Envisioning Positive Futures with Technology
Stories about hopeful technological futures serve as both compass and catalyst for human innovation and progress. While dystopian narratives warn us about potential risks, we equally need inspiring visions that can guide us toward the futures we want to build. The optimistic science fiction of the 1960s, exemplified by Star Trek's vision of a united humanity exploring the cosmos, demonstrates how powerful storytelling can spark real-world innovation and shape societal attitudes toward technology. However, the promise of technology to solve our most pressing problems has not yet been translated into real world impact. This gap between imagination and reality makes new, positive narratives even more crucial. By harnessing the power of storytelling, we can imagine new hopeful pathways for technology development that steer us towards positive futures while fostering the collective optimism and determination needed to overcome obstacles in realizing these visions. We seek to help catalyze and amplify positive visions of the future with the goal of ultimately steering technology development towards building a better world.
Sub-projects
Foresight Worldbuilding Course
A course aimed at individuals interested in understanding and shaping the future of technology and society. It explores the societal impact of AI and emerging technologies, and teaches futures thinking tools like worldbuilding and backcasting to help learners design and communicate their own 2035 scenarios aligned with their vision and priorities.
Imagine a World Podcast
Can you imagine a world in 2045 where we manage to avoid the climate crisis, major wars, and the potential harms of artificial intelligence?
This new podcast series explores ways we could build a more positive future, and offers thought-provoking ideas for how we might get there.
Worldbuilding Competition
Depictions of the future in the media are overwhelmingly dystopian. The worldbuilding contest sought to challenge this paradigm and inspire positive visions of the future. We hope that, by providing detailed roadmaps towards a future that is desirable, the worlds our contestants built will inspire real-world initiatives to steer the development of technology in a positive direction.
BlueSky Screenwriting Competition
BlueSky Screenwriting Competition invites screenwriters to submit pilot scripts set in a positive future that includes themes of racial equity, climate change mitigation or adaptation, advancements toward peace, and incorporating the beneficial use of AI.
Foresight Hackathon
Advancements in science, technology, and specifically AI, are ushering us into an era filled with both extraordinary challenges and possibilities. This hackathon explored near-term Transformative AI scenarios to identify and evaluate existing and possible future institutions or coordination architectures for the safe and beneficial development of transformative AI technologies.