Future Today #057 - DALL-E 2, Polytopias, Critical Thinking, Books

Welcome to Future Today! A newsletter for those curious about social innovation, disruptive technologies and futures studies. In it I share weekly articles, reports and interesting links, and recommendations of books, movies, series, events and courses.

📚 20 Books and Articles to Get You Started in Strategic Foresight. Lately, a lot of people are interested in strategic foresight, and companies are creating new positions, or even entire teams, dedicated to exploring uncertainty. Regardless of whether you’re just starting out in the field of strategic foresight, or you’re a seasoned practitioner looking for new insights, these are the books we recommend to our clients and colleagues

 🤖 OpenAI DALL-E 2: Top 10 Insane Results! DALL·E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. DALL·E 2 can create original, realistic images and art from a text description. It can combine concepts, attributes, and styles.

💥 Polytopias: The Missing Speculative Genre. The word polytopia means “many places”. Unlike dystopias and utopias — which begin or end on the precipice of change — polytopias show the change from one state to another. They are stories that depict many people, many places, at many times. They demonstrate the incremental steps required to shift a system and how those systems interact with people along the way.

💭 Is Direct To Avatar The Next Direct To Consumer? In the 90s, some kids would save up every dollar they made from doing chores and working a summer job in order to buy those coveted Air Jordan sneakers or a 23 Chicago Bulls jersey. In 2020, children are asking their parents to get them Robux instead of cold hard cash, so they can buy their favorite gamer's skin in Roblox. 

⁉️ Critical Thinking Is About Asking Better Questions. Are you tackling a new and difficult problem at work? Recently promoted and trying to both understand your new role and bring a fresh perspective? If so, critical thinking — the ability to analyze and effectively break down an issue in order to make a decision or find a solution — will be core to your success.

🦠 How to future-proof your life from pandemics and other threats. In 2010, game designer and forecaster Jane McGonigal invited nearly 20,000 people to imagine a future pandemic — and, for a few weeks, live as though it were real. So when the real respiratory pandemic originated in China in 2020, they felt ready. They emailed McGonigal things like, “I’m not freaking out, I already worked through the panic and anxiety when we imagined it 10 years ago,” and, “Time to start social distancing!”

🌱 Why Sustainability Is Important in Business. The concept of green living and consumption has become increasingly popular throughout the world, particularly in developed countries, and is rapidly expanding to middle-income and higher-income developing countries. The conscious purchase and use of ecologically-friendly products that do not impair human health or threaten the natural ecosystem are referred to as green consumerism.

💡 No One Does Speculative Fiction Like Emily St. John Mandel. IN 2014, EMILY St. John Mandel published her fourth novel, Station Eleven. It went on to be the kind of breakout critical and commercial hit that transforms a writer’s life. A story about the survivors of a fictional flu pandemic, it gained new relevancy in 2020—the word “prescient” got tossed around a lot.

🚀 Sweden to set world’s first consumption-based emissions target. The committee responsible for setting Sweden’s environmental goals on Thursday presented its proposals for what goals Sweden should set for greenhouse has emissions linked to the country’s consumption. “No other country in the world has done what we have done” Emma Nohrén, chair of the climate goals committee, said at a press conference announcing the goals.

🖌 Design for a Just Transition: Co-design, community & care. The climate crisis — and Design for Planet — is a social justice issue and linked to systemic inequalities. The people responsible for producing the crisis sit far away from those who are feeling its impacts on their health and wellbeing.

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