The Tomorrow Project explores our possible futures through fact-based, science-based fiction and video conversations with scientists and science fiction authors, legends and world renowned experts, passionate advocates and everyday people. Science fiction gives all of us all a language so that we can have a conversation about the future and these conversations make dramatic changes. 

"IOTA is Superflux's proposal for a product ecosystem to support creative and collaborative applications of the internet-of-things." lovely project

"With the rapid growth of the emerging markets, the global economy is experiencing a seismic shift. In 'The World in 2050', we argue that this shift is set to continue." HSBC view of the future

"Google’s video would very nearly be a remake of this 2009 Nokia video if it weren’t for the fact that Nokia’s protagonist is a girl who’s happy to lounge around at home, and Google’s one stars a more active guy. (Note: Nokia has not brought such goggles to market to date. It just made a video about them.) Both of these movies fall into a genre I wrote about last week: corporate future-vision movies. Such films have been around for at least seventy years, and while they often depict things that come to be, in one form or another, I don’t see any evidence that they actually help the companies involved to do great things."

At the Summit on the Global Agenda 2011 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies asked some of the world’s leading minds within the entire GAC Network which technology trends would have the greatest impact on the state of the world in the near future.

Bill Joy in Wired 2004 - The nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies used in 20th-century weapons of mass destruction were and are largely military, developed in government laboratories. In sharp contrast, the 21st-century genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) technologies have clear commercial uses and are being developed almost exclusively by corporate enterprises. In this age of triumphant commercialism, technology - with science as its handmaiden - is delivering a series of almost magical inventions that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. We are aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial incentives and competitive pressures.

"The "Future of Mobility 2030" trend study points to a new era of mobility and focuses on the questions: What do we mean by mobility in the 21st Century? And how does it affect our everyday lives? We know that mobility is regarded not only as transportation but as an expression of a meta-mobile lifestyle, which includes our consumption habits as well as our social relationships."

"One of the thought leaders in this category Julian Bleecker sums the topic up well in his essay "Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction" with these words: 'I proposed “design fiction” in order to think about how design can tell thoughtful, speculative stories through objects.........I decided on fiction not so much to create objects that are for storytelling, but to create objects that help think through matters-of-concern. I am interested in working through materialized thought experiments. Design fictions are propositions for new, future things done as physical instantiations rather than future project plans done through PowerPoint.' "

Sarcastic Gamer takes a look at the future of the workplace - a parody of an MS office of the future video.

"Already today, 1.5 billion people use the Internet. In a few years, once the Internet has become genuinely mobile, over 4 billion users and billions more devices and objects will be connected anywhere and anytime. But before this can happen, the Internet must undergo important changes. Designed in the seventies, it is starting to face technical limitations which hamper its potential. Browse through our website: discover the opportunities and challenges facing the Internet, and Europe's leading role in shaping its future." the main EC future internet portal - should point to most of the FI activity in Europe.

"Self-tracking will disappear because it will be taken for granted. The quantitative tools in our lives will produce data that will be incorporated into some feedback mechanism; we will look at those mechanisms and they will influence us in some way. For instance, we will get biometric data in the form of feedback about how well we’re eating and sleeping, but we won’t have to peel back that information and do the analysis ourselves. Of course, the people who will be making these products and services will be highly aware of their tracking components, but if they’re successful, users won’t think about those aspects."

In March, President Obama identified "the biggest threat to our nation's balance sheet." Not major banks on the brink of insolvency. Not paralyzed credit markets. Not a bailout tab in the trillions. The biggest threat, he warned, "by a wide margin," is "the skyrocketing price of health care." Health care accounts for $1 in every $6 spent in the United States -- and costs are climbing at twice the rate of inflation. Every year, an estimated 1.5 million families lose their homes because of medical bills. Although we have the world's most expensive health-care system, 24 countries have a longer life expectancy and 34 have a lower infant-mortality rate, according to the latest United Nations report.

"The rise of the professional futurist is important. Although humans are capable of thinking through the implications of our actions, we are still notoriously bad at acting in our own long-term best interests, let alone the long-term best interests of society at large." IFTF on futures work

"What will the world be like in 85 years' time? How will we fly then? There are no absolute answers, but the visions are fascinating. This Internet site is divided into five sections, in which experts from different fields envision the future of air travel. Hopefully they also inspire You to discuss the future of flying!" Finnair vision of the future of flying - via their annual report on a plane to helsinki

"This wiki is designed to give you a little more background on the Did You Know?/Shift Happens (original, version 2.0, one referred to as 3.0, version 4.0) presentation. The wiki also will connect you with some resources to learn more about the shifts that are occurring in our world and their implications for K-12 and higher education."

TechCrunch surfaced this YouTube video this morning, a 1981 KRON news report on the San Francisco Examiner efforts to deliver its news online, calling it “pure gold.”

To accomplish this, we have conducted surveys, assembled focus groups of leading design thinkers and educators and conducted extensive interviews. The outcome will serve at least three purposes: for educators, it will help to refine the demands of the educational curriculum in preparing future professionals; for designers and corporations, it will help to understand the range of skill sets and organizational models for which they should be preparing today as they recruit new designers; and for developers creating the tools for future designers, it will help to focus product development efforts that improve the way designers work.

Future Files is a new book filled with provocative forecasts about how the world might change in the next half century. It examines emerging trends and developments in society, technology, economy, and business, and makes educated speculations as to where they might take us.

Edge Futures are a series of five books that explore the impact that climate change will have on different aspects of our lives in the future. They are available to order as individual titles or as a complete set.

In the latest study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, over 700 technology experts were asked to evaluate an assortment of scenarios in an attempt to determine potential trends for the year 2020.

the most eerily predictive, prescient films of the future. They’re not necessarily the best movies—just the ones that got the science right, or will sometime soon.

IBM is joining together with leaders from business, academia, and politics from around the world to create new opportunities for business and society.

Design know-how for a new era
A two-day conference exploring what designers need to know for the future

interesting portrait of what people were thinking in 2007

a book on yesterdays tomorrows