million miles of undersea cables. This planetary layer of digital connections knits eight billion people into a living overlay of thought—the noosphere. The noosphere introduces the seventh stage in the LCE: the Age of Consciousness.

The Digital Revolution is automating knowledge, driving attention up the hierarchy of thought into the subjective realm of emotion, values, and beliefs that form higher consciousness. The obvious example is the way smartphones and social media allow anyone to broadcast whatever they wish, producing today’s notorious cacophony of “post-factual” noise. The resulting flood of random information forces people to make subjective choices based on what they like and believe, or even how they feel. As a result, subjective thought now constitutes a higher consciousness that supersedes facts.

The implications are historic, and it is impossible to understand life today without seeing this crucial new reality. An Age of Consciousness is here now, though it’s dominated by polarization, disinformation, and other threats that form a crisis of global maturity. Although one would think that consciousness implies “enlightenment” – we can now see that it includes everything beyond knowledge. The good, the bad, the ugly … everything. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump, almost all would concede that he is brilliant at mobilizing mass media to create alternative realities. He is a master at shaping consciousness.

The rise of Trumpmania, social media madness, the cryptocurrency craze, and other boondoggles that rely on sheer belief remind us that life has moved beyond knowledge. It also recalls the Joseph McCarthy witch-hunt, alcohol prohibition, and other flights of national insanity. As the Digital Revolution drives attention into the realm of subjectivity, the mass delusions that were once considered rare are now ever-present. We are now living beyond knowledge on a daily basis.

But there is good reason to expect a major shift in our global mindset. All stages of the LCE have been propelled by revolutions in thought: the Agrarian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Post-Industrial Revolution, and, most recently, the Digital Revolution. The Industrial Age, for instance, was driven by the Protestant ethic of hard work and the accumulation of wealth … and our continued focus on self-interest, money, and power is largely the cause of today’s mounting crises.

As the LCE graph illustrates, we are now in the throes of what I call a “Mental/Spiritual Revolution” to kick-start the Age of Consciousness. In short, it appears the world is heading toward some type of historic shift in Global Consciousness —a collective epiphany, a new mindset, a code of global ethics, or a spiritual transformation for a unified world.

The world saw a vivid sense of Global Consciousness when William Shatner (Star Trek’s Captain Kirk) flew into space on Blue Origin and experienced the famous overview effect of global awareness all astronauts report.7 Shatner was emotionally

overcome and said, “Earth is… our only home… And [we have been] making it uninhabitable.” (Koren, 2022)

DRIVING FORCES TO RESOLVE THE CRISIS OF GLOBAL MATURITY

Experiencing Global Consciousness may seem exotic, but my studies identify major trends in this direction. The Digital Revolution, booming green energy, the “democratization” of business, and the pressure of crisis itself are moving toward a largely cooperative globe. I know this may seem hopelessly optimistic, but it is where the evidence leads.

Although the climate situation is dire, scientist Hannah Ritchie (Ritchie, 2024) has studied the evidence and found that gains in energy efficiency and solar and wind power are causing the world to reach peak carbon. CO2 emissions have declined roughly 20 percent in modern nations over the past decade, and China (the biggest emitter by far) is passing peak emissions now. She concludes, “No previous generation had the knowledge,

technology, political systems … to build a sustainable world.”

A breakthrough is underway among corporations. These prevailing threats are forcing business and social interests to work together. The Business Roundtable adopted a new “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” in which 181 CEOs committed to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders— customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders. (Business Roundtable, 2019) Business is the most powerful institution in the world, and corporations could lead the way toward a collaborative global order.

Autocrats may be threatening the global order, but demagogues have always been with us, and they usually collapse after a few decades. As power blinds dictatorships to truth, they fail to adapt and doom their regimes. Think of Pinochet in Chile, Berlusconi in Italy, and Chávez in Venezuela. Hitler and the axis powers passed in one horrible decade, and Bashar alAssad’s dictatorship in Syria fell after two decades. We could be surprised to see the Cubans, Iranians, Russians, Chinese,

and North Koreans liberate themselves in time.

Finally, today’s crises are themselves driving global integration. Teilhard called it “the forces of compression.” Global threats require global solutions, forcing nations and corporations to collaborate for their mutual survival. Without crises, little would change. For instance, CEOs know they must resolve these threats, and so 90 percent of corporations now practice a quasi-democratic form of governance that serves social and environmental interests as well as profits (McCallion, 2022).

NEGATIVE FORCES, UNCERTAINTY, AND RISK ARE UNPRECEDENTED

Although such powerful trends may be promising, it would be foolhardy to assume a unified world is inevitable. Just as the life cycles of all organisms can be cut short by disasters, the universe offers no guarantees. The LCE may have a precise trajectory, but it can be diverted by environmental collapse, nuclear war, raging pandemics, and a variety of other threats.

The current global conflict with Russia, for instance, could easily escalate into nuclear strikes, weapons fired from satellites, biological warfare, and more. It does not help that President Trump is enamored by strongmen like Putin. Journalist Evan Thomas (2024) warns:

War is the natural state of humankind …There is more armed conflict today than at any time since World War II … With Russia, China, Iran and North Korea forming an alliance against the West, there is talk of World war III.

In the progressive West, resistance to change is so great that the idea of a sustainable world seems near impossible. Oil companies are locked into the profits of fossil fuels, a fixation that could continue for decades. Almost all nations have pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions, but few are meeting their goals, and some remain intent on climate denial. The American GOP, for instance, advocates more of the same “drill, baby, drill,” while Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax.” Apart from a leading edge of activists, apathy is everywhere.

In the face of a harsh world muddled by uncertainty, confusion and risk, we should not rely on bold leadership, a clamoring for change, or a bolt of inspiration. Instead, the LCE offers the steady advance through ever more powerful stages of development that exert their own inexorable force. The powers of evolution are so beyond mere mortals that they eclipse us; they exert subterranean movements as relentless as tectonic plates. We are not likely to witness a groundswell for global order, then, but more of a slouching toward redemption.

GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS LIKELY ABOUT 2033

In summary, the world is entering a great drama where revolutionary changes in technology, business, and society are reaching a critical point that threatens civilization—at the very time we are gaining the vast powers of knowledge, intelligence, and consciousness. An AoC is being forged in the crucible of a

crisis of global maturity, or what I call the Global MegaCrisis.

An impending AoC is a bold claim, but that is roughly how the shift to a world of knowledge looked when the Information Revolution began a few decades ago. Back when computers filled entire rooms, I told people that we would soon enter a Knowledge Age of personal computers (Halal, 1993). The typical response was, “Why would anyone want a personal computer?”

Yet, by 2000, PCs were everywhere. Books about knowledge became rife, and most jobs involved managing knowledge. This illustrates how difficult it is to understand these profound shifts to a new stage of social evolution. An AoC is emerging today, and we simply do not yet understand this intriguing new frontier. All life cycles eventually reach a stage of maturity, and the LCE suggests that social evolution is now approaching its culmination in global maturity.

After reviewing the above background data and more, the TechCast experts estimate that some form of Global Consciousness is likely to emerge about 2033, give or take a few years, although at a modest 65 percent probability. If this forecast proves reasonably valid, a mature civilization is likely to follow in a decade or two. Not a perfect world, but one that works.

This conclusion can be thought of as a story explaining the rise of civilization as a superorganism. Based on this evidence, I think it’s accurate to envision our world evolving through its own life cycle toward a higher state of Global Consciousness and, in time, One World.

REFERENCES:

n Business Roundtable. (2019) An Economy That Serves All Americans. Business Roundtable.

n De Chardin, P. (1955) The Phenomenon of Man. Harper Collins

n Galer, S. (2021, September 14) People Think Humanity is Doomed. Vice

n Halal, W. (1993) The Information Technology Revolution. Technological Forecasting & Social Change (44) No. 1

n Halal, W. (2022) Beyond Knowledge: How Technology is Driving an Age of Consciousness. Foresight Books.

n Koren, M. (2022, December 10) Seeing Earth From Space Will Change You. The Atlantic.

n McCallion, A. (2022, December 8) Ninety Percent of Companies are Developing an ESG Strategy. Morningstar

n Perlmutter, S. et al. (2024) Third Millennium Thinking. Little Brown.

n Pinker, S. (2018) Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Viking. p. 24

n Ritchie, H. (2024) Not the End of the World: How We Can Be The First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. Little Brown. p. 19

n Thomas, E. (2024, November 11) Wars Over There, But Not Over Here. Washington Post.

n Timsit, A. (2021, November 2) ‘Very Few’ Believe U.S. Democracy sets a Good Example. Washington Post

n UN (2023) Climate Change 2023, International Panel on Climate Change

THE AUTHOR

William Halal is professor emeritus and author of the forthcoming book, One World: The Digital Revolution and the Rise of Global Consciousness (Amplify, 2025)

AI THROUGH MANY LENSES: RECLAIMING TRUST

IN

A POLARISED AGE

By Loren Phillips

Fractured Futures, Shared Stakes

ARTIFICIAL intelligence is not one story. It is many stories, unfolding all at once.

In San Francisco, it is told as a tale of disruptive innovation. In Beijing, it is framed as a lever of national competitiveness. In Johannesburg, Nairobi, or Lagos, it is experienced more cautiously — as something imported, powerful, and yet not entirely ours to shape.

We are asked to believe that AI is universal, but in truth, it is a prism. What you see depends on where you stand. And what you see — or don’t see — determines how you trust, govern, and adopt it.

In an age marked by mistrust and polarisation, we need a new way of looking at AI. Not as a single trajectory, but as a set of lenses — perspectives that expose both fracture and possibility. Each perspective carries its own tensions: between North and South, East and West, male and female, young and old, white and black, shiny and shadowed, generative and degenerative.

NORTH–SOUTH PERSPECTIVE: WHOSE AGENDA COUNTS?

For decades, the Global North has written the rulebook of technology. From Silicon Valley startups to European regulators, the gravitational centres of AI remain firmly lodged above the equator. Models are trained on Northern data. Standards are set in Northern forums. Capital flows North-to-North.

And yet the impact is global. African enterprises are being

told they must “adopt AI or be left behind.” The tools arrive readymade — but not ready-fit. A South African bank evaluating risk with a model trained on American credit histories, or a Kenyan hospital trialling a chatbot designed for English-only queries, knows this tension all too well.

The risk is clear: we import not just tools, but assumptions. Hidden within the code are cultural values, economic priorities, and governance defaults that may not align with our contexts. What is called “responsible AI” in Brussels may look like overregulation in Lagos. What is celebrated as “trustworthy AI” in Palo Alto may fail to address the multilingual, multi-ethnic realities of Johannesburg.

And yet, this is not only a story of dependency. The South has agency — and an opportunity. African enterprises and governments can treat imported technology as raw material, not finished product. They can adapt, re-train, and re-contextualise. They can set their own benchmarks for fairness and performance, grounded in local realities.

EAST–WEST PERSPECTIVE: BETWEEN RIVALRY AND MULTIPOLAR FUTURES

If the North–South lens is about who sets the agenda, the East–West lens is about what kind of agenda is being set.

Two dominant models of AI governance are already visible. In the United States, AI is largely framed as an engine of innovation and competition. The logic is liberal and marketdriven: let private companies move fast, capture market share,

and push boundaries, while regulators scramble to catch up.

In China, AI is entwined with national strategy. State-directed investment, surveillance-first applications, and infrastructural integration give it a different texture altogether — centralised, coordinated, often opaque.

For Africa, this rivalry is not an abstract geopolitical debate. It shows up in every procurement decision, every partnership, every infrastructure choice. Should a telco build its data backbone with Chinese vendors, knowing it may lock in a particular surveillance architecture? Should a bank adopt American-origin cloud services, knowing its data sovereignty may then rest outside the continent?

The danger is that African leaders are forced into binary alignment: East or West, Washington or Beijing. But the opportunity is greater: to claim a multipolar position that resists dependency. Multipolarity means recognising that Africa is not just a consumer of someone else’s technology, but a region with its own imperatives: youth employment, linguistic diversity, financial inclusion, informal economies.

MALE–FEMALE PERSPECTIVE: WHOSE VOICE SHAPES THE MACHINE?

Every technology carries the imprint of its makers. With AI, those imprints are often male. From research labs to venture capital boards, the field remains dominated by men. The result is a design ecosystem where women are present as data points but scarce as decision-makers

Consider the paradox: most digital assistants — Siri, Alexa, Cortana — default to a female voice. They are coded to be helpful, deferential, always available. Yet the systems behind them are largely engineered by male teams. This is more than a quirk of interface design. It reinforces subtle cultural scripts: AI is feminised when it serves, masculinised when it commands.

At the level of adoption and leadership, gender dynamics play out differently. Women leaders often approach AI with greater caution, aware of bias and social impact. Men, conditioned to associate risk-taking with leadership, may embrace the shiny without interrogating the shadows. Both perspectives matter, yet when one dominates, organisations lose balance.

The implications are serious. Models trained on biased hiring data replicate decades of gender

inequality in the workplace. Health applications misdiagnose because women’s data is underrepresented. Leadership programmes exclude or underfund women, compounding the cycle.

Through this lens, inclusivity is not a concession. It is a strategic advantage. Systems built by many voices are less brittle, more trusted, and more resilient in the long run.

YOUNG–OLD PERSPECTIVE: THE FLUENCY DIVIDE

Technology has always revealed generational divides, but AI makes the gap sharper.

For younger professionals — digital natives raised on smartphones, social media, and instant search — AI feels like a natural extension of daily life. Experimentation comes easily. Adoption is fluid. Curiosity outweighs caution.

For older leaders, the calculus is different. Many have seen waves of hype before — from dot-com to blockchain — and know how quickly promises can collapse. They are also the custodians of governance, risk, and compliance. Their hesitation is not ignorance, but responsibility.

The result inside organisations is a fluency

divide. Teams of younger employees race ahead with pilots and personal AI tools, while senior executives remain hesitant, demanding proof, policies, and safeguards. One side sees opportunity slipping away; the other sees risk spiralling out of control.

Bridging this divide is not about forcing one side to adopt the other’s posture. It is about creating a translation layer:

n Giving younger employees the frameworks to understand governance and ethics.

n Equipping older leaders with fluency, not just oversight, so they can engage without fear.

Seen this way, generational difference is not a liability. It is a complementary strength. Youth brings boldness, elders bring ballast. Together, they form the balance that sustainable adoption requires.

WHITE–BLACK PERSPECTIVE:

REPRESENTATION IN THE MACHINE

AI systems are often called “neutral,” but neutrality is a myth. Models learn from data — and data reflects the societies that generate it. If those societies are unequal, the inequalities are encoded. The result is stark. Credit scoring algorithms

trained on Western financial histories undervalue applicants in African contexts where informal economies dominate. Hiring tools replicate decades of bias by ranking CVs from certain universities or geographies higher than others. Medical datasets underrepresent Black patients, leading to misdiagnoses and poorer outcomes.

In global AI development, African voices are frequently absent or peripheral. Few African languages are supported in mainstream models. Few African researchers sit on global standard-setting bodies. This absence is not accidental — it is the inheritance of a digital ecosystem built elsewhere, by others, for priorities that are not our own.

Equity is not a technical afterthought. It is the condition for trust. Without it, AI risks amplifying the very injustices it promises to solve. With it, AI can become a tool for redress, widening access to credit, health, and education for those historically excluded.

Seen through this lens, the White–Black binary is not only about bias. It is about sovereignty — the right to have our realities recognised and our futures shaped by systems that see us fully.

SHINY–SHADOW PERSPECTIVE:

BEYOND THE THEATRE OF INNOVATION

AI dazzles. Executives are shown slick demos of chatbots writing reports in seconds, image generators producing flawless

campaigns, copilots drafting code at speed. The promise is intoxicating: productivity without friction, creativity on demand, intelligence as a service.

But behind the shiny surface, shadows gather. Models hallucinate facts with confidence. Bias creeps into automated decisions, invisible until damage is done. Proprietary systems lock organisations into dependency. Cybersecurity vulnerabilities widen as attack surfaces grow. Meanwhile, misinformation spreads faster than truth, eroding the very trust on which institutions depend.

This is the paradox: the more dazzling the shiny, the darker the shadows can become. Leaders risk being seduced by the theatre of pilots and prototypes, mistaking spectacle for strategy. They announce “AI adoption” with fanfare, while the underlying risks — data governance, ethical oversight, employee trust — remain unaddressed.

Through this lens, responsible innovation is not slower innovation. It is innovation that sees the whole stage — both spotlight and shadows — and directs attention accordingly.

GENERATIVE VS DEGENERATIVE PERSPECTIVE: CHOOSING RENEWAL OR DECLINE

At its core, AI poses a civilisational question: does it help us regenerate, or does it accelerate decay?

On the generative side, AI has the potential to free human attention from drudgery, expand access to healthcare and education, and unlock new forms of creativity. It can help enterprises model climate resilience, governments deliver services more equitably, and societies imagine futures that are more inclusive than their past.

On the degenerative side, AI can amplify precarity: displacing jobs without creating meaningful alternatives, flooding information ecosystems with noise and manipulation, concentrating power in the hands of a few firms or governments. It can corrode trust, widen inequality, and deepen social fracture.

Neither outcome is inevitable. AI is not destiny — it is design, governance, and choice. The trajectories that emerge will depend on the values encoded into systems, the incentives shaping adoption, and the courage of leaders to steer toward renewal rather than decline.

Through this final lens, the tension becomes a responsibility: to seed the generative, to constrain the degenerative, and to act with foresight so that what grows from AI is not just profitable, but sustainable and just.

FROM BINARIES TO BRIDGES

Each lens we have explored reveals a fracture: North vs South, East vs West, male vs female, young vs old, white vs black, shiny vs shadow, generative vs degenerative. Taken alone, they look like impasses. Together, they form a map of the terrain we must navigate.

The value of these binaries is not that they lock us into sides, but that they force us to see complexity clearly. They remind us that trust in AI cannot be built on a single story. It must emerge from recognising many perspectives at once, and from learning to work with their tensions rather than wishing them away.

This is the essence of futures literacy: to hold multiple trajectories in view, to anticipate their interplay, and to act with agency even in the face of uncertainty. Binaries, when understood as lenses, become not barriers but bridges.

Loren Phillips Principal Vizier

LEARNING FROM HISTORY: OF AN AI ANALYSIS OF FOR THE FUTURE FROM

HISTORY: A CASE STUDY THE CORE MESSAGES FROM SHAKESPEARE

By Dr. Bruce Lloyd

AI’s (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, Perplexity and Deepseek) consider: ‘What are the key learning message for the future, from the plays of Shakespeare?’ and notebooklm discussion.

You said: What are the key learning message for the future, from the plays of Shakespeare?

ChatGPT said: Shakespeare’s plays, though written over 400 years ago, still offer powerful and relevant lessons for the future—about human nature, power, society, and morality. Here are key learning messages drawn from his work:

1. The Complexity of Human Nature

n Key Plays: Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello

n Message: People are deeply complex—capable of greatness and cruelty, logic and irrationality. Future societies must understand and design systems that reflect this complexity, not oversimplify it.

2. The Corrupting Nature of Power

n Key Plays: Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear

n Message: Power can blind and corrupt. Leadership requires humility, self-awareness, and accountability. The future needs leaders who resist ego and prioritize the common good.

3. The Destructiveness of Prejudice

n Key Plays: Othello, The Merchant of Venice

n Message: Racial, religious, and cultural prejudices tear societies apart. Inclusion and empathy must be core values in future global communities.

4. The Value of Forgiveness and Redemption

n Key Plays: The Tempest, Measure for Measure, King Lear

n Message: Growth often comes from mercy, not vengeance. Personal and societal progress depends on the ability to forgive, rebuild, and move forward.

5. The Danger of Deception and Self-Deception

n Key Plays: Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night

n Message: Lies—especially to oneself—can destroy

relationships, governments, and lives. Critical thinking and honesty are essential for healthy futures.

6. The Role of Fate vs. Free Will

n Key Plays: Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet

n Key Plays: While destiny plays a role, choices define outcomes. The future is shaped not just by circumstance, but by how we respond to it.

7. Love as a Force for Both Chaos and Growth

n Key Plays: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing

n Key Plays: Love can lead to both conflict and healing. Understanding, patience, and communication are essential in all human relationships.

8. The Fragility of Order and Civilization

n Key Plays: King Lear, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus

n Key Plays: Civilizations are fragile, especially when driven by ambition, pride, or poor governance. Sustainable futures require strong institutions and collective responsibility.

9. The Importance of Identity and Disguise

n Key Plays: Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice

n Key Plays: Identity is fluid and complex. Future societies must embrace diversity and allow individuals to define themselves.

10. Art, Theater, and Imagination Matter

n Key Plays: Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest

n Key Plays: Storytelling, imagination, and art shape culture and reflect truth. They remain essential tools for change,

resistance, and understanding in any era.

Would you like these ideas summarized visually or adapted into a teaching tool (e.g., poster, slide deck, or study guide)?

GEMINI

Shakespeare’s plays, despite being written over 400 years ago, continue to offer profound and timeless learning messages for the future due to their universal exploration of the human condition. Here are some key takeaways:

1. The Enduring Nature of Human Psychology and Emotions:

n Ambition and its corrupting influence: Plays like Macbeth vividly illustrate how unchecked ambition can lead to tyranny, guilt, and destruction. This remains highly relevant in discussions of power, leadership, and ethical decisionmaking in any sphere, from business to politics.

n The destructive power of jealousy and envy: Othello stands as a stark warning about how jealousy can blind individuals, lead to irrational acts, and ultimately destroy lives and relationships. This resonates in an age where social media can often exacerbate feelings of inadequacy and mistrust.

n The complexities of love and relationships: From the passionate, tragic love of Romeo and Juliet to the nuanced dynamics of familial and platonic bonds, Shakespeare explores the joys, challenges, and sometimes destructive aspects of human connection. These themes are eternally relevant to understanding personal relationships.

n Revenge and its consequences: Plays like Hamlet delve into the cycle of violence that revenge can perpetuate, demonstrating how seeking retribution can consume individuals and lead to further tragedy. This offers insights into

conflict resolution and the importance of forgiveness.

2. The Power of Words and Communication:

n The immense impact of rhetoric and persuasion: Mark Antony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar is a masterclass in how words can sway public opinion, ignite revolutions, or sow discord. In an age of information overload and social media, understanding the power of language and its responsible use is more critical than ever.

n The importance of honest communication: Misunderstandings, deception, and a lack of clear communication often drive the tragic plots in Shakespeare’s plays. This highlights the ongoing need for clarity, integrity, and genuine dialogue in all interactions.

3. The Struggle Between Fate and Free Will:

n Many of Shakespeare’s characters grapple with the extent to which their lives are predetermined by fate versus the choices they make. This philosophical question remains pertinent as we consider individual agency, responsibility, and the forces that shape our lives.

4. The Significance of Self-Knowledge and Authenticity:

n To thine own self be true” (Hamlet): This iconic line encapsulates the importance of self-awareness, integrity, and living in alignment with one’s values, even when faced with societal pressures. In a world often driven by external validation, this message encourages introspection and authenticity.

n Appearance vs. Reality: Characters often disguise their true intentions or are deceived by appearances, leading to tragic outcomes. This theme urges critical thinking, skepticism, and the ability to look beyond superficiality.

5. Leadership, Power, and Governance:

n Shakespeare’s historical plays and tragedies frequently examine the nature of leadership, the corrupting influence of power, and the consequences of good or bad governance. They offer lessons on responsibility, justice, and the delicate balance required for stable societies.

In essence, Shakespeare’s plays serve as a mirror to humanity. By observing the triumphs and follies of his characters, future generations can gain invaluable insights into themselves, their relationships, and the complex societal structures they inhabit, ultimately fostering greater empathy, critical thinking, and wisdom in navigating the challenges of any era.

CLAUDE

Shakespeare’s plays offer several enduring lessons that remain remarkably relevant for navigating our contemporary world and future challenges.

The Complexity of Human Nature Shakespeare’s characters reveal that people are rarely purely good or evil. Hamlet’s indecision, Macbeth’s ambition, and Iago’s manipulation show us that understanding human psychology requires acknowledging contradictions and moral ambiguity. This insight becomes increasingly valuable as we grapple with complex social and political issues that resist simple solutions.

The Dangers of Unchecked Power From Macbeth to King Lear to Richard III, Shakespeare repeatedly demonstrates how power corrupts and how the pursuit of authority can destroy both individuals and societies. As we face questions about corporate power, political authoritarianism, and technological control, these warnings about the abuse of

power feel particularly urgent.

The Importance of Self-Knowledge Many of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes fall precisely because they lack understanding of themselves. Othello’s jealousy, Lear’s vanity, and Coriolanus’s pride blind them to reality. The plays suggest that honest self-reflection and emotional intelligence are crucial for making sound decisions, whether in personal relationships or leadership roles.

Love’s Transformative and Destructive Potential Shakespeare shows love as both redemptive force and dangerous obsession. The mature love in plays like „The Winter’s Tale” contrasts sharply with the destructive passion in „Othello.” This nuanced view of human relationships offers wisdom for navigating our own connections and understanding how emotions shape our choices.

The Tension Between Individual Will and Social Order

Characters like Hamlet, Coriolanus, and even Romeo and Juliet struggle against societal expectations and constraints.

Shakespeare explores when rebellion is justified and when conformity serves the greater good - questions that remain central to debates about social change, civil disobedience, and personal freedom.

The Fragility of Justice and Truth Many plays reveal how easily justice can be perverted and truth obscured. „Measure for Measure” and „The Merchant of Venice” show how legal systems can be manipulated, while „Othello” demonstrates how misinformation can destroy lives. These insights feel especially relevant in our age of misinformation and polarized discourse.

Redemption and Forgiveness Shakespeare’s late plays particularly emphasize the possibility of redemption and the power of forgiveness. „The Tempest” and „The Winter’s Tale” suggest that cycles of vengeance can be broken and that people can change, offering hope for reconciliation in our divided world.

These themes endure because they address fundamental aspects of human experience that transcend historical periods.

Shakespeare’s genius lies not just in his language but in his understanding of the psychological and social dynamics that continue to shape human behavior across centuries.

COPILOT

Shakespeare’s works aren’t just relics of Elizabethan theatre—they’re deeply human explorations that still echo across modern social, political, and ethical landscapes. For someone as reflective and future-facing as you, Bruce, I think the Bard offers a constellation of insights.

Here’s a distilled look at the key learning messages from his major works, grouped thematically:

Human Nature & Self-Reflection

n Ambition and Power (e.g., Macbeth, Richard III)

• Ambition without moral anchor corrupts.

Power can hollow out identity and distort perception.

n Identity and Transformation (Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello)**

We are layered selves—constructed by society, circumstance, and choice.

Questioning who we are is essential to becoming who we ought to be.

Justice, Governance & Leadership

n Ethical Leadership (King Lear, Henry V)**

• Authority must be earned through humility, empathy, and wisdom.

Decisions made in isolation from emotional intelligence often lead to ruin.

n Law vs Morality (Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice)** Legal systems can entrench injustice when divorced from compassion.

• The letter of the law should be tempered by its spirit.

Society & Resilience

n Class and Inequality (Coriolanus, Timon of Athens)**

• Social cohesion falters when the powerful disregard the needs of the many.

Pride and contempt for the masses breed fragility, not strength.

n Love and Community

(As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing)** Relationships heal and transform in ways systems cannot.

• Joy, laughter, and forgiveness are acts of rebellion against cynicism.

Philosophical and Existential Inquiry

n Time and Mortality (Hamlet, Sonnet 18)** Time is fleeting, but ideas and beauty endure. Death frames life not as tragedy, but as urgency.

n Truth and Performance

(The Tempest, Hamlet, Julius Caesar)**

All the world’s a stage—not just metaphorically, but politically and spiritually.

• What we perform often becomes who we are.

GROK

Shakespeare’s plays offer timeless insights into human nature, society, and morality. Here are key learning messages for the future, drawn from his works:

1. Human Nature is Complex and Flawed: Plays like Hamlet and Othello show the depth of human emotions—jealousy, ambition, doubt, and love. Recognizing and understanding these complexities can foster empathy and self-awareness in personal and societal interactions.

2. Power Corrupts: In Macbeth and Julius Caesar, unchecked ambition and power lead to downfall. Future leaders must prioritize ethical governance, accountability, and humility to avoid destructive consequences.

3. Love and Relationships Require Trust and Communication: Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing highlight how miscommunication and mistrust can ruin relationships, while mutual respect strengthens them. Building honest, open connections is vital for harmony.

4. Prejudice and Division Breed Tragedy: The Merchant of Venice and Othello expose the dangers of racism, religious

intolerance, and social division. Embracing inclusivity and challenging biases are critical for a just society.

5. Choices Have Consequences: In King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, characters face the outcomes of their decisions, whether rash or wise. This underscores the importance of thoughtful decision-making and taking responsibility for actions.

6. Resilience in Adversity: Characters like Viola in Twelfth Night and Prospero in The Tempest demonstrate adaptability and strength in challenging circumstances. Facing adversity with courage and resourcefulness is a universal lesson.

7. Question Authority and Seek Truth: Henry V and Measure for Measure explore the tension between authority and justice. Critical thinking and moral courage are essential to challenge corruption and uphold fairness.

8. The Value of Forgiveness and Redemption:

The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale emphasize reconciliation and second chances. Offering and seeking forgiveness can heal relationships and foster peace.

These messages remain relevant, urging future generations to navigate human flaws, build equitable societies, and make principled choices in an ever-changing world.

PERPLEXITY

Key Learning Messages for the Future from Shakespeare’s Plays Shakespeare’s works, centuries after they were written, offer enduring insights and lessons that remain deeply relevant to contemporary and future societies. Here are the central learning messages derived from his plays:

1. Understanding Human Nature and Emotions

Shakespeare’s characters confront love, jealousy, ambition, guilt, hope, and fear— universal emotions that still resonate today.

Whether it’s Hamlet’s paralysis by overthinking or Macbeth’s destructive ambition, these stories teach us about the consequences of our inner drives and the complexity of the human condition.

2. The Power—and Danger—of Ambition

Tragedies such as Macbeth and Julius Caesar highlight the corrupting effects of unchecked ambition and the moral ramifications of seeking power at any cost. These cautionary tales underline the importance of ethical leadership and self-awareness when pursuing success.

3. The Value of Mercy, Forgiveness, and Compassion

Prince Hamlet’s journey, the redemption arc in The Tempest , and Portia’s plea for mercy in The Merchant of Venice emphasize that greatness is shown not just through power,

but through the ability to forgive and act compassionately. The lesson: mercy is a strength, not a weakness.

4. The Complexity of Love and Relationships

Shakespeare’s plays explore not just romantic love ( Romeo and Juliet ), but also familial loyalty, friendship, and betrayal. These stories highlight love’s joys and dangers and the need for empathy, communication, and understanding in all relationships.

5. Identity, Self-Reflection, and Authenticity

Plays like Hamlet and Twelfth Night urge us to examine our own identities and stay true to

ourselves, even when circumstances pressure us to pretend or conform. The famous motif of “all the world’s a stage” is a reminder that life is transient and we must reflect and shape our roles responsibly.

6. The Illusion of Reality and Search for Truth

Themes of appearance versus reality recur, warning us that things are often not whatthey seem—counsel especially relevant in an age marked by misinformation and digital illusion. The need for critical thinking and discernment is ever more vital.

7. The Danger of Prejudice and Rigid Tradition

Works like Romeo and Juliet and Othello demonstrate the potential harms of old grudges, rigid social hierarchies, and discrimination, urging future generations to break cycles of hate and embrace understanding and inclusivity.

8. Embracing Change, Creativity, and Adaptability

Shakespeare’s life and writing show that innovation—creating new words, blending genres, and questioning norms—is key to progress. This teaches us to adapt, collaborate, and remain open to new perspectives in a fast-changing world.

9. Leadership, Decision-Making, and Responsibility

Leadership lessons from Shakespeare warn of the pitfalls of poor judgment, betrayal, and lack

of self-control. His plays are “things to think with,” helping leaders and citizens reflect critically, act responsibly, and anticipate the wider impact of their choices.

10. The Transformative Power of Art and Language

Lastly, Shakespeare’s ability to use drama as social commentary reminds us that art has the power to inspire, educate, provoke change, and unite diverse communities— a principle valuable for fostering a more thoughtful and cohesive society. These timeless lessons teach critical thinking, empathy, adaptability, self-reflection, and the courage to question established norms—skills and mindsets crucial for navigating the uncertainties of the future.

What future lessons can we learn from Shakespeare’s depiction of human nature

• How do Shakespeare’s themes suggest we handle conflicts and moral dilemmas later on

Why are Shakespeare’s plays still relevant to future leadership and societal values

How might exploring Shakespeare’s view on love influence future relationships

• What can Shakespeare’s emphasis on unmeasurable qualities teach us about future priorities

DEEPSEEK

What are the key learning message for the future, from the plays of Shakespeare?

Okay, the user is asking about the key learning messages from Shakespeare’s plays that are relevant for the future. That’s a thoughtful question—they’re probably looking for timeless wisdom rather than just literary analysis. Maybe they’re a student, educator, or just someone reflecting on human nature.

First, I should avoid listing every play. Instead, focus on universal themes that resonate today and will keep mattering. Shakespeare’s insights into power, relationships, and human flaws feel eerily modern.

Hmm, the user didn’t specify context, so I’ll assume they want both personal and societal lessons.

The Macbeth example (ambition vs. ethics) is crucial— especially in today’s „win-at-all-costs” culture. And Othello’s jealousy? With social media amplifying insecurity, that’s painfully current.

I should also highlight empathy. Shakespeare humanizes everyone—villains, fools, outsiders—which is a skill we’ll need more in polarized times. The Tempest’s forgiveness angle feels urgent too; imagine applying that to global conflicts.

Oh, and language! His wordplay reminds us that precise communication is a superpower.

Miscommunication drives half his tragedies—relevant in an age of chatbots and misinformation.

...Wait, should I mention adaptability? Characters like Viola (Twelfth Night) thrive by bending to change. Future-proofing advice, honestly.

The user might appreciate concrete examples (like Lear’s pride vs. modern leadership failures), but I’ll keep it concise. No jargon—they likely want clarity, not academic overload. Finally, I’ll end with why this *matters*: these plays are like human nature simulators. Mastering their lessons is emotional PPE for the future.

...Did I balance depth with accessibility? Hope so. Shakespeare’s plays, though centuries old, offer profoundly relevant lessons for the future, revealing timeless truths about human nature, society, and leadership.

Here are key learning messages distilled from his works:

1. The Corrupting Nature of Power

• Examples: Macbeth, Richard III, Julius Caesar.

n Lesson: Unchecked ambition and power often lead to moral decay, tyranny, and self-destruction.

n Future Takeaway: Leadership must prioritize ethics over ambition. Systems need checks and balances to preventautocracy.

2. The Danger of Prejudice & Intolerance

• Examples: The Merchant of Venice (anti-Semitism), Othello (racism), The Tempest (colonialism).

n Lesson: Bigotry dehumanizes both victim and perpetrator, fueling violence and injustice.

n Future Takeaway: Embrace diversity, challenge biases, and build inclusive societies to avoid repeating cycles of hatred.

3. The Complexity of Human Identity

• Examples: Twelfth Night (gender fluidity), Hamlet (existential doubt), KingLear (self-deception).

n Lesson: Identity is multifaceted and often performative. Self-awareness is crucial for authenticity.

n Future Takeaway: Encourage empathy and self-reflection in an era of evolving social identities.

4. Consequences of Hubris & Pride

• Examples: King Lear (arrogance blinds loyalty), Coriolanus (pride destroys a hero).

n Lesson: Arrogance isolates leaders from reality, leading to catastrophic mistakes.

n Future Takeaway: Cultivate humility in leadership. Value counsel and feedback to avoid fatal errors.

5. The Universality of Human Emotion

• Examples: Romeo and Juliet (youthful passion), Hamlet (grief), Othello (jealousy).

n Lesson: Emotions drive decisions across cultures and eras, often overriding reason.

n Future Takeaway: Emotional intelligence is essential. Understand motivations in diplomacy, AI ethics, and social dynamics.

6. The Fragility of Truth & Manipulation

• Examples: Othello (Iago’s deceit), Much Ado About Nothing (rumors), Hamlet (performance vs. reality).

n Lesson: Misinformation destroys trust and relationships. Perception can eclipse truth.

n Future Takeaway: Combat disinformation through critical

thinking, media literacy, and transparency.

7. Resilience Through Adaptability

• Examples: The Tempest (Prospero’s growth), As You Like It (exile to renewal).

n Lesson: Survival depends on flexibility, forgiveness, and learning from adversity.

n Future Takeaway: Foster adaptability in a changing world— climate, technology, and geopolitics demand resilience.

8. The Folly of Revenge

• Examples: Hamlet (cycle of violence), Titus Andronicus (carnage begets carnage).

n Lesson: Vengeance consumes the seeker and perpetuates suffering.

n Future Takeaway: Prioritize restorative justice over retribution in conflicts.

9. Language as Power

• Examples: Rhetoric in Julius Caesar, wordplay in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

n Lesson: Language persuades, manipulates, inspires, and reveals truth.

n Future Takeaway: Master communication ethically— whether in AI, politics, or daily life—to build trust and drive change.

10. Hope in Reconciliation

• Examples:*The Winter’s Tale* (redemption), *The Tempest* (Prospero for gives).

n Lesson: Even deep wounds can heal through empathy and forgiveness.

n Future Takeaway: Reconciliation is possible after conflict—a vital message for global peacebuilding.

Why Shakespeare Endures for the Future:

His plays are humanity’s mirror, showing our best and worst impulses. As technology advances and societies evolve, these core truths remain:

• Power demands accountability.

• Empathy bridges divides.

• Truth must be vigilantly guarded.

• Change is navigated through wisdom, not force.

Shakespeare reminds us that the future belongs to those who learn from history’s cycles—and choose humanity over hubris.

NOTEBOOKLM

Shakespeare’s Enduring Lessons for the Future

The provided texts, originating from various AI models, comprehensively explore the enduring relevance of William Shakespeare’s plays and their key learning messages for the future. Each source identifies common themes such as the complexity of human nature, the corrupting influence of power, and the destructiveness of prejudice. They collectively highlight the importance of forgiveness, self-knowledge, and effective communication as vital lessons for navigating personal relationships and societal challenges. Furthermore, the analyses underscore Shakespeare’s insights into leadership, governance, and the interplay of fate versus free will, suggesting his works continue to offer profound wisdom for contemporary and future generations.

https://notebooklm.google.com/ notebook/406d1883-9c31-4950-b8d0- 775c1b7a660f/audio

THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

TOP TRENDS ARE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT:

• AI-driven Tools

• Low-Code and No-Code Platforms

• Cybersecurity Agentic AI

• Quantum Computing

n AI-driven tools for writing, testing, and optimizing code have become essential in developers’ daily work. AI coding tools like Copilot and Tabnine are transforming software development by automating routine tasks, boosting productivity, and enabling developers to focus on higher-level problem-solving—fostering collaboration, no replacement (Anderson, 2025; Grace Themes, 2025). Aderson (2025) argues that the use of AI in software development reduces human error. However, the 2025 Developer Survey (applied to over 49,000 developers from 177 countries) conducted by Stack Overflow (2025) reveals that while 84% of developers now use or plan to use AI tools in their development processes, only 33% trust in AI tools.

n Low-code and no-code platforms are software development tools that enable users to create applications with

By Maria Watson Santander

minimal or no coding expertise. Low-code platforms provide a visual interface and pre-built components, allowing users to build applications efficiently while requiring some coding knowledge for customization. In contrast, no-code platforms are designed for non-technical users, offering drag-and-drop tools to create applications without writing any code (Kissflow, 2025). The growth of low-code/no-code platforms empower citizen developers (Grace Themes, 2025), democratizing software development through user-friendly interfaces (DiMarket, 2025).

n Cybersecurity. The growing need for robust Cybersecurity protections is driving the growth of the security testing and analysis tools market (DiMarket, 2025). Cybersecurity focuses on safeguarding the digital world by protecting computers, networks, and data from unauthorized access or malicious use (Gattrix, 2025). Proactive threat intelligence combined with behavioral biometrics provides actionable insights to help navigate the constantly evolving cybersecurity landscape (Devi, 2025).

n Agentic AI is evolving into a collaborator capable of independent thinking, planning, and action. It is transforming autonomous systems and changing how organizations and individuals engage with technology. AI agents integrate

autonomy, adaptability, and decision-making to deliver practical solutions. They can handle tasks such as scheduling meetings, carrying out transactions, or activating automated pipelines. Autonomous AI-driven development uses Agentic AI systems that can independently plan, write, test, and deploy software with minimal human intervention. AI agents act as autonomous developers (Ahmed, 2025).

n Quantum Computing. Unlike conventional computers, that operate using binary code (0s and 1s), quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits. A standard computer bit functions like a light switch—either on (1) or off (0). In contrast, a qubit can exist in a combination of both states at once. This property, called superposition, allows qubits to simultaneously explore many possible outcomes (Lee, 2025). Quantum computers are capable of operating highly complex mathematical problems that are inefficient for classical systems (Lee, 2025).

The Future of Software Development

AI-driven tools, Low-Code and No-Code Platforms, Cybersecurity, Agentic AI, and Quantum Computing trends will converge into a new software era where speed, innovation, and intelligence are the key characteristics over the next decade. In that Future, developers focus on innovation and complex problem-solving. There is an integration of Agentic AI with Quantum Computing. Hybrid quantum-classical platforms are present. AI agents are proactive, autonomous, predictive, and self-learning developer Partners. Software Development is democratized. Organizations rely on hybrid teams where business experts and developers co-create solutions, cutting costs and dramatically reducing development time, flattening organizational hierarchies, and making software design part of business strategy. There are challenges in privacy, security, and ethics. Legislators play an active role. IT Service companies act as proactive partners in cybersecurity defense. Cybersecurity is part of the Software Development Strategy. Repetitive coding is automated, processes are automated, error detection happens before it occurs, workflows are fast, efficiency, productivity, and innovation increase.

AI-driven Tools will become indispensable in automating repetitive coding, detecting errors before they occur, and accelerating workflows. Rather than replacing human developers, these tools act as partners, allowing teams to focus on innovation and complex problem-solving (Anderson, 2025; Grace Themes, 2025; Jhonson, 2025). Development cycles will be faster, boosting productivity.

Low-Code and No-Code Platforms will fully democratize software development. By 2035, organizations will rely on hybrid teams where business experts and IT professionals co-create solutions, cutting costs and dramatically reducing development time (Anderson, 2025). This shift has flattened organizational hierarchies and made software design part of business strategy.

With the rise of Agentic AI, developers act as supervisors, focusing on governance, ethical oversight, and guiding innovation, while Agentic AI agents autonomously schedule tasks, optimize resources, execute deployments, and even negotiate workflows across teams (Ahmad, 2025). This accelerates delivery pipelines and enables software development to evolve in real time.

Agentic AI plays a central role in shaping an intelligent future by leveraging its core attributes—autonomy, adaptability, proactivity, and learning ability—to drive transformative improvements in organizational performance (Hosseini & Seilani, 2025). By enabling autonomous decision-making and process automation, Agentic AI increases efficiency, productivity, and innovation. However, it also raises challenges around privacy, security, and ethics (Hosseini & Seilani, 2025).

Quantum Computing will go from experimental labs to realworld integration. With Quantum Computing, developers will solve optimization, cryptography, and simulation problems that classical systems could never address (Lee, 2025). Quantum computing’s software development strategies will focus on information processing and storage (Desdentado et al., 2025). However, because quantum computing differs substantially from classical computing, applying conventional software engineering approaches directly is a challenge (Murillo et al., 2025). Hybrid quantum-classical platforms will be commonplace, requiring a new generation of developers skilled in quantum algorithms and systems integration (Murillo et al., 2025).

The expansion of AI-driven Tools, Low-Code and No-Code

Platforms, Agentic AI, and Quantum Computing trends will make cyber threats more sophisticated. Cybersecurity is a core service (Raygain, n.d.), a key software strategy. Organizations will rely on their IT services company as proactive partners in cybersecurity defense (Raygain, n.d.). Cybersecurity will be proactive, embedded, and intelligent—powered by AI-driven threat detection, behavioral biometrics, and continuous monitoring of conversations and transactions (Devi, 2025; Gattrix, 2025). Cybersecurity will be a built-in layer across development pipelines (Devi, 2025; Gattrix, 2025). Organizations unable to adopt Cybersecurity can face financial losses, disruptions, loss of trust, and regulatory penalties (Gattrix, 2025).

The future of cybersecurity lies in the integration of AI with quantum computing for proactive, autonomous, predictive, and self-learning defense. According to Mohanty et al. (2025). he integration of AI in cybersecurity strategies improves threat detection, analysis, incident response, and risk management. Machine learning algorithms analyze vast data, identify anomalous patterns, and respond to threats faster and more accurately (Mohanty et al., 2025). Thus, organizations can adopt proactive defense strategies, anticipate and mitigate cyber threats before they occur (Mohanty et al., 2025). The self-learning capability of AI technologies allows adjustments in cyber defense strategies to detect emerging attacks in real-time (Mohanty et al., 2025).

Call to Action

The adoption of AI-driven tools, Low-Code and No-Code Platforms, Cybersecurity, Agentic AI, and Quantum Computing in software development will not result in a competitive advantage. All businesses will have access to them. What will make the difference is ethical behavior, creativity, and innovation in building relationships with stakeholders. Therefore, in light of these trends, organizations within the Software Development sector need to change the way they operate and build relationships in the future by innovating, being creative, behaving ethically, and building collaborative relationships with AI agents and quantum algorithms. Do not adopt those technologies and not being innovative, creative, and ethical will result in privacy and security losses, financial losses, disruptions, loss of trust, regulatory penalties, loss of business opportunities, low workflow, low productivity, and low efficiency.

Organizations must formulate AI strategies that align with business needs by selecting the right technologies, investing in employee training, and implementing effective risk management practices (Ahmad, 2025). They also need to explore the ethical and social impacts of using those technologies (e.g., privacy, data security, labor market effects) (Ahmad, 2025). They must investigate the integration of Agentic AI with emerging technologies such as Quantum Computing

(Ahmad, 2025). They must train developers in quantum algorithms and systems integration.

Business and educational institutions must investigate real-world hardware and strategies to enhance the implementation and performance of quantum algorithms. The effective evaluation, verification, and validation of quantum solutions require investigation (Desdentado et al., 2025).

Together, AI-driven tools, Low-Code and No-Code Platforms, Cybersecurity, Agentic AI, and Quantum Computing trends have converged into a new software era where speed, innovation, and intelligence are the key characteristics. With the integration of these technologies, Software Development will become a proactive, autonomous, predictive, and self-learning system. Developers, businesses, legislators, and researchers need to take action to shape that future.

Success in software development will rely not only on adopting advanced technologies but also on cultivating human adaptability and creativity, ethical governance, and the ability to build collaboration between humans and intelligent systems. This is a call for you to take action in the role you play in Software Development to shape its future! Be creative, adapt to change, act ethically, and make AI agents partners. Be the change we need in Software Development!

REFERENCES:

n Ahmad, T. (2025, June 10). Getting Started with Agentic AI. Solace. https://solace.com/

n Anderson, K. (2025, June 10). Top 10 Developments in Software You Need to Know Now. Cognativ. https://www.cognativ.com/about

n Desdentado, E., Calero, C., Moraga, M.Á. et al. Quantum Computing Software Solutions, Technologies, Evaluation And Limitations: A Systematic Mapping Study. Computing 107, 110 (2025, April 11). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-025-01459-2

n Devi, Y. (2025, June 9). The Future of Cybersecurity: Predicting Trends and Preparing for Emerging Threats. IJERET [Internet]. https://ijeret.org/index.php/ijeret/article/ view/198

n DiMarket. (2025, Aug 27). Programming Tool Future Forecasts: Insights and Trends to 2033. DiMarket. https://www.datainsightsmarket.com/reports/programming-tool1974573#summary

n Gattrix. (2025, September 1). What Is Cybersecurity? Types, Threats, and Best Practices for Protection. Learn about Cybersecurity, Including key types, Common Threats, and Best Practices for Protection. Gattrix. https://www.sattrix.com/blog/what-is-cybersecurity-types-threats-and-best-practicesfor-protection/

n Grace Themes. (2025, August 28). Top Software Development Trends Transforming Businesses in 2025. Grace Themes. https://gracethemes.com/top-softwaredevelopment-trends-transforming-businesses-in-2025/

n Hosseini, S., & Seilani, H. (2025, July). The Role of Agentic AI in Shaping a Smart Future: A Systematic Review. Array, 26, 100399. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S2590005625000268

n Jhonson, M. (2025, September 2). The Role of AI in Shaping the Future of DevOps. DEV.https://dev.to/mitchelljhonson/the-role-of-ai-in-shaping-the-future-of-devops-24l3 n Kissflow. (2025, September 2). Difference Between Low Code and No Code Platform. Kissflow. https://kissflow.com/faq/what-is-the-difference-between-nocode-and-low-code

n Lee, L. (2025, August 30). Quantum Computing May Sound Like Science Fiction but Here’s Why We Need to Take it Seriously. CNA. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/ today/big-read/quantum-computing-technology-investing-cybersecurity-5318401

n Mohanty, S., Satpathy, S., Yang, M., & Vali, K. (2025). Protecting and Mitigating Against Cyber Threats. Deploying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Wiley.

n Murillo, J., Garcia-Alonso, J., Moguel, E., Barzen, J., Leymann, F., Ali, S., Yue, T., Arcaini, P., Pérez-Castillo, R., & García-Rodríguez de Guzmán, I. (2025, May 27). Quantum Software Engineering: Roadmap and Challenges Ahead. https://dl.acm.org/doi/ full/10.1145/3712002

n Raygain. (n.d.). Managed IT Services Company Trends That Will Shape 2025. Raygain. Managed IT Services Company Trends That Will Shape 2025 - Raygain Technologies

n Stack Overflow. (2025, July 29). 2025 Developer Survey. Sentiment and Use. Stack Overflow. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/ai#sentiment-and-usage

THE AUTHOR

Maria Watson Santander is a Doctoral student in Strategic Leadership with a concentration in Strategic Foresight at Regent University School of Business. Strategic Manager, Project Manager, and Mathematician with over ten years of experience in long and short-term planning, project management, and decision-making analysis.

NORMALCY IN THE THRIVING TOGETHER HOSPITALITY AND HUMAN

(OpenAI. (2025). Futuristic space hospitality lounge with AURORA distillery unit [AI-generated digital image]. DALL·E.)

THE EXTRAORDINARY: THROUGH SPACE HUMAN FACTORS

By Colleen McLeod Garner, MBA, EMGM, PhD (Student)

WHEN most people think about space, they picture rockets, clunky spacesuits, and the ISS. Yet ask any astronaut what sustains them during months away from Earth, and they will often tell you it is the small things: a shared meal, a favorite song, or a holiday celebrated together in orbit. These moments of normalcy are not luxuries. They are essential for the success of every mission.

Too often, psychological wellness and the “human factors” are treated as afterthoughts in the grand narrative of exploration. But as we plan for long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars, the question is no longer whether humans can survive in space—it is whether we can truly thrive there together. Thriving requires more than life support systems; it requires cultural, psychological, and social systems that honor our shared humanity.

Space as a Testing Ground for Humanity

The International Space Station (ISS) has shown us that thriving in orbit requires far more than engineering prowess. Astronauts have found resilience in rituals: tortillas replacing bread to prevent crumbs, movie nights projected on laptops, and cultural dishes shared during international holidays. These seemingly small acts tether astronauts to identity, belonging, and community.

Earth-based analogs confirm this lesson. Antarctic research stations, such as Concordia, provide some of the best comparisons to space due to their extreme isolation, confinement, and environmental hostility. Studies have consistently found that shared meals, cultural rituals, and daily routines are what preserve morale and group cohesion during long polar winters (Pagel & Choukèr, 2016). In both Antarctica and space, normalcy becomes a survival mechanism for the psyche.

Hospitality Beyond Survival

Hospitality in space takes on radical meaning. It is not about indulgence or luxury—it is about creating environments where people feel safe, valued, and included, even under extraordinary conditions. Offering a seat at the table, celebrating a colleague’s holiday, or simply pausing for coffee becomes an act of solidarity that strengthens team cohesion and mission success.

Consider the story of an astronaut smuggling a pastrami sandwich aboard Gemini 3 in 1965—while it violated mission protocol, it highlighted a deeper truth: humans crave the familiar as a way of grounding themselves in extraordinary environments. Similarly, tortillas replaced bread aboard the ISS not only to prevent floating crumbs, but as a nod to cultural familiarity. Whether it is pastrami or paella, these gestures go beyond food— they are about memory, identity, and belonging.

Today, we are seeing signals that space hospitality is evolving beyond mere caloric necessity. Chef José Andrés and his ThinkFoodGroup are preparing bold, flavorful Spanish dishes like Chicken & Mushroom Paella and Secreto de Cerdo with Pisto to send to the ISS for the Ax-1 private crew mission—meals designed for taste, nutrition, and shared experience (Food & Wine, 2022).

NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge is pushing innovation in food systems that are resource-efficient, nutritionally rich, and delightful to eat—not just functional (NASA, 2023). And in 2025, the Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar champagne bottle, engineered for zero-gravity consumption, flew on Axiom Mission 4, signaling that even ceremonial traditions like a toast are being adapted for space (Axiom Space, 2025).

These examples show that we’ve moved past survival alone— but they also make clear that with missions to Mars projected for 2026 and a lunar base with NASA planned for 2027, timelines for infrastructure are accelerating at a fever pitch. Food, hospitality, and psychological wellness cannot be afterthoughts. They must be designed into the foundations of lunar and Martian habitats alongside oxygen generators and radiation shields.

Food and beverage rituals remind us that humans are not merely biological organisms in need of calories but social beings in need of community. They transform survival into thriving.

Responsible Frameworks for Thriving

Yet thriving together requires more than spontaneous acts of kindness. It demands frameworks—policies, designs, and practices—that make psychological wellness and hospitality central to mission planning, not secondary.

NASA’s Human Research Program has underscored the risks of long-term isolation, confinement, and stress on both cognitive performance and crew health (NASA, 2022). These findings must shape how we design habitats, allocate resources, and build systems for care. Embedding psychological health alongside propulsion and power is no longer optional; it is mission-critical.

At the same time, the growth of the space economy—already valued at over $613 billion and rapidly expanding—underscores

the creativity and opportunities emerging at this frontier (Space Foundation, 2023). Innovations are not limited to propulsion or satellites; they also touch human factors and hospitality. For example, AURORA, a modular distillery unit designed for multi-use in space habitats, demonstrates how technologies can serve dual purposes: supporting biomedical applications and water purification, while also fostering rituals of normalcy and connection through food and beverage. Its design reflects a larger truth: that thriving requires equal attention to efficiency, psychological well-being, and community.

Responsible frameworks also require equity and inclusivity. As commercial space ventures expand, there is a risk of replicating Earth’s inequities in orbit. Thriving together means designing missions that honor diversity—of culture, diet, language, and tradition—and ensuring that psychological wellness is accessible to all participants, not just a privileged few.

In short: responsible frameworks are not ancillary. They are the scaffolding that allows normalcy to flourish in extraordinary environments.

Reflections for Earth

The extraordinary context of space reframes what it means to live well together. It sharpens our focus on essentials: cooperation, trust, inclusivity, and care. These lessons are equally urgent on Earth, where the coming decades will test human resilience through climate change, migration, and resource scarcity.

Normalcy is resilience. It is what allows people to flourish under pressure, to find belonging in unfamiliar places, and to endure together when the world changes around them. The practices that sustain astronauts and Antarctic researchers—rituals of connection, frameworks of hospitality, inclusive spaces—are the very practices that can sustain communities displaced by floods, rebuilding after conflict, or navigating polarization.

Space teaches us that thriving is not about escaping Earth’s challenges. It is about learning how to build solidarity under conditions of uncertainty, scarcity, and change.

A Future of Flourishing

Space is a mirror. It reveals that technology alone will not carry us forward; it is our shared humanity that ensures permanence beyond Earth. Normalcy in the extraordinary is not a soft add-on. It is the foundation of mission success.

As we imagine 2050 and beyond, we must design futures that embed psychological wellness, hospitality, and solidarity into every layer of exploration. Whether in orbit, in Antarctic research stations, or in climate-stressed cities, thriving together depends on creating rituals and frameworks that anchor our humanity.

But this is not work for any single discipline. Engineers, psychologists, anthropologists, policymakers, designers, educators, and hospitality professionals must come together to shape futures where humans do more than survive—we flourish. Space exploration offers us both a challenge and an invitation: to

collaborate across boundaries, to integrate wisdom from many fields, and to recognize that thriving is a collective endeavor. What keeps us alive is oxygen. What helps us thrive together is the ability to belong, to share, and to find home—wherever we may go. Let us commit not only to building spacecraft and habitats, but to building cultures of care. Let us use space as a proving ground for solidarity and carry those lessons back to Earth. And let us continue this dialogue—across disciplines and across borders—to co-create futures where thriving together is not an aspiration but a reality.

REFERENCES:

n Axiom Space. (2025). Elevating cultural icon: Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar champagne bottle tested on Axiom Mission 4. Retrieved from https://www. axiomspace.com/mission-blog/elevating-cultural-icon

n Food & Wine. (2022). José Andrés is sending paella to space. Retrieved from https:// www.foodandwine.com/news/jose-andres-axiom-space-paella-iss

n NASA. (2022). Human Research Program Evidence Reports. NASA. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/hrp

n NASA. (2023). Deep Space Food Challenge. NASA. Retrieved from https://www.nasa. gov/prizes-challenges-and-crowdsourcing/centennial-challenges/deep-space-foodchallenge/

n Pagel, J. I., & Choukèr, A. (2016). Effects of isolation and confinement on humans— implications for manned space explorations. Journal of Applied Physiology, 120(12), 1449–1457. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00928.2015

n Space Foundation. (2023). The Space Report. Retrieved from https://www. thespacereport.org

THE AUTHOR

Colleen McLeod Garner is the BD & Marketing Director at Paragon Space Development Corporation and founder of InterGalactic Imbibing. She holds an MBA in Global Innovation and an Executive Master’s in Space Leadership, Business, and Policy, and is currently pursuing PhD in Human Factors in Space at the University of North Dakota.

PLANETARY CONSTITUTION INSTITUTE FOR EXOCONSCIOUSNESS

UNITING HUMANITY FOR A NEW AND INTERGALACTIC RELATIONS

By Rebecca Hardcastle Wright, PhD

THE INSTITUTE FOR EXOCONSCIOUSNESS (IEXO) announces the first anniversary of the Planetary Constitution , originally signed on September 20, 2024. This landmark document safeguards humanity’s fundamental right to consciousness while preparing us for a shared future among the stars.

The Constitution’s anniversary comes at a pivotal moment in global space policy. Sean Duffy, Interim NASA Administrator, has accelerated plans to:

Deploy a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030

Transition to commercial space stations, replacing the ISS

• Shift NASA’s focus away from Earth-climate research toward deep space and exoplanet exploration

Open new pathways for private-sector participation in space initiatives

While these developments reshape humanity’s presence in space, IEXO calls for an equally bold inclusion of Exoconscious Humans—those who have had verified encounters with nonhuman intelligences. The Planetary Constitution affirms that the voices of Contactees and Experiencers are essential in shaping

CONSTITUTION BY THE EXOCONSCIOUSNESS NEW ERA OF CONSCIOUSNESS

RELATIONS

future frameworks for intergalactic communication, governance, and diplomacy.

“The Planetary Constitution is more than a document—it is a call to recognize consciousness as the foundation of human rights and interspecies relations,” said Dr. Rebecca Hardcastle Wright, Founder of the Institute for Exoconsciousness and previous Washington, DC, representative for Apollo 14 astronaut, Dr. Edgar Mitchell’s Quantrek Science team. “As space agencies and corporations expand outward, humanity must expand inward, acknowledging our lived reality of contact and preparing for cooperative engagement with other intelligences.”

This initiative stands as a historic opportunity to redefine humanity’s role in the universe. By fostering peace, cooperation, and inclusivity, the Planetary Constitution ensures that technological progress is matched with conscious evolution.

The Institute invites journalists, researchers, and the public to commemorate this anniversary and engage with the Exoconscious Planetary Constitution—an emerging framework that could change the course of human history.

The Institute for Exoconsciousness (IEXO): The Institute for Exoconsciousness is the first post-disclosure organization to support co-creation between natural human and interdimensional and off-planet intelligences.

Planetary Constitution: Video of Reading of Planetary Constitution

PLANETARY CONSTITUTION Institute for Exoconsciousness

We, the People of the Planet Earth, in Order to form a more perfect Interplanetary Global Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the Common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity as a Human Race, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States and Planet Earth.

WHEREAS:

1. Natural human Consciousness is a fundamental and precious Right of all Humans and embodies the inalienable human rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Health and Happiness;

2. All humans have the inalienable right to protect their Consciousness from spiritual, energetic, physical, or environmental Influence or Interference from Human and NonHuman entities;

3. Non-Human entities, both Natural and Artificial, have historically and currently interacted with governments and individuals of the human race on Planet Earth;

4. Humans have the Ability and Intention to explore Outer Space, including other planets, moons, dimensions, and celestial bodies;

5. Space Exploration increases the likelihood of increased interactions with unknown types and species of Non-Human entities;

6. Encounters with Non-Human entities raise Important Issues for the Future of the Human Race, including Inter-Galactic Communication, Independence, Negotiation, Governance, Diplomacy, Technology, Trade, Ownership, Protection, Interference, and Consciousness;

7. Many Humans, known as “Contactees” and “Experiencers,” are experiencing Direct Contact and Communication with NonHuman entities. The term “Exoconsciousness” has been created to describe this unique form of communication. It includes, but is not limited to, co-creation with Non-Human intelligences, telepathic knowledge, spaceship piloting, predictions of global warfare and environmental issues, medical healing, DNA

alterations, and interdimensional and intergalactic exploration;

8. The United States Government and other governments have engaged in a long-term campaign to hide black budget programs, exclude the general population from its knowledge of Non-Human interactions, and discredit claims made by Contactees and Experiencers, all in an effort to maintain maximum secrecy about Non-Human interactions with Humans;

NOW, THEREFORE, WE DECLARE:

1. Contactees and Experiencers must be included in Human interactions with Non-Human entities on behalf of the Governments of Planet Earth.

2. Contactees and Experiencers can Communicate with and thereby gain a better understanding of Non-Human Intentions, Capabilities, and Plans than traditional Government Space Programs or existing Human Technologies.

3. The inclusion of Contactees and Experiencers in Government discussions and interactions with Non-Human entities will reduce the likelihood of Planetary Conflict, War, and Destruction and increase the likelihood of accurate Communication, Mutually Agreeable Goals, Peaceful Cooperation, and Interspecies Respect.

On September 20, 2024 at 8:00 pm ET the Planetary Constitution was signed by

Rebecca Hardcastle Wright, PhD

Nancy du Tertre, Esq.

Linda Martuch

Susan Manewich, M.S. PhD Candidate

THE AUTHOR

Rebecca Hardcastle Wright , PhD, is a leading pioneer in Exoconsciousness and founder of the Institute for Exoconsciousness (I-EXO). A former college educator in Ufology and author of three influential books and numerous articles, Rebecca served on Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell’s Quantrek science team researching zero-point energy, consciousness, and the ET presence.

RESOURCES AND REVIEWS

PLAYBOOK OF FORESIGHT: DESIGNING STRATEGIC CONVERSATIONS FOR TRANSFORMATION AND RESILIENCE

A Book Announcement

WE are thrilled to announce the release of Playbook of Foresight, a timely and essential toolkit for anyone facing an uncertain future. Authored by futurist Victor V. Motti — longtime director with the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) — this guide offers a comprehensive framework to design strategic conversations that reveal alternative pathways for transformation and resilience.

From foundational concepts like time, change, and imagination to more advanced frameworks drawn from diverse philosophical traditions, Motti guides readers through a journey of increasing complexity and depth. This is a resource not just for seasoned foresight professionals, but also for newcomers—students, policymakers, organizational leaders, and anyone eager to think more deliberately about the future.

Organized in a deliberate progression, each chapter seamlessly balances conceptual clarity with actionable tools—so readers can move fluidly between reflection and practice.

Why you should read this book:

Gain practical methods to facilitate strategic foresight conversations in organizations.

• Explore how resilience thinking and futures literacy can support transformation in complex, turbulent times. Engage with tools that support collaborative decision-making across diverse stakeholders.

Playbook of Foresight is now available in paperback and digital formats. Whether you’re launching foresight initiatives, teaching futures studies, or simply curious about how futures thinking can inform present choices, this book can be a powerful companion.

Grab your copy, join the conversation, and enable transformation through foresight!

By Victor Motti

FOCUS ON AFRICA: THE ZEITGEIST OF CAPE TOWN, 2025

IN the cusp of the 26th WFSF World Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, the Review Room desk can reveal publications that elucidate cogent key issues, contextualize, and also historicize this conference.

I. The Fairest Cape of All

By Leopold Mureithi

The Millennium Project Kenya Node

Let’s start with the physical. Noting the unparallelled natural beauty and the uniqueness of the place, the around-the-world navigator, Sir Francis Drake, pronounced this African Cape as “a most stately thing, and the fairest Cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth” in `1580 [Fairest Cape - DSAE].

Cape Town is itself one of the most beautiful cities anywhere [25 Most Beautiful Cities in the World]. Undoubtedly a visual feast, in addition to other creature comforts erected, to stimulate the intellectual engagements with the conference agenda. I should know: I lived and worked in this geography during the 1990s.

II. Lest We Forget

As a background, one could do with some readings focused on Africa’s macrofutures, following the hallowed stepwise methodology of futures studies: hindsight, insight, and foresight. Basically, the “the farther back you look, the farther forward you are likely to see” [Churchill on History - Liam M OBrien].

A book that gives a lucid rundown on Africa’s past is When We Ruled: The Ancient and Mediaeval History of Black Civilisations by Robin Walker (Black Classic Press, 2011). Reminisce the glorious days of the African continent, from being the cradle of homo sapiens to the conquest by external powers -- a time lapse spanning from some seventy thousand years ago to the seventh Century AD. Within this time and space have evolved essential human relations, succinctly summarized in the Freedom Chater adopted by the Congress of the People in Kliptown, Sowoto (Johannesburg) in 1955, thus: Africa belongs to all who live in it [The-Freedom-Charter.pdf]. Though the Charter was meant for South Africa, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Kole Omotoso wrote a sobering book on reckoning with the need to shift from being entirely Euro-centric to focusing on Africa –grounded imagining of movement from the developmental North to the marginalized South. His book, Season of Migration to the South: Africa’s Crises Reconsidered (Tafelberg,1994), is a good read for appreciating the African problematique. Omotoso is singularly suited to have written this text by virtue of having been born in Nigeria in 1943, taught in both the University of the Westen Cape (the intellectual capital of the Left) and Stellenbosch University (the intellectual capital of the Right) between 1991 and 2003, and . that he featured as the “Yebo Gogo man” (Zulu language for “yes grandmother”) in the 1994 cell-phone advertisements by Vodacom -- which prompted the South African President, Nelson Mandela, describe him as “the most photographed man in South Africa” [Kole Omotoso - Wikipedia]. By the time he died in Johannesburg in 2023, Omotoso knew a thing or two that we can learn in bridging geographical, political, and other relational barriers. Yebo Gogo was trope for the ‘changing face of a “new South Africa”’ [Yebo Gogo: Visibility and Culture in the New South Africa].

Having covered hindsight by a look at Africa’s history, and insighted by examining Africa’s

This “multiple ways of knowing the future” is a force for good with respect to time and space.

contemporary challenges, these “facts” can be coupled with imagination to foresight future possibilities. The maintained hypothesis is that the operational terrain is “an incomplete past and an uncertain future” [Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells and Alexandra Whittington (Eds.), Aftershocks and Opportunities 2: Navigating the Next Horizon, Fast Future Publishing Ltd, 2021, p. 1]. But, to cut to the chase, we look at the work by Naomi Terry, Azucena Castro, Bwalya Chibwe, Geci Karuri-Sebina, Codruţa Savu, and Laura Pereira, “Inviting a decolonial praxis for future imaginaries of nature: Introducing the Entangled Time Tree,” Environmental Science & Policy, Volume 151, 2024. They “offer the Entangled Time Tree heuristic to acknowledge multiple pasts and alternative ways of conceptualizing futures”. Thus:

“ …. time is conceived as a baobab tree with deep roots in the past referencing the ancestors, and acknowledging the multiple lost and erased knowledges and distorted truths from the past that inform multiple presents from which the branches of the future arise. We illustrate three potential ways of thinking through these future spaces, one that is circular and does not project up, but returns to be grounded in an infinity loop with pasts. The second draws on the Sankofa icon to reference the need for groundedness in the past as the future is navigated. Finally, the multiple time cones draw on the diverse literatures on opening up from projected time and recognising that there are multiple subjectivites informing the boundaries of each cone. Each pathway is porous and can be influenced by each other, referencing the Cat’s cradle string game of rhizomatic relations connecting multiple cultures and how there is no singular dominant viewpoint. We offer this heuristic as a talking point for further discussion and more examples from other cultural contexts” [Introducing the Entangled Time Tree - ScienceDirect].

III. WFSF Conferences on African Soil

The 26th world conference (October 2025) of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) in Cape Town, South Africa, is the third being held on the African soil. The first two took place in Cairo, Egypt (the 6th in the series, September 1978) and in Nairobi , Kenya (the 14th in the series, July 1995). Both were characterized by key landmarks.

The 1978 Cairo gathering dealt with the various issues of “communication and cultural identity in an interdependent world.” This was during a liminal period in information and communication technology (ICT) towards computer miniaturization, skyrocketing computational power, and a networked world. At a time when the world was still ideologically divided into East and West and a world cold war existed between the two camps, it is uplifting that there were participants from the Republic of China “for the first time in futures studies history” [Eleonora Masini, “Giving the media the message” Futures, Volume 11, Issue 1, February 1979, p. 72]. Debates on techno-domination, cultural imperialism, and ethos livened the debates in Cairo.

The 1995 General Assembly in Nairobi accepted a consensus process of a living final draft constitution for the transitioning of WFSF from a non-profit “international association of cultural, scientific and educational character” registered under French law in 1973, to one operating under international law” [WFSF Biannual Report 1995-1997, pp. 4 & 23]. This was a “turning point …. a historical turning point” [pp. 8 & 9]. Yet, it was “about to turn into a catastrophe because of an unprecedented collapse in support and cooperation, and for some internal obstacles within WFSF. But finally it turned into a victory for WFSF and its co-organisers” [p. 9]. Aside from the WFSF constitution coming into effect, the conference theme, “Futures Beyond Poverty,” proved to be of critical importance as a stalemate that engages many on ways and means to overcome the same even today. Coming soon after the liberation of South Africa from apartheid (racial segregation) in 1994, the conference participants emphasized on the need to “determine our own agenda, our own priorities” [Karoliina Lehtinen, “World Futures Studies Federation in 1993–1997,” Futures, 37(5), June 2005, p. 392].

The WFSF 2025 Cape Town conference, therefore, comes with a continental streak of ideological rapprochement, sociotechnical transitions, readiness to confront poverty, the comfort that it birthed a WFSF constitutional turning point, and own-agential development. Of course, in a world facing risks and uncertainties, the journey has not been all smoothsailing; but sufficient resilience was summoned to see

things through by strengths overcoming weaknesses, and threats turned into opportunities.

IV. Engaging the Issues

The theme of the 26th Conference is “Thriving Together”. This conjures up a sense of justice in that one does to another what one would wish others to do unto one [the golden rule]. That one would care about the welfare of others is at the core of Ubuntu (Nguni - Zulu and Xhosa; Umuntu: Ndebele and other Bantu languages; Utu: Kiswahili; Ũmũndũ: Kikuyu; etc.), the an ancient African concept that one is because the other is; one is because all are; and moving together with no one left behind. As philosopher Lucas Fain observed “there is no future without openness to the other” [Public Seminar]. In a similar vein, Claire Nelson reminds us, in the editors page of the WFSF Human Futures magazine, that “until we see the value of sharing the future, we will not achieve the future we most value” [WFSF Magazines – WORLD FUTURES STUDIES FEDERATION]. These sentiments constitute a solid mindset foundation “to envision and co-create futures where individuals, groups, and societies can move beyond survival and into sustainable flourishing” [WFSF IFR Conference –] as necessary to engage with the challenges identified by the conference organizers, namely:

Adaptive capacities in times of disruption; Democratic renewal and social cohesion; Ecological sustainability and climate resilience;

• Technological responsibility and innovation; and

• Shared narratives for hopeful and inclusive futures.

V. Reasonable Expectation

Gaius Plinius Secundus (23-79 AD), the Roman writer commonly known as Pliny the Elder, wrote in his 37-volume tome Historia Naturalis: “Semper aliquid novi Africam adferre (Africa always brings something new)” [Oxford Reference]. Pliny covered only the natural world of fauna and flora. The WFSF conference could give another dimension in the area of foresight. This would be in keeping with the 1960 “Wind of Change” speech given in the South African Parliament in Cape Town by the British Prime Minister, Sir Harold MacMillan [The wind of change (the original text)]. Such foresightful “wind of change” in 2025 has a precedent -- the Mt. Fleur (Stellenbosch) Scenarios crafted in 1992 served as a instrument ‘to move beyond „stone-throwing politics” in South Africa, by embracing collaboration …. and … an inclusive, robust and transformative polity’ [Lessons from the Mont Fleur Scenarios: Moving beyond stone-throwing politics]. Such a way forward could be the way to reify the 1998 “African renaissance” dream of the then Deputy President Tambo Mbeki [Mbeki Speech - THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE, SOUTH AFRICA AND THE WORLD] and its antecedent “regeneration of Africa” 1906 vision of his fellow South African, Pixley ka Isaka Seme [The+Regeneration+of+Africa_ Pixley+Seme.pdf]. Will the 26th WFSF Conference rise to the challenge? That’s the question. Time will tell.

VI. In Lieu of

a Conclusion

A legacy of the late Pentti Malaska, WFSF President (1993-1997) is for futurists to be pragmatic. In what could pass as his hand-over notes, he stated: “Only ethically justifies and enjoyable futures are well worth of our making. let’s challenge the belief of the optimist and the fear of the pessimist. Do not be optimists nor pessimists but futures realists” [WFSF Biannual Report 1995-1997, p. 9].

So, welcome, pragmatic futurists, to the fairest Cape. Shine. Sawubona. Welkom. Karibu.

THE AUTHOR

Leopold P. Mureithi is a Professor at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He has had assignments of limited duration (ALD) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa; the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. He is Co-Chair of The Millennium Project (TMP) Kenya Node; and is the Review Room Editor of Human Futures. His research specialization is on the interface between economics, futures studies, and strategic foresight. Email: Lpmureithi@hotmail.com

FROM FUTUREPHOBIA TO FUTURETOPIA: YOUTH PERSPECTIVES ON THE FUTURE AS A CIVILIZATIONAL TRANSITION

Abstract

TBy Rosa Alegria

HIS article presents the results of the study From Futurephobia to Futuretopia, carried out with Brazilian youth through an expanded listening methodology for futures. The study seeks to understand the pains, desires, and aspirations of Generation Z in relation to the future. Through interviews, surveys, and the application of foresight tools, future scenarios were built under the name Futuretopia 2035. These scenarios are integrated into each of the study’s eight thematic axes, offering desirable pathways for the next ten years. The article proposes futures literacy as a key tool for a civilizational transition guided by youth agency and social imagination.

Introduction: What Are Youth Telling Us About the Future?

In a global context marked by climate crises, disruptive technologies, and political disengagement, understanding young people’s emotions, perceptions, and imaginaries becomes urgent. This study, focused on Brazilian youth aged 15–29, explores the transition from a passive or anxious stance toward the future (futurephobia) to a proactive, creative, and hopeful stance (futuretopia). The premise is that imagining is neither a luxury nor a fantasy but an essential capacity for transforming reality.

The Emotional History of the Future

Throughout history, collective perceptions of the future have oscillated between utopian hope and apocalyptic fear. From the techno-utopias of the 20th century to contemporary dystopias, the future reflects each era’s emotional state. Philosophers such as Ernst Bloch and Fred Polak warned that without positive images of the future, societies stagnate.

Today, we witness the rise of a condition called futurephobia: anxiety toward the future, fear of collapse, and imaginative paralysis. In response, the concept of futuretopia emerges: a recovery of youth agency, creativity, and possibility. As Franco Berardi (2019) argues in After the Future, the loss of utopian references has contributed to the collapse of the collective imagination. Similarly, García Barnés (2021) in Futuretopia advocates reactivating imagination as a regenerative political act. This perspective aligns with Alegria (2022) in TranSetarian Revolution: The Strength of Intergenerational Futures , which highlights the power of intergenerational futures as a pathway to civilizational regeneration, defending intergenerational collaboration as a driver to reimagine tomorrow.

The Youth Gaze on the Future: A Generational Comparison

While in the 20th century young people were seen as agents of change, today many youth feel powerless before an uncertain future. According to UNICEF & Gallup (2021), current youth are more skeptical about the future than previous generations. The British Council (2020) confirms that they feel a disconnection between their dreams and social structures.

Jennifer Gidley (2002) refers to this as a “crisis of imagination,” intensified by educational systems that restrict the capacity to dream. Geoff Mulgan (2023) further warns, “Amid so many crises, we are also living a crisis of the collective imagination.”

Future-oriented education appears as a necessary response: to teach futures literacy is to empower youth to imagine and

co-create. As Alegria (2024) argues in Envisioning a World with Universal Futures Education, it is urgent to include futures literacy in education policy as a tool for democratic resilience and social transformation.

Methodology: Expanded Listening of Futures

To organize findings, results were structured into three complementary analytical dimensions:

n Intimate: addressing internal and subjective aspects such as imagination, anxiety, pressure for perfection, and health.

n Collective: exploring social relations, work, education, politics, and temporality.

n Systemic: considering structural forces such as technology, territory, and the environment.

The methodology, called Expanded Listening of Futures, began with mapping key systems affecting youth (education, work, health, technology, social bonds), followed by a literature review of related studies. Hypotheses were then defined and classified by system, guiding the selection of specialists for in-depth interviews.

A geographic mapping of Generation Z voices in Brazil led to an online closed-question survey. Data were then organized into thematic axes, identifying emerging signals of change. These were processed using Millennium Project AI foresight tools, including a Futures Wheel and cross-impact analysis. Finally, desirable scenarios—Futuretopia 2035—were constructed, expressing pathways imagined by youth for a decade of transformation.

Sample: 12 experts across thematic axes and 689 young people from nearly all Brazilian regions. The study combined qualitative data (specialist interviews, youth focus groups) with quantitative data (digital surveys). The voices represented a wide diversity of geography, gender, social class, and ethnicity.

Results: Between Pains, Desires, and Possible Futures

n Imagination

• 87% of youth believe imagining the future can be cultivated.

• 88% report financial instability and social crises restrict their imaginative horizon.

Quote: “People don’t have time to imagine because they are trying to survive.”

Futuretopia 2035: Schools and communities become imagination hubs, turning uncertainty into a starting point for innovation.

n Anxiety

• 62% expressed high fear about their future. Main feelings: anxiety (78.5%) and hope (62.6%).

Quote: “I don’t know what I want to be because the world could collapse at any moment.”

Futuretopia 2035: Anxiety is reframed as a compass. Schools teach how to live with uncertainty, and networks strengthen human connection.

n Perfection

• 61.6% feel excessive pressure to succeed; 29% affected by aesthetic/digital pressures.

Futuretopia 2035: Perfection is replaced by authenticity; imperfection is embraced as creative power.

n Health

• 78.5% associate the future with anxiety; 45.1% with fatigue.

Futuretopia 2035: Health becomes central, with parks, school breaks, and mindful nutrition fueling creative futures.

n Work

• 79% prioritize financial stability; 66.1% want purposeful work. Futuretopia 2035: Work becomes meaningful, collaborative, and youth-centered.

n Education

• Only 31% feel school prepares them for the future.

Futuretopia 2035: Schools integrate futures imagination as part of daily learning.

n Politics

• National trust level: 5.1/10; self-confidence: 7.1/10.

Futuretopia 2035: Brazil recognizes youth as a democratic force; power is decentralized.

n Temporality

• 28% perceive poor dialogue with younger generations. Futuretopia 2035: The future becomes a meeting place where times embrace each other.

n Technology

• 72% link tech to anxiety/overload; 40% say excessive social media reduces future imagination.

Quote: “Youth are trapped in the algorithm’s eternal now.”

Futuretopia 2035: AI becomes an ally of critical imagination.

n Locality

• Over a third tie their future to space, access, security, and community.

Futuretopia 2035: “Future stations” link infrastructure, culture, and community action.

n Environment

• Strong fears of collapse and destruction.

Futuretopia 2035: Regeneration becomes daily practice, and hope a method.

Futures Literacy to Activate Active Hope

Futures literacy emerges as a key strategy to cultivate active hope among youth. It is not only about anticipating scenarios but fostering transformative attitudes toward uncertainty. As Peter Bishop (2024), founder of Teach the Future, states: “The more aware we are of the future, the more responsible we become for it.”

Teaching long-term thinking, imagining alternatives, and collaborating on solutions counters paralysis and despair. Futures literacy empowers youth to become protagonists of regenerative futures.

Conclusion

The study reveals a generation marked by real fears yet open to imagining new worlds. The transition from futurephobia to futuretopia requires educational, emotional, and collective tools. Futures literacy allows anxiety to become action, resignation to turn into desire, and paralysis into imagination. Listening to youth is not symbolic—it is an act of future-making.

REFERENCES:

n Alegria, R. (2022). Transetarian Revolution: The Strength of Intergenerational Futures. Human Futures Magazine, WFSF.

n Alegria, R. (2024). Envisioning a World with Universal Futures Education. Compass Magazine.

n Berardi, F. (2019). After the Future. Caja Negra.

n British Council. (2020). Next Generation Global Report.

n García Barnés, H. (2021). Futuretopia. Ediciones Paidós.

n Gidley, J. (2002). Giving hope to young people: Futures education as a tool for agency and transformation.

n Mulgan, G. (2023). The Imaginary Crisis. Demos Helsinki.

n Polak, F. (1973). The Image of the Future. Elsevier.

n Slaughter, R. (2007). Futures Education: A Gift for Our Times.

n UNICEF & Gallup. (2021). Changing Childhood Project.

n Ahvenharju, S., Lalot, F., & Bishop, P. (2024). The Seeds of Tomorrow: Investigating adolescent perception of the future with the Futures Consciousness Scale for Adolescents. Futures, 155.

n Teach the Future & Millennium Project. (2024). From Futurephobia to Futuretopia: Possible Crossings for Youth.

THE AUTHOR

Rosa Alegria is a professional futurist with a Master’s degree in Futures Studies from the University of Houston–Clear Lake (2000–2001), a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Letters from the University of São Paulo (USP), and specializations in Sustainability (Schumacher College, UK), Management for Diversity and Global Management (Morehouse College, USA), and Creativity (Center for Creative Leadership, USA). She was Vice President of the Futures Studies Center (NEF) at PUC-SP for 16 years, founder of Pangera – Age-Free World (focused on intergenerational futures), a global team member of Teach the Future, and serves on the executive board of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF).

AFTERMOST

COMPLEXITY OF ‘TOGETHER’ AS AN IDEOLOGY: WHAT’S THE FUTURISTS VIEW?

By Edna Chepkurui

WHAT could ‘together’ mean or look like in the present world and more so in an unprecedented future? This issue of the Human Futures Magazine has emphasized the concept of ‘thriving together’ a clear contrast of the state of the world at the moment with everything and everyone seemingly pulling in different directions.

Looking up for the what the word together symbolizes brings up interestingly contrasting meanings.

“The word “together” symbolizes unity, connection, and shared purpose, but can also carry negative connotations of codependency or lost individuality”.

Which gives us a point to think about as global futuristic professionals. The world is often and increasingly viewed from the perspectives of ‘north’ vs ‘south’, ‘developed’ vs ‘developing’ or ‘least developed’, ‘industrialized’ vs ‘nonindustrialized’, and so forth. Other factors including race, religion and other ideological differences are continually being strengthened at the expense of human cohesive existence. And this in a sense portrays togetherness from a negative perspective .

Challenges brought about by climate change, for example, are being faced differently depending on levels of ‘development ‘ more than geographical locations. Adaptation to the effects of climate change is openly an economic than a climatic factor. While a well adapted world will depend on the contribution of each one of us and every

region, economic inequalities seem to be increasing by the day; yet there’s barely any action that points towards adapting together.

It is therefore imperative for any futurist to reflect on the existing inequalities and envision a world where each individual , country, region or continent contributes to a thriving planet through it’s own strength. Whereby, strength is what each one brings to the table and is viewed equally.

As we close the year and the Futures Forum concluding it’s conference in Africa, is it possible to envision Africa, for example, as an ‘equal’ global partner in economic development, trade, peace and security with a clear mandate in global politics?

Is there possibility that futurists could influence the current global political economy structures to reflect the shared prosperity which is ideal for a world that enables thriving together? The future will either be about pulling together for a greater good and a shared purpose or pulling apart for individual or group interests. Whichever we view as the best for our purpose will determine how we influence the world to ‘Thrive Together’.

THE AUTHOR

Edna Chepkurui is a freelance journalist and communications practitioner based in Kenya. Her interests spans politics, current affairs and economic development matters especially in Africa.

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