Designing The Future We Actually Want

Designing The Future We Actually Want

If we can’t picture the 22nd century, we can’t build it. Here’s how creative teams, brands and foresight thinkers can swap a commonly shared abstract and dystopian view of the future for something worth working toward.


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How often do you sit and think about the future? Not your future but our collective future. I know I don’t, because imagining the future right now feels dystopian and a little uneasy.

This is a question the design futurist and trends forecaster Sarah Housley posed at a recent Creative Mornings event. She said we are living through what the science fiction writer William Gibson termed “future fatigue.” In the 20th century, images of the 21st century were often conjured up in art, culture and film, but you can’t say the same for the 22nd century. For most people, that feels too scary to think about.