| “Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description[…] but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We’re dreamers, you see, but we’re also realists, of a sort.” ?— William Gibson, Hugo Award winning Science Fiction Author |
I’ve been doing a lot of “dreaming in public” for the past few months. There is nothing I love more than to be out in the world sharing positive visions of the future against the backdrop of so much fear and uncertainty. Public narratives about the global future always seem to have the same dystopian premise: that our way of life is under threat from forces beyond our control, and we are running out of time to keep things from getting worse. That’s why I’ve been on a wild roadshow engaging with experts and audiences to test out our new ideas on the incredible future we can build together. To the Future! ? — Julie & the World Future Society Team Update: On the Road ???? From Hollywood to Harvard, from a floating city to the United Nations, we are working on building key partnerships and broad collaboration networks with world leaders in business, economics, government, technology, entertainment, academia, science and the investment community. I’m excited to share with you some highlights from my recent whirlwind of meetings, events, speeches, and networking. A lot of the roadshow was focused on testing out new ideas around the next stage of evolution for impact investing, or what I like to call for-purpose investing. The World Future Society is working on defining public interest missions that can grow key economic sectors while solving grand challenges for the future of civilization at a global scale. I’ve been out there gauging reactions to nine new investment themes and how we can improve existing investment strategies and the work of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using systems thinking, visioning, and strategic foresight. These ideas received incredible traction in front of audiences at Harvard, MIT, and UMass Amherst, where I joined Ambassador George Hara and Doug Heske of Newday Impact Investing to discuss the future of finance. It was clear from the discussions that we are on to something that has never quite been considered before. At the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, I gave the closing keynote on our new civilization themes, and the response was incredible, with everyone was very eager to know more. There was still a line of people at the microphone waiting to ask questions when the organizers had to end it the event. Reality is a Shared Belief System. I spoke to students at Minerva College in San Francisco about how reality is created in our minds. The students really resonated with this way of thinking, and we are excited to welcome many of them into our community. One way in which they are eager to make a difference in the world is in figuring out how to reduce traffic, and I got them thinking about the Z Axis (as in flying cars 😉 Discussing Sea-level Rise at the Arkup: the Floating City. I had the chance to talk in Miami with a key network of influential entrepreneurs in Miami about how ways we can think about approaching sea level rise in the region. It was great to be able to promote the World Future Society and help this unique group learn new ways to think about shaping the future. Since the Hollywood Gala for Science, we’ve been talking with the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES) about vetting our civilization development theses in the areas of their current research. And as an Advisory Board Member of the UN Women for Peace, I attended the organization’s annual Awards Luncheon to End Violence Against Women. President (and WFS member) Barbara Winston talked about Buckminster Fuller’s concept of “Spaceship Earth” in her speech introducing Ben Stiller, who received an award for his work helping refugees. |