Think Forward EP 130: Futures of Democracy with Jake Dunagan

Jake Dunegan, a visionary operating at the intersection of futures thinking and political systems, shares how experiential futures can help us reimagine governance for the 21st century challenges we face.

Drawing from his fascinating journey from anthropology to futures studies, Dunegan shares the moment he discovered a manuscript on "Quantum Politics" that proposed revolutionary ideas about constitutional design based on uncertainty rather than mechanistic balance. This epiphany eventually led him to establish the Governance Futures Lab at the Institute for the Future, where he pushes for nothing less than a renaissance in political system design thinking.

• Background in anthropology exploring fundamental questions about why people do what they do
• Discovered futures studies through a manuscript on "Quantum Politics" that proposed redesigning the US Constitution
• Co-created the Reconstitutional Convention in 2013 to bring together diverse thinkers to redesign political systems
• Developed experiential futures approaches to make possible tomorrows tangible today
• Led the Hawaii 2050 project creating immersive experiences of alternative futures
• Created pandemic simulations years before COVID-19 that explored prioritization of vaccines
• Founded the Governance Futures Lab at Institute for the Future to support political system design
• Believes our current governance structures aren't equipped for 21st-century challenge
• Emphasizes the importance of emotional connection to future possibilities, not just intellectual understanding
• Advocates for embedding futures thinking throughout our systems rather than treating it as a specialized activity
• And we find out where the best tacos and food trucks are in Austin, Texas

The conversation explores Dunegan's groundbreaking work in experiential futures—creating immersive, tangible experiences that help people feel possible futures rather than just intellectually understand them. From the Hawaii 2050 project that created four radically different versions of Hawaii's future to pandemic simulations developed years before COVID-19, Dunegan demonstrates how making futures visceral can change decision-making in profound ways.

Find Jake at jakedunegan.com or on BlueSky as dunegan23.

Order your copy of SuperShifts: www.bit.ly/supershifts

Real Talk About Marketing

An Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Think Forward Show.
Let's explore the futuretogether.
Welcome, friends and fellow bigthinkers.
We're diving deep into thefuture of democracy and
governance with a visionary wholives at the intersection of
futures thinking, politicalsystems, design and experiential
futures.
He brings a fascinatingbackground in anthropology,
visual media and future studiesto his work at the Institute for

(00:22):
the Future's Governance FuturesLab.
In this conversation, we'llexplore how governments can
better prepare for radicalchange, why our current systems
may not be equipped for 21stcentury challenges and how
experiential futures can help usfeel and understand possible
tomorrows in ways reports andwhite papers simply can't.
From pandemic simulations forthe CDC to redesigning Hawaii's

(00:44):
future through immersiveexperiences, his work challenges
us to think differently aboutgovernance, not just tweaking
what exists, but fundamentallyreimagining what's possible.
So buckle up for a journeythrough constitutional
conventions, rinse laboratoriesand the powerful ways in which
we can make the future tangibletoday.
Welcome to episode 130, theFutures of Democracy with Jake

(01:06):
Dunnegan.
Jake, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Hi Steve, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Well, you know, you and I have known each other for
a long time and I know a lot ofpeople who are in the futures
field, are familiar with youfrom many different things in
governance and experiential.
But, uh, for those who don'tknow you, let's, uh, let's kind
of start with your, yourbackground, your journey okay,
yeah, um, it's always the the uhdetermination of whether take

(01:38):
the long road or the short road.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
I'll I'll try to do an efficient road, and then we
can just name a few milestonesalong the way, and then we can
pick up some of those themes aswe go.
But so well, I think it'srelevant.
I grew up in Alabama, outsideof Birmingham.
So, not the most oriented placeor culture, and I appreciate it,

(02:01):
I have no ill will to it, butit was a lot of backward looking
to be honest, in the past, sortof thinking about that, and I
sort of always yearned for thefuture and looked, you know, try
to look at what's next.
And so, coming out of that, myintellectual background started
in anthropology and so I wasvery attracted to why people do

(02:26):
what they do.
I mean really fundamentalquestions Like why does this
group of people eat this foodand pray to this God and this
other group, that's you knowtheir neighboring culture, do
something totally different?
I'm just fascinated by that.
Why do people do what they do?
As a fundamental question?
Let's run through all my work.
So I, you know, really likethat holistic thinking, that the

(02:50):
kind of thick description Iguess is a term of ethnography,
like looking at the details,really really honing in the
material culture, why peoplebelieve what they do, things,
beliefs that are embedded inmaterial culture.
Those were kind of fascinatingelements of anthropology and
that kind of evolved towardanthropology of media as I went
along, really really alsofascinated in a similar way why

(03:13):
people or how people representthemselves, what they create
visually and then how does, in asense, a more meta conversation
around how do anthropologists,how do you represent a culture
accurately or fairly, or, youknow, rigorously and usefully?
And that sort of got me intothe sort of media visual
anthropology sphere and I wasreally fascinated by that point,

(03:36):
by questions of how is truthcreated, how does representation
work, what happens when we lookat other cultures, and how to
create meaning within.
You know a genre, for example,of documentary film or
ethnographic film.
I really had not thought aboutfutures very much.
Well, part of my origin storyis that I started a bookstore as

(03:57):
an undergrad and a box of bookswould often boxes of books
would often sort of show up onour doorstep from professors
that wanted to get rid of them,and in one of those boxes was a
book called, uh, quantumpolitics.
It was actually a manuscript.
It was, like you know,pre-publication manuscript and I
, you know, looked at that andstarted reading that uh, and

(04:18):
that was a series of thoughtexperiments about redesigning
the us constitution based onquantum physics rather than
Newtonian physics, so not amechanical world of balance, of
power and separation and sort ofindividually bounded political
subjects, but really whathappens when we influence
reality or that things are lesscertain and that certainty and

(04:43):
predictability are fugitive, andhow would you design a clinical
system around that?
So that was kind of a lurkingthing that really sparked my
interest and while in themeantime I'm going on spending
years in anthropology, but aftermy master's in anthropology I
went back, started kind ofthinking about things that
really got me excited and Irefound that work and that

(05:03):
thinking, cutting through a lotof steps.
That got me in touch with a guynamed Jim Dator at the
University of Hawaii.
That was at that point where Idiscovered future studies.
I didn't know that it existed,but immediately it was like one
of those epiphany moments.
Okay, it's got the big picture,thinking of anthropology, it's
thinking about systems, it'sthinking about culture, it's

(05:24):
holistic, but it's running thetape forward and saying we're
not just trying to understandand sort of explain that.
We're like how can we use that,what could we do with that
information?
To think about redesign,improve the world in some way,
and so I really liked thatapplied part and that sort of
set me off the path to theUniversity of Hawaii, studied
with Jim Dator and you know, Iguess, ultimately became a

(05:49):
futurist in that way.
So I'll stop there.
You know there's a lot afterthat part of the story, but
that's kind of the beginning, Ialways talk about the accidental
futurist.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
I don't think anybody comes to this.
You know directly, you know, Ithink that's always an
accidental thing, that kind ofthey discover it and curse.
You know directly, you know, Ithink that's always like it's
accidental thing, that kind ofthey discover it occurs.
You know, yeah, it's not likeyou know oh, lawyer, or an
engineer like it.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
It lives in the margins and you have to kind of
almost, as you say, accidentallyor you know, serendipity, find
your your self to it.
Oh, it exists, and then, okay,it resonates with me.
So, yeah, I'm one of thosefolks, for sure.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
So you mentioned um the the uh constitution.
Like is that where thereconstitutional uh congress
convention came from.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
So we're starting from yeah yeah, so, uh, the
reconstitutional convention was,uh, a gathering that um, me and
others at the Institute for theFuture created in 2013,.
So going a ways back now is notup to the task of dealing with

(07:07):
21st century challengesStructurally, that there are
fundamental failures built in tothe systems that we're living
under and that electing the nextright person is probably not
going to solve the problem.
So it's very much a kind ofdesignerly, architectural,
structural approach to that.
How do we redesign?
In this case?
You know we're thinking aboutthe constitution, and mostly the

(07:27):
us constitution.
Although it was, it was aglobal um gathering.
Uh, we had, we had satellite uhgatherings all around the world
, but it was really to get mindsacross different disciplines
from, you know, constitutionallaw professors to designers, to
artists, to futurists, toweirdos, to journalists,
creatives intellectuals.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
There's actually a category.
There's actually a category ofweirdos.
There's actually specificclassification.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
I'm an honest to you.
In that one, the very cherishedcategory, I kind of catch all
for hype.
So we got together.
We had a process that was basedon more or less on Jim Dator's
political system design classthat he ran at the university of
Hawaii, which you know.
We can go into the details ofthat, but there's a there.

(08:15):
It's not just like, hey, whatwould we create.
There's actually a fairlysystematic way of thinking about
it at a fundamental level tonot just like, oh God, how can
we tweak the voting system.
It's really like what are the,what are our values, what is
reality, what is human nature?
We take those as designparameters and then say let's
operationalize that intosomething that actually works.
And so that was a kind of testrun of that model.

(08:36):
We have a toolkit and thingsthat we've done, but really
successful in the room.
You know, a lot of great ideas,um, for lots of reasons, that
sort of just um.
You know we kind of pushed itforward, but I would love to see
I mean, that's one of my maingoals in life is to see a kind
of Renaissance and politicalsystem design thinking, uh, and
get more ideas out there.
You know, I think.
I think part of our problem isis a little bit of challenge of

(09:00):
the imagination and what ispossible now with new
technologies and you know, asyou might guess, you have new
scientific insights about thehuman mind, about organic
self-organizing systems, about,you know, the kind of social
physics of the world, uh, theway we communicate our global
reach.
All of those things are in playand I don't think we fully uh

(09:24):
internalize or process thoseinto ways that we can
operationalize.
That.
It's hard and it goes back tothe beginning, because the
quantum physics, our quantumpolitics book, was great at
analyzing the failures ofmechanistic thinking and why we
need to do that.
Really operationalizing quantumphysics into a political system
extremely difficult.
There are very few things thatwere, you know, even novel.

(09:47):
I mean things like, you know,sortition and random
representation and some thingsyou know that that might be
interesting to do.
But the challenge ofoperationalizing, you know,
modern, difficult, complex viewsof reality, we're still there
and so that's sort of part ofthe overall goal is well, we

(10:07):
need to try and we need lots ofdifferent ways to attack that
problem.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
So what are the unique challenges to working
with government institutions onfutures projects?
It's such a you think oftraditionally commercial
business strategy.
Obviously, your dog has anopinion on this as well.
You know, Zoom does a good jobof being perfect, I always

(10:32):
apologize.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
I can't hear you, okay.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Well, yeah, they're good there it all started with
the South Korean reporter forCNN when his kids walked in the
back.
That was just my favorite ofall time.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
We're all in the same .
There's no favorite of all time.
We're all in the same.
There's no difference ofexistence anymore.
We're all together.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah.
So I mean like doing projectslike this, is it no, yeah, so
how do you approach futures workwith institutions like that?

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, you know, part of that original question was
unique challenges and I don'tthink any of these are gonna
sound unique.
For better or worse, I thinkit's a problem many with
business, it's a problem withnonprofits, others that I work
with, you know I work and teachat educational academic
institutions and governments aswell.
You know a lot of barriers oryou know hurdles to get over to

(11:27):
do good futures work.
Some are cultural and some arestructural.
I mean a big, you know bigthing for me.
You know, as an anthropologistyou might guess that I would
skew toward culture, and I do,and it's extremely important.
But I think a lot aboutstructure and think structure
matters deeply to how things areorganized.
So on the cultural side, youhave kind of you know, risk

(11:49):
aversion cover your ass.
Like you know I don't want totake any chances or do anything.
That sort of calls attentionnegatively to myself.
So there's a, there's a lot ofrisk averse, fear, fear, failure
kind of stuff out there.
Yeah, structurally, uh, just alot of, just a lot of negative
or perverse incentives to doinganything new.

(12:09):
So are you, you know, are yourewarded for taking a chance?
Are you rewarded if you take achance and fail.
You know, are you rewarded fora plan that might take five or
10 years to really see thefruits of?
Meanwhile?
Your evaluation cycles, whetherit's quarterly, you know

(12:30):
business reports, or you knowtwo or four year election cycle
you know like the incentivestructure to push for long-term
thinking is difficult.
So you know you have somecultural biases, uh, against
pushing into the future.
You have a lot of kind ofstructural incentive that are uh

(12:51):
pushing against it.
And yet things do happen.
Uh, you know, and often,unfortunately, often, it's uh,
you basically have to learn thehard way or get to the point
where the status quo is, isglaringly obvious that it's not
going to be sustainable and youhave to try something else.
So there's a lot of freedom incrisis moments, you know, to
sort of take away that themainstream status quo, normal

(13:15):
way that we're doing things, isnot sustainable anyway.
So we got to try something.
So often we have to get tothose kinds of crisis points or
you know sort of wait a fewyears and then oh, yeah, you're
right, let's, let's actually gowith with that idea or go with,
you know, let's really invest inthe future this time so I it

(13:35):
kind of bridges the get, bridgesthe conversation, because I
would like to kind of get intoexperiential futures as well.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
But the the you had a , you did a project with Stuart
Candy on the state of Hawaii.
Right, and there were a few ofthem, correct.
There's a 2051, you did.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, that was the, the, the.
You know the kind of um uhanchoring project or kickoff
project that that Stuart and Iand of course Jim Dator and
others in the Hawaii ResearchCenter for Future Studies were

(14:12):
involved in.
Uh later on, after Stuart and Ileft, john Sweeney and others
did 2060, and you know there aretendrils of of that ecosystem
of projects that came out.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Is that where experiential were you both, like
you know, kind of did it comefrom that or did it?
Well, what was more likechicken and egg?
Did you guys work on otherthings and then use it to do the
State of Hawaii project, or didyou the State of Hawaii project
kind of called for it and italmost kind of burst

(14:39):
experiential?

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit of both, but in
hindsight.
So the project itself was kindof X and Y.
We were like what needs tohappen here?
So a little bit of background.
The Hawaii 2050 project came wasinspired by, in many ways, the
Hawaii 2000 project which wasdone in 69, 70, 71 in Hawaii and

(15:05):
it was still to this day one ofthe most participatory or
futures projects ever done.
So the whole state of Hawaii,you know the main newspaper,
were running articles every day,there were workshops and
gatherings and meetings.
It was very much on people'sminds.
You know, you fast forward to2000 and some of the least

(15:25):
desired futures for Hawaii werethe ones that they were that
people were living in, soovercrowded, you know, reliant
on imports, you know sort oftourism driven, military driven,
so kind of a fragile economythat hadn't diversified.
And you know, oh, this feelsjust like California.

(15:47):
You know we've lost our senseof place.
So a lot of the things thatwere happening in 2000 were the
least preferred futures from thepoint of view of what people
were saying in 1970.
So you know, stuart and I andJim were, you know you just take
that as as, uh, a challenge,like why did that happen or

(16:08):
explain why did we get?
You know you did this greatthing.
It's sort of ticked all theboxes of you know really smart
futurists and communityengagement and government buy-in
and media support and all ofthat, and you ended up it didn't
.
It didn't work.
So, you know, just trying to getreal honestly, and that was our
main motivation, how do we makesomething like this work?
And you know, part of ourinsight.

(16:30):
Again, in retrospect it lookslike you know, oh, that's
obvious, you were in visualanthropology, stuart was, you
know, working in media himself.
You know, oh, of course youwould do something that's a
little bit more immersive.
Or you know, media rich.
But no, we were really.
It really came from thatmotivation.
How do we make it stick?
And part of our at leasthypothesis or premise for this

(16:51):
is making it stick meanssticking it here in your gut,
not just here intellectually,and oh, these are possibilities
that can happen.
No, what does it feel like?
What would it?
What if we could?
I mean, this was also part ofour logic.
If you could take somebody from1970 and time travel to 2000,.
This is what it feels like tolive in that world Would they
have made different choices youknow so broadly, they as a

(17:12):
person, but also as a societyWould people have made a
different, made a series ofdifferent choices along the way
if they knew the outcome?
They knew what it felt like tolive in Hawaii they didn't want
to live in in 2000.
In Hawaii, they didn't want tolive in in 2000.
So our motivation or goal orhypothesis was if people could
feel what the future might belike, maybe they'll think about
things differently.
And there's another thread ofmy work in neuroscience and

(17:34):
neuro politics you know in theneuroscience of foresight, which
you know, some of thoseinsights are have become
relevant.
But basically, people can't makedecisions without an emotional
side to things.
If their emotional core isdisconnected from their rational
side, it's almost toxic.

(17:55):
People can't really sort of getto the point of making a
decision.
We, you know, we wanted toinstill and install a sort of
visceral, emotional, uh feelingembodied, kind of experience of
that with again with the premisethat oh, maybe, you know, maybe
that would move the needle alittle bit on when people are

(18:18):
pushed to certain kind ofdecisions, they might choose a
better path.
So that was the overall premiseand and um, you know, we did,
we did the Hawaii 2050 event 600people.
We created four radicallyalternative versions of the
future of Hawaii using JimDator's alternative futures
method.
So you know the future ofHawaii using Jim Dator's

(18:39):
alternative futures method.
So you know, a continued growthstory, a collapse version, a
post-collapse version of Hawaii,a kind of discipline or
constrained version and ahigh-tech transformation version
.
So they were really differentplaces.
I think, not places maybe otherthan the continued growth that
people or maybe collapsed to,but at least showing them

(19:01):
alternatives.
And then you, and then youprocess that through a
conversation like what are thethings you liked about this one
or that one you know?
And then action steps what,what could you do to make the
things that you like happen?
Make the things you don't likenot happen?
So that's a another criticalpart of this is the is the
follow-up.
This is not just an art, it'sreally, it's a process, the, the
art and the performance and theimmersion is really a vector or

(19:24):
doorway, an invitation to dothe work, which is talk about it
, process it and then,ultimately, hopefully, make
better decisions is are anythingthat came out of that being
implemented or being used asguides?

Speaker 1 (19:38):
because I know 26 has been like they keep revisiting
it.
But has anything, yeah, yeah,impact you?

Speaker 2 (19:43):
know?
Um, I think, well, part of it.
Yeah, here's.
Here's another answer to your,to your, uh, what is it like to
work?
Challenges, working withgovernment.
But we did that event with aplan to take little miniature
versions of that to all theother islands, you know, to sort
of continue that process andrepeat that process in smaller,

(20:07):
segmented form.
But for whatever reason, Idon't know if we were too
successful or that, you know, itwas just not.
It scared people in the kind ofenergies that were generated
and unleashed.
But basically that was putaside.
We were told no, we're notgoing to do that again.
We're going to go to highschool gymnasiums and write on
the board you know what do youthink sustainability is?

(20:29):
And we're going to just list iton a whiteboard and then gather
those and call that, you know,a process.
So we were a little bitfrustrated that the energy was
sort of, from our point of viewI'm sure you know maybe they had
other reasons it felt verypolitical and and, again, risk
averse.
But, um, you know, we we sawthis as a a sort of momentum, a

(20:53):
snowball effect happening, uh,that that we really didn't get
to execute on.
That said, the energy in theroom, even though the
officialdom might have pulledback the sort of cultural
ripples we kept hearing aboutstories of people having got
excited, doing kind ofgrassroots kind of work that was

(21:14):
going on as well.
So the cultural ripples, Ithink, were important Now,
practically, as you mentioned,and we mentioned 2060, a
follow-up project a few yearslater.
You know, I think that was sortof birthed out of the, the
unfulfilled energies that wereunleashed and in that case, uh,
uh, I believe, uh, in theofficial process of, of, of, uh,

(21:39):
deliberating new laws and whyyou have to think about future
generations, I think they putpolicy in place that future
generations have to beconsidered, not in some sort of
formal environmental assessmentreport, but so it's a little bit
symbolic, honestly, probablymore than with teeth, probably
more than with teeth.

(21:59):
But you know, start with thatsymbolism of even thinking about
future generations.
As you consider, newlegislation was an important
outcome of the overall sort ofthing that was going on.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
So we've been talking about, you know, hawaii and the
experiment, and I mentioned, Isaid, the word experiential
futures.
You know, we're both designfuturists, which is kind of this
kind of moniker um, futures isthe experiential is the process.
I think design futures is thepractice itself.
Um, the method, methods, but um, how would you define it?

(22:31):
You know it's been around fornow 13 years, 15 years, 20 20.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, how would you how?

Speaker 1 (22:38):
would you define?
I know there's other dun andravey, there's other people that
are.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know different kinds of, but yeah, I mean what
yeah, yeah, and you know theseare, um, you know we can get
into, uh, some of the pedantryof, uh, of nomenclature and
who's doing what.
But from our point of view asfuturists, experiential futures
is really trying to use richmedia, immersive experiences,

(23:02):
performance, tangible artifactsto bridge the gap.
This is a phrase that my friendand colleague, stuart Candy,
likes to use.
We're basically bridging thegap between the lived present
and possible futures, in a sense, to try to pre-experience or
pre-live or pre, you know,memories of, of futures that
haven't happened again.
You know, kind of touching onthe neuroscience point, we tend

(23:24):
to think about the future interms of what we've experienced
in the past.
I mean, that's a it's a naturalthing that to to, to say, you
know, sort of intuitive like ohyeah, we imagine the future, you
know, based on what we've seen.
That that's our roadmap, um,you know and know, and there's a
thing that, uh, andy Clark, uh,cognitive philosopher, talks
about predictive processing.
So we're always sort of runningthrough simulations in our

(23:46):
minds of the future, but thoseare often and they almost always
are based on what's happeningnow and experiences from the
past.
So what we're trying to do iscreate artificial memories, in a
sense or artificial experiencesof possible future, so they
make them thinkableno-transcript, what it feels

(24:20):
like later on.
You can, you can, you know,throw a thousand different
references to them and signalsof change and all that to kind
of intellectualize and fill inthat gap.
But having that emotionalconnection to I want that or I
don't want that is also a, youknow, a kind of button or lever
that we want to engage in thisas well and make sure that that
a kind of full bodied, full mindexperience of the future is

(24:43):
useful.
And you know, just to, to sortof wrap up, uh, that the
usefulness is everything for us.
You know, like our, ourartifacts and experiences are
really creative.
They're fun, they, they sort ofstand alone as a, as an, an
experience or, you know, acreative endeavor.
But that's not the work and wenever see that and you know that
that in some ways distinguishesus from, maybe you know, uh,

(25:07):
how some speculative designersor others go about.
You know, it's a little bitmore about the thing.
For us it's really about thepayoff in the end.
Uh, what, what changes?
What do these new experiencesdo to make us reconsider how we
think about the future and thepath that we take?

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, I think you mentioned earlier on.
You talked about emotion.
I think that immersion, thatability to touch, taste, feel,
experience the future, it justreally puts it in view, versus,
like you get scenarios in areport, they put it in a drawer
and it it doesn't affect yourdaily life right now.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
That's our enemy.
Dismissal is our enemy, andthat's what we've been fighting
in the beginning, you know ishow can we be undismissible or
at least fight against that toyou know, I've already mentioned
all the cultural and structuralthings how can we fight against
that where this cannot beignored or this must be thought
of, and sometimes that meansscaring or, you know, creating
an emotional action, a reactionto that.

(26:02):
Uh, does that kind of work atleast you know?

Speaker 1 (26:04):
that's, is that what makes it a S you know, like
experience, experiential futuresproject successful?
It's, it's like the provocation, the action itself the, the,
the reaction and the reactionand the result.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
You know.
So for me, like if, if no, ifnothing changes again, if, uh,
if people just have a good timeor they're provoked, but it
doesn't have a noticeable impact, then I wouldn't call that
successful.
And the tricky part is, uh,staying with these projects and
finding out how, like five yearslater, that that you know
experience you had actually, youknow the, the, the connecting
the dots from that moment to achanged decision is difficult.

(26:46):
So saying that success meanssomething changed you know,
positively doesn't mean wealways have that data,
unfortunately.
And so you know we often will,we'll, we'll try it, we'll see
the result, or we'll see it manyyears later.
Or people even have forgottenthat that was you know we often
will, we'll, we'll try it, we'llsee the result, or we'll see it
many years later.
Or people even have forgottenthat that was, you know, maybe
one of the sources for why theymade shifted strategy or, you
know, change something along theway.

(27:08):
So it's a little bit slippery,uh, uh, uh, one-to-one, you know
, return on investment oh, youhad this experiential future and
then this change, nevertheless,that that must remain our goal.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
This is again in the terms of social foresight and in
service of trying to createbetter futures.
It has to change something inmy mind to be successful.
It can't just be a greatexperience.
That experience has to pay offin some positive way.
Well, you did a uh simulationfor the cdc.
It was a pandemic simulation.
Like when did you do that?
What?
When did you want it?
When did that happen?

Speaker 2 (27:45):
that was that.
Oh well, uh, we did a project,uh, with a kind of arts grant
from the mayor, where we had a.
This is 2007 and you know we'reone of the three scenarios that
we put on the streets in a kindof guerrilla style in Chinatown
.
So this is an arts grant forthe Chinatown district in
Honolulu and one of those threescenarios was a kind of

(28:07):
post-pandemic world.
Part of the reason why and thisis sort of the subtle
subtleties of this work you knowwe didn't want to, we didn't
want to put stuff on the streetas if a pandemic was happening.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
So we were cognizant of, you know, yelling fire in a
theater and you know, oh, youmean just you were trying to
kind of display it in in realreal space, you know, and yes,
yeah, it was unannounced.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
It was.
You know, there were no.
Uh, oh yeah, that would thatwould be like war.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
That'd be like war of the worlds.
That would be, like, you know,the world's broadcast first of
all this is one of the greaterbureaus too.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
So, yeah, it's probably on our minds.
Or, you know, like the yes Men,who do kind of satirical, you
know, provocations and things,you know that kind of culture,
jamming stuff was influential tous.
So it was a post-pandemicscenario and we did this
self-directed no-transcript whenit was going to happen.

(29:27):
We knew there was going to be aglobal pandemic, um, and so
they funded, uh, another stageof that sort of pandemic
oriented experience which wedesigned as a, uh, augmented
reality game which at the time2007, 2008, 2009 was very, very
popular, you know, so seriousgaming and to role-playing a

(29:49):
world without oil and thingswere happening at the time.
And so we designed a augmentedreality game which would be kind
of interactive.
There'd be phone calls you couldmake, there'd be you know
videos that you would see thatpop up and things like that, so
you'd play this future and playa simulation in a more
interactive way.
Well, I don't know if anybodyremembers this anymore from the
memory hole, but swine fluhappened, and I think around

(30:11):
March of 09.
And yeah, and you know, thatwas, you know for a minute,
going to be the big one andpeople were really scared.
So we had this emergent, we hadthis augmented reality game
around a pandemic outbreak andmeanwhile, the week we were
going to launch, swine fluhappened and so we had to, you
know, the reality, at least atthat point, caught up to us, and

(30:35):
so we redesigned the game as anemergent reality game up to us,
and so we redesigned the gameas an emergency reality game and
we you know we're, we were, uh,you know, sort of giving more
practical information in realtime.
For that, one of the things thatstood out for me from that
experience was you know, we hada um, we had a kind of uh uh in
the game, uh, uh, uh a sense ofhow do you prioritize?

(30:56):
Who gets vaccines first, whichyou know has become quite
interesting.
So, is it first responders?
Is it, you know, people thatare out in public.
Is it essential workers andthings like that.
So we were at that point tryingto play test how would people
really react to who gets itfirst and when?
You know, uh late, you knowlater on the the vaccine
politics have emerged quite uhsaliently over time, so that was

(31:21):
kind of interesting.
It stood out in retrospect, butyeah, so you know, kudos to
them for for at leastentertaining the idea of of
communicating in a different waythat maybe would be more
effective than just trying totell people, you know, here's a
checklist like live it, whatwould you do what?
How would you really react tothat?
So yeah, that was quite aninteresting project and, as I
said, quite interesting.
That reality sort of bit us.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
That's what we're about to launch.
I've read a lot of dystopianfiction in my time and I think
they say you're nine meals fromanarchy.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
So yeah, I believe, oh yeah, In the future's world.
You've got to really get outthere, and you probably know
this Jim Datert's famous sayingany useful statement about the
future should at first appear tobe ridiculous.
So if you're not really pushingout there, if things sound very
conventional or kind ofplausible at first glance,
you're probably not doingjustice to what's in store.

(32:15):
And so you've really got topush the edge to get ahead of
how, how things are changing.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
I hope.
I hope that's the case withsuper shifts when it comes out
in April and there I'd put adesign fiction piece through the
book.
So the prologue is anintroduction to a family in 2040
.
And they experienced basically,like the singular, like an
anomaly, they but it's nobody'sreally talked about after the

(32:42):
singular, like what happensright so we kind of go through
the super, each super shift,each of the nine the.
The beginning part moves throughthe weeks after that and then
the prologue I'm sorry, theepilogue goes 200 years in the
future.
And it is like you said, likeit's like I don't believe it.

(33:02):
But you're like, yeah, I thinkI always think of data.
I'm like am I doing my jobright?
Like, am I doing?
Am I doing it?
Am I pushing it?
The plausibility where it'slike, yeah, it sounds kind of,
but yeah, it's kind of wild, butyeah.
And then I'm like excellent, soyeah.
I totally get that.
So you've taken all of thisright.

(33:23):
You take governance, you takeexperiential futures, you take
your futures work and thenInstitute for the Future, which
is where you are right now,among your other things.
But the governance lab that yourun, I mean I know you through
the design futures courseworkyou do and we become friends
over the years.
But the did they pitch you onit?

(33:44):
Did you pitch that like, howdid that come about?
How did your?
How did your tenure in theinstitute there kind of go?

Speaker 2 (33:53):
yeah, well, uh, we'll just start, we'll just keep it
to the governance futures lab.
And I've been at the Instituteat that point for three, four
years and they you know the thekind of different kinds and you
know skunk works and big kind ofSilicon Valley experimental

(34:25):
mode, and so the Institute wassort of playing that space as
well and I pitched you know weneed a, you know we need a
political system design lab ofsome sort.
Obviously, I've already goneinto great detail about some of
the influences on that, but youknow we're still, we're still
facing a challenge where, youknow, you know this was of
course, also after the globalfinancial collapse, so so the

(34:48):
idea of systems failures orlimitations, to say the least,
were salient and that it's goingto take more than you know a
hero politician to solve this,and so that was the core of it.
So why don't we create,formalize in some more direct
way, a place where we can gatherthinking around system design,

(35:11):
political system design, whichthere weren't?
You know, mentioned data'sclass.
There's bits and pieces,certainly a lot of political
think tanks and things like thatworking on different issues.
Political system design and thegovernance futures lab is not
about who's going to win thenext election or even a
particular kind of policy.
It's really architectural orthat was the goal, you know kind
of a renaissance of politicalsystem design.

(35:52):
And you know, I mean in thesense the kind of thinkers that
were writing the Constitution toa degree like how do we think
about I already mentionedoperationalizing the world, we
want to see the values we wantto see in the future very, I
would say, opportunistic way ofthinking about how do we do that
?
Because there weren't, you know, we were in a way trying to
make the case for that so thereweren't buckets of saying you
know, you know funders who hadmoney to throw at a particular
issue because it was sort ofdidn't fit neatly in any of

(36:14):
those categories.
So we've, since the beginning,we've been very sort of
opportunistic, working withmayors or getting a little bit
of funding to do thereconstitutional convention and
things like that.
So you know, I've enjoyed that,I've enjoyed sort of working at
the margins, but I do wish thatthings had been accelerated
sooner so that we can look atstructural issues involved in
our economic, environmental,cultural, political systems and

(36:39):
get a little bit further aheadof that rather than being
reactive to some of thosedynamics that you know, I think
we've seen play out over time.
So, yeah, that was the goal.
And you know, again, we're stillin that same, in a sense, that
same mode.
Where can we have a positiveimpact?
Where can we get peoplethinking about things other than
just the what's, what's infront of them?

(36:59):
You know the crisis mode thatwe're all in.
We really need to think aboutdesigning systems for the future
.
You know, uh, we're we're socaught into the present right
now, no matter where you'recoming from, like the present
has such a deep sort of almostblack hole sense of us.
There's always gonna be afuture.
You know, um, I think you weresaying that before even after

(37:21):
the singularity, there's alwaysgoing to be something else after
that, and so we're just tryingto remind people that there's
something else after that, andwe should really get serious
about contributing to that andfor that world too well, it's
the paralysis of the present anda lot of people just you know
it's easy for us to talk aboutthinking of the future, as a lot
of people can't.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
They just have a tough time with it.
You know they're just so muchand it's just even their lives,
the stress of their day, Likethey don't really want to Right,
Just trying to get through theday, through the week.
So it's just like they can 10years, they could care less, but

(37:59):
even just in business mostpeople.
Most people have their jobs.
Are they going to be there in10 years?
I always thought governmentwould be more acclimated to
futures work because of thewe'll call it the long-term
managerial class.
They're always there.
They're putting their 20 in andretiring.
The parties change but theydon't.
The parties change but theydon't right and they to them.

(38:20):
Obviously there are politicalpolicies and agendas and I think
that's also where yourgovernance lab comes in.
It's like how do you implementfutures?
Thinking like in an outcome,like how do you look at, deal
with possible futures with thetype of government structure?
How do you deal with politicalsystems?
I think that's right you know,um you know, andy hines just put

(38:40):
out po is uh after capitalismbook.
So, um, yeah, it's like what isthe next kind of system?
I don't think it's star trek'smonetary system.
If you've ever read theeconomics of star treks, it just
doesn't work uh, we also need ahell we just need a hell of a
lot of energy and abundance.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Right, yeah, and yeah , and experiments.
Well, what you started withthere was really stuck with me
too is just a little bit of um,a little bit more patience and
respect for people that aretrying to deal with their
everyday existence and to notvilify.
Oh, you should be thinkingabout the future.

(39:19):
Why are you so present oriented?
No, I mean, yeah, you know, we,we see some of the downfalls of
doing that, but you can't blamepeople for that.
Their lives are now, we live inthe now and I've got to get by
and I, you know I've got to getby and I, you know I've got to
make sure my power stays onbecause it's freezing here, you
know.
So you can't, you can't sort ofyou know the sort of arrogance

(39:39):
of thing.
Why aren't you a visionary?
Or why aren't you thinkingabout longer, about the future?
Why aren't you doing this?
You know a lot of things arestacked against people and just
giving them the room and thepatience and respect to to have
that, but also not stop thereand you don't get to wallow in
and only thinking about thefuture, because if you're doing
that, you're never going to getahead.
You know you're, you're alwaysgoing to sort of be fighting

(40:01):
what's going on in front of youand never actually leading
toward the future.
So you got to be just a littlebit more.
I mean there's, you knowthere's modes for for futures
work, sometimes provocation, butsometimes it's it's more like a
counselor or a coach or ahelper that's trying to support
you as you move forward.
And honestly, I thinkexperiential futures helps with
that too.
Uh, when you're overloaded,having a more full bodied, you

(40:22):
get to use different senses.
You get to use different thingsother than your overwhelmed
mind at times, and I thinkthat's powerful for ways to to
sense the future when you'resort of overwhelmed by the
present, which is often the case, yeah, I'm, my work is around,
I, I have a approach calledspectrum, uh, foresight, and I

(40:44):
look at.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
I'm a big world building person and as a
designer, I look at personaslike there are people that exist
in the world, in this, inWhatever possible futures.
There are these people.
And then there's a range ofexperiences.
I know Dater's alternativefutures take more of a.
Is it a collapse, is it atransformational?
I look at there's people thatare living in that future that

(41:08):
it's a collapse for them.
That's right, or it's atransformation.
You just don't you know.
So it's like, how do you, how doeach of those people you have
to address that so that people,so that when you have to plan or
strategize for the future,you're addressing the needs of
all the people that will live inthat future, right?
So, um, yeah, like ourgovernment, you know, with the,

(41:31):
this is being taped a coupledays after the inauguration.
It's a peaceful transfer ofpower, but it's also a radical
change of policies from fouryears to four years to four
years, no matter whichadministration it's in.
And it's like how some peopleare like, oh my God, it's a doom
scroll, or other people arelike it's just magical golden

(41:53):
age or just what?
What is it in between?
So all those people exist.
So how do you address the needsof everybody you know?
So I think it's good I think,experiential.
I think for me, design futures,experiential futures, is a great
way to help with that, becausepeople just used to those things
from the future.
We're channeling stewart ifyou're listening, your ears are
burning and you both things ofthe future, like you guys are

(42:15):
both.
You know it's a great game.
If anybody hasn't tried it,you'll look it up.
But for me, like, where do wego?
Like, where does experientialfutures go the next decade?
You know the possible futuresfor experiential futures, if you
will.
That was just so cumbersome tosay.
But yeah, I mean it's kind of,what are those?

(42:37):
What does it look like for you?
What's the outlook?
You're?

Speaker 2 (42:40):
kind of a yeah, you know, I mean, I think the goals
and the need has not changed.
You know, I think we still needto get out of the present, we
still need to feel whatdifferent futures are like.
And again, you know whether,wherever you're coming from, the
present is so strong right nowand it really um, in some way

(43:01):
keeping us from thinking aboutother futures.
There'll be a future aftertrump.
there'll be a future after thenext administration you know, um
, and so just just rememberingthat and and knowing and again
sort of feeling what that mightbe like, and keeping at least
your eye, pull your eyes upevery once in a while to see
that horizon.
So those goals are still goingto be the same.

(43:23):
The spate of technology andopportunities and places for
this, I think, is reallyevolving.
It's quite interesting.
Obviously, we haven't evenmentioned we'll get thrown out
of the Futures Club in an hourconversation.
We didn't mention AI, but youknow that's.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
I was trying.
A lot of my conversations kindof went there.
I figured that might be forpart two because.
I figured we could come back,you and I could come back in the
summer and kind of see, likeProject Stargate just got
announced, which I think my wifeand I were talking about.
This I equivocate that tobuilding the naval fleet in

(43:58):
pre-World War II, in the 30s, orramping up production, because
not only is it about battling inan information war or a cyber
war, but it's also about,instead of like making physical
things here, they have to createand figure out how to do
individualized medicine, proteinfull, like all the things that
ai could do with a, with superintelligence is here, and that

(44:22):
is again like yeah, well, Ifigured, well, I figured we'll
get into that, you know, butyeah, and we brought it up.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
If there's anything you want to mention, please,
please, yeah yeah, well, youknow the way I see technology
and you know, again, this isinfluenced by folks like Andy
Clark and extended mind theory.
You know that we, we don't justthink in our heads and our
brains, even we think in ourbodies obviously, experiential
futures, but we live in acognitive ecology.

(44:48):
I've got this computer in frontof me which is different than
if I just had a notebook, youknow, with pen and paper.
That's a different cognitiveecology, right.
So you add artificialintelligence into the mix, you
know, you add these generativeAI, you add large language
models.
That changes cognitive ecology,that changes how we think, that
changes how thinking ispossible.

(45:08):
So I like to think aboutdesigner, futuring environments
kind of holistically.
And then what, what are theelements that that go in there?
So if you think about thefuture experiential future, the
future of experiential futures,you're right, it is a mouthful.
The ways that we have thoseexperiences and the technologies
and the affordances of thosenew cognitive ecologies to learn

(45:29):
, I mean, for a while, ever, youknow everyone's like oh, vr is
the.
You know, that is what, what adiverse technology, and maybe
there's still a future for that.
I think it's a little moreniche, but that's one way to do
an experience.
I really like the visceral,tangible.
You know interactive, spatialparts of doing that.
So I think that'll still bepart of the mix.
But you know adding AI, speedrunning through visualization,

(45:52):
where we used to have to go to adesigner and we would, you know
, sort of tweak things for daysor weeks or more to come up with
an artifact.
You know that you can speed runthrough to get about 90 percent
of the quality within seconds.
And you think about thatbecause all of this, you know,
is a designed feedback loop, asI mentioned, the bridge to the
future, but you don't just stayover there.
Feedback to the present.

(46:13):
What did I learn?
What can I take from thissimulation that influences where
I want to go, and so the speed,the cycles of those feedback
loops for futuring and thinkingabout and immersive and
experiencing futures areshrinking.
So what can we do with thosefaster loops of learning and how
do we turn that know again intoaction?
So I think there's I'm excitedabout.

(46:35):
You know, uh, you don't want tojust sort of uh, offload a lot
of your thinking to the machine,because I think there's loss
there, but using it within anecosystem and to play that
feedback loop out a little bitmore richly and and you know the
speed of that I think that's animportant structural factor for
that.

(46:56):
Another part of it is where.
Where does experientialfeatures take place?
And this you know, I meanstewart and I and many others
have, you know, consciouslytried to find different
locations for it, whether it'son the street of chinatown and
honolulu, whether it's in aconvention center for i-2050,
whether it's in a boardroom,whether it's in in a UN meeting,
you know, or working withmayors, the location or museums.
You know I haven't mentionedMuseum of the Future as a touch

(47:18):
point for design futures andexperiential futures, but
there's a whole movement outthere for future oriented
museums, and so the kind ofpublic space I mean museums are
in a sense our public memory andour public discussion of how we
learn and represent ourselvesto each other.
So the museum space is quiteinteresting.
So the locations of experientialfutures, I think, are still in

(47:41):
the process of expanding, and soyou put those two things
together and I think you startto see, maybe you know, in the
hopeful future that we canactually have somewhat more
guidance.
If not, we're not going to havecertainty, but just a way to
sort of play out things beforewe make a decision and have to
learn the hard way Again.

(48:02):
That's another one of ourenemies Always do we have to
always learn the hard way.
Well, maybe I'm maybe overlyhopeful, but if we can play out
and see a little bit moreefficiently, less cost, faster,
more responsive to the momentI'm in, where that
decision-making input, byconsidering the future, becomes
more present to me, then I thinkmaybe it has a bigger impact

(48:23):
and a bigger role.
And then at that point,expansion of this methodology
and thinking, I think wouldcontinue to grow quite
profoundly continue to growquite profoundly well.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
It also relates to, like you and I, before the, we
started taping, we're talkingabout the role of the futurist,
like an interview victoriamulligan did with paul zaffo
right at the five future form,and you know I'm I'm debating
myself whether it's is it is ita job function like a job, job
role, sorry, job role, or a likefunction and skill set right,

(48:58):
right.
And I think about experientialdesign, like it's the role of
the designer changing, it's notjust being and it's it's evolved
.
I think about the last 30 yearsof design, what you did 30
years ago versus 10, 20, 20, andnow, like you said, you could
rapidly prototype things if youhave the right prompts, and that

(49:18):
can be scary but it can be alsoliberating because you're not
sitting there doing more of themundane.
You can really tackle moreproblems, bigger problems, and
use experiential design or otherthings to really go out,
because you have this space nowbut, you know, use it as a
futurist.

(49:38):
Where do you see the?
Do you see the role kind ofbecoming more prominent and
specific?
Because there's so many peoplethat call themselves?
But I don't think joe, and Ijoe, joe, joe laporte, I talked
about some mcdonald's.
It's an actual field of study.
You can't just call yourselfthat, but it's like do you think
it'll become more skilled?
Like what do you think?

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, yeah, I think it will.
You know, and I'm notnecessarily advocating that what
Sappho said was basically wedon't need more futurists, but
he wasn't saying we don't needmore future in our world, in our
lives, as I understand and Iagree with that, that framing,
you know, I think we will havemore futures out there.

(50:19):
I think people are veryinterested in this, I think, you
know, for lots of reasons,coming at it from, you know,
social side, or governance side,or technology side.
Often it in this the field,it's always in sort of half like
, oh, is it collapsing or is itgrowing?
Um, but I do think it willcontinue to to be kind of
interesting and trendy in someways.

(50:40):
But you know, that's fine, uh,but really what I would prefer
is if we embedded foresight intothe world in a more direct way,
into our systems, into ourthinking and, and to you know,
our technologies, uh, uh, aprecursor to experiential
futures.
We were very influenced by WendySchultz and she had a concept
or around ambient futures.

(51:00):
Can we, can we just makefutures thinking, uh, threaded
through, uh, you know,conversations, threaded through
our technologies, threaded sortof ambiently existing in the
world, so that we can have thatinterface with the future, and
that was a really interestingthought.
I kind of lead to that too.
How can we get the future tomatter in the present and how

(51:24):
can we make it be a differencethat makes a difference to how
we see the world, and so youknow, in that sense, that's
where I would.
You know both, and.
But I would love to see, evenmore than more futures in the
world, more futures threadedthrough the physical and

(51:45):
cognitive spheres that we livein and hopefully design those
cognitive spaces, thoseinteractive spaces, to actually
have a positive impact, or, youknow, um, at least give
ourselves a chance to where thefuture can matter to the present
.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
So I'm useful and poured away I'd like it to
become well, I'm on a kind ofmission to democratize it.
Like design thinking was lastdecade, but I would like it to
become a like talent-basedcourseware, like negotiation or
difficult conversations or youknow your project you know

(52:23):
project management, you knowlike all the, all those like
masterful things, you have tohave to be a, I would say, a
complete functioning business oryou know government, like to to
be, you know, productive.
And I think in getting thatmindset, it's built into it that
way, versus like, oh, I'm goingto go off and do specials, that

(52:43):
like I do the future state whenI need to, or it's over there,
it's it's just basically withinyou.
I think that's, it's a vision.
I think we can achieve that.
I think AI is going to speed upa lot of the processes in which
we do things, so it becomesmore easily and accessible in
the way we ask and do stuff.
It still requires a humanelement, but it again takes away

(53:05):
the barriers to do things.
So, this amazing career you'vehad and you know you've done so
much for the field Like what doyou?
You've got a lot of years youknow, ahead.
I always like to you know, kindof ask this like a legacy
question, like how do you wantthe work to be remembered, like
the impact you've had?
You know, when your kids,you're talking to your grandkids

(53:27):
like what you're proud of, yourcareer, like I did this.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
I, this is great.
So well, you know, I mean youdon't want to get so grandiose.
I mean I would love to just seebetter, livable worlds.
You know, yeah, my kids now.
But you know, uh, whatever,whatever pain and transformation
we're going through.
Now I want to come out on theother end where, you know, it's
just kind of back to thequestion how do we want to live
as humans?
I mean, this is something, fromthe very start, that's been

(53:59):
influenced by me.
We are, we are rubbing upagainst, you know, crisis.
We're in the crisis because Idon't think anybody's happy with
the way they're living, or notenough.
You're sort of agitated anddissatisfied for whatever reason
.
So I would love to contribute toa world where we have an honest

(54:19):
conversation and not as if it'ssome sort of monolithic thing
there are different ways to livebut where people can ask
serious questions about how dowe want to live and then we have
a way to design that.
The way to contribute to thatthat's where my sort of
democracy hat comes in is likecan can we create systems where

(54:41):
people can have an influence onthe kind of outcomes they want
and maybe steer toward living inworlds that they actually enjoy
living in uh and feel a littlebit of agency toward getting
there in some ways.
So that's kind of the big,grandiose goal uh of it.
You know, and, and, and, inother sense like just uh, uh,

(55:04):
you know, just having a positiveimpact at very local levels.
You know, I teach uh.
I've seen, you know, people whohave not heard of future
studies.
This is not a precise number,but I find that when I'm
teaching classes, about 10 to15% of people that take the
class it's a life changing thing.
They didn't know it existed, itreally like.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
How did they find it?
How did they just choose forthat Like?

Speaker 2 (55:27):
well, you know, to be a class that they take that
they didn't realize that it wasfutures or it's just part of a
curriculum, like I used to teachat California College of the
Arts and they had a strategicforesight class within their
design strategy MBA program.
So it was an elective, sosomebody would take it, you know
, oh, this might be interesting.
Or you know, at UT I teachexperiential futures to a combo

(55:49):
med school, design schoolprogram in design.
So you know it's an elective.
So you know they, they mustalready be interested at some
level.
But often they don't reallyknow what they're taking.
But the first, the first partsof the class are always like
disabusing of what you think itis trying to to tell you what it
is.
Um, everybody gets somethingout of it, I hope.

(56:10):
But I really found that thatthere's a there.
You know, a good percentage ofstudents are like oh my God, I
needed this.
I didn't realize that, uh, it's, it's going to change how I do.
And I've had students who'vegone off and become futurists
and that weren't even you knowthat wasn't their intention ever
.
They weren't already cominginto the room thinking they
would do that, um, just like weall did.
You know the accidental futureis just kind of in that sense.

(56:32):
Um, so, having those sort ofmaybe life improving or life
altering impacts on a one-to-onestudent human, you know, at a
workshop somebody hears aboutsomething that that positively
changes them or that opens adoorway to a kind of career or
life that they didn't see.
So at that level too, I hopeyou know to have had uh, when

(56:53):
the story is told some positiveimpacts there.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
That's great.
So where can people find youand learn more about?
I mean, obviously you have alot of stuff on research net or
you know research gate, yeah,but where, where can people find
you?

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Well, there's a little Christmas bar down the
road, a year round Christmas bar.
You can find me there in Austin, excellent, excellent.
Otherwise, yes, I have awebsite, jakedonegancom.
You know.
Go there with all caveats thathaven't been updated in a long
time, but you can get somethingthere.
Not I've sort of pulled backfrom social media, but I'm just

(57:30):
a remain of a minor president onblue sky, duncan 23 at blue sky
.
Um, and then, yeah, you knowI'm, I'm at the institute so you
can reach out to me uh, theredirectly.
Uh, you know, uh, never popularenough to be flooded with with
people, so I I that means I cankeep an open door.
We'll see if that changed.

(57:51):
Yeah, I'm always keen to talkto people and uh see where
they're at and see how futurescan be useful or I can help in
some way.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
That's great.
And the most important questionof all of it where's, what's
your favorite taco and yourbarbecue spot in Austin?
Uh, people want to know.
People want to know thesethings.
These are important things,yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
I mean, almost any gas station is going to have
pretty good tacos, so I'm notgoing to pick a chain.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
Gas station tacos, not gas station sushi, but gas
station tacos, you know not inAustin.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
I've had some gas station sushi.
It's pretty darn good.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Interesting my favorite barbecue you know.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
I mean it's pretty darn good, interesting, okay,
yeah Well, my favorite barbecue,you know.
I mean, franklin's is actuallygood, you know that's the big
thing If you can stand in line.
If you can stand in line, itabsolutely is.
No, I'm never going to stand inline, but if it crosses my path
it's pretty good.
But I love this food truck onSouth Elmore called Brown's
Barbecue.
Nice more called brown'sbarbecue.
You know I like brisket but Ialso like uh pork barbecue.

(58:53):
So sometimes I skew towardplaces that can do pork barbecue
.
So brown's barbecue it's a.
It's a truck, nice uh, on southlamar, so that's, that's a good
one that maybe people hadn'theard of awesome well, jake, I'm
gonna do part two, I'm suresoon.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
This is great.
Uh, thanks for, uh, thanks forbeing on and uh, let's thank you
.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
We'll talk thanks steve, yeah, if part two is in
six months, the world will becompletely different exactly.
That's the whole thing so wecan process together.
It's a day-by-day uh story,exactly.
Yeah, just let me end with that.
Thank you, thank you thanks forlistening to the think forward.
You can find us on all themajor podcast platforms and at
wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as wellas on YouTube under Think

(59:38):
Forward Show.
See you next time.