On futures, philanthropy, and real social change.

Since I started looking for references about futures studies, I have received recommendations about Amy Webb's work. I confess that I was very resistant to reading more about her, even without a concrete reason—I'm currently more interested in ideas and perspectives from other parts of the world. I just picked on Amy Webb, and that was it. Still, when I saw that the latest SXSW panel videos were available on YouTube, her presentation was the first one I reached out to watch. Lucky me.

Amy Webb positively surprised me, despite the rehearsed jokes that were obviously in the script she was reading and the planned pauses to wait for the laughs. This part didn't work for me. But when I reached the end of the video, I felt compelled to heed the call to action she concluded her speech with. I finished watching the presentation, convinced I needed to share what I saw and heard.

Although Amy's primary audiences are business leaders and governments (whom she addresses directly at the end of her speech), everything she said made me think about the impacts of future scenarios on organized civil society and philanthropy. Those of us who work on social and environmental justice and human and social development can't continue ignoring trends such as those Amy presented. It scares me that some of these topics are never part of conversations about strategies, resilience plans, and emerging issues in democracy, human rights, and the protection of natural resources. Not even funders supporting healthy information ecosystems and digital rights are consistently addressing the possibilities of disruption that are knocking on our door, given the profound technological transition we are experiencing.

I was never a herald of the end of the world, much less a promoter of conspiracy theories. Still, I heard many derisive comments from activist partners when, in the middle of the first decade of this century, we began to raise awareness about issues such as privacy protection, vigilantism, and other structural issues that opened the door to problems for which we now continue to seek solutions without a thread that guides us through the labyrinth. I expressed concern about emerging trends then, as I do now, and my motivation was not fear, but rather a desire to investigate and navigate particular waves before they engulfed everyone. A willingness to openly engage with what's next and what's possible has always driven my work as an activist. The same force inspired me as a grantmaker. Now, this motivation is at the roots of Toriba—an institution dedicated to contributing to imaginaries that fuel collective engagement and action toward the realities we desire and intuit as possible. "Another world is possible" remains a slogan for us (a world where many worlds fit). And "I see hope" could be our tagline.

For this reason, I enthusiastically suggest you watch Amy Webb's video at SXSW. Perhaps making this suggestion is a paradox. And that's okay. I am learning that paradoxes are important keys to navigating this moment, assuming we are what Amy calls "Generation T"—the Transition generation. No matter how old you are, you are part of this generation.

The futurist's statement that "we continue to hope for changes, but we adopt the wrong incentives to promote them" strikes me. She is right when she says that the strongest incentives in the technology market (which affects us all) are "speed and scale,"  because that is where the money comes from. Amy also hits the nail when she states that these incentives will promote more and more distortions and prejudice. Therefore, the problems we have already started to face due to technologies like AI and LLMs will worsen. For her, teams at large technology companies dedicated to ethical issues are not treated as relevant, and the increased speed and scale in the development and implementation of AI will deepen the ethical challenges that already exist, in addition to creating new ones.

Unfortunately, the appetite for "speed and scale" goes beyond the borders of Silicon Valley. Almost all the civil society organizations I know, which innovate by working territorially, which experiment and invent new approaches and methodologies with their local communities, and which prototype models of social and environmental transformation rooted in specific realities and cultures, have already heard the question from funders: how will this scale? What indicators, products, and results will you present in two years? In many cases, these questions appear in proposal and report templates. And so, many philanthropic institutions seek "solutions" using the same lens that, according to the futurist, is at the root of some of the biggest challenges we are facing and which we will see loom large—ironically, on a scale and at a speed we are not ready for. 

Looking to the future with our feet firmly planted in the present, I know that the narratives around the "search for solutions" in a radically changing sector with massive resources from Silicon Valley deserve attention. In addition to the money, Amy also remembers that the idea that "saving humanity is pretty cool at the moment" comes from there. "Each technology messiah has their own vision of how to save us. They call this "effective altruism." They call it techno-optimism. But the real face of this is free-market techno-authoritarianism. We don't need anyone to save us. We just need to plan better for the future."

In the last part of her speech, the futurist offers recommendations. For governments, she recommends establishing transition departments. "Our elected leaders need to look forward, not back, no matter how old they are." She also recommends creating instances of palliative treatment for companies. “It’s time to recognize that certain businesses and jobs will cease. Look more at the sectors where humans will be needed in the long term.”

For companies, she suggests mapping their value chain. On this topic, she offers the example of Blackberry, which failed to perceive significant business segments for the future of its products, and we know what happened as a consequence.

The message for ordinary people like us is: “Fight for your future. We can make transitions toward something truly wonderful. But we need to work on it.”

The recommendations are helpful. And they all serve the universes I navigate —philanthropy and organized civil society—but with adaptations. I, therefore, offer my suggestions for organized civil society and philanthropy in my little bubble, drawing inspiration from the white American futurist I recently came to admire:

• Yes, look forward, behind, and to the sides.

It is possible to look ahead and to the sides and recognize that we are nourished by the roots and stories that preceded us. Imagining futures is not writing a blank slate. Preparing for the new and unknown is not something you can do alone. Looking around, we recognize who can be by our side in the radical choice to imagine and say new realities and desired futures. Realities and futures - in the plural, always. In this century, there is no place for a messiah or hero. Creation is inexorably collective.

• Yes, map your value chains - but most of all, map your values.

If humility and courage are not among your institutional values, consider and incorporate them. We are going to make a lot of mistakes. We've been making mistakes for a long time now. We fail to understand important things because we become addicted to being on the right side of history, to being right, and often to keeping outdated organizations and systems alive. After all, there is where we feel safe, even when things no longer make sense. We are addicted to being protagonists (and not just in our own stories, let's admit it). Despite much research and diagnosis, we often pretend to know things we don't know. We want to change the world out there but maintain our status. We co-create environments of constant judgment; our fear of being judged is the measure of our judgment of others. I'm at the front in this aspect. Every public speech and published text causes me to have nightmares because I'm terrified of people judging me. But I no longer have time to waste maintaining this pride. And I recognize that I am a master at making mistaken judgments. This kind of judgment made me prejudiced against Amy Webb.

• Yes, fight for your future. Work for it. But don't just do that.

Fighting and working so hard is exhausting. There have never been so many exhausted activists, and most people I talk to feel depleted. "Fighting" and "working" are watchwords for an exhausted world. They call us to perform permanently, which primarily serves those same systems that exhaust us. This logic robs us of our creativity, vital force, internal space, and time necessary to generate other ideas, visions, words, affections, and lives.

With our eyes always gazing at the social media timeline, we produce without stopping or realizing it. We perform all the time. We must stop, refuse to (re)produce, and calm down to imagine what else is possible. 

No scale or speed can account for the transformations that emerge from bold, transformative collective imagination exercises, generative storytelling, and powerful agency that emerge from expanded inner space and belonging to a community. I invite us to humbly and courageously embrace the possibility of playing in the cracks of dysfunctional systems without rushing while courageously reimagining technology, philanthropy, and social justice already inevitably affected by tomorrow's dream.

(The Portuguese version of this text is on Substack)