Think Forward EP 137: Mapping Tomorrows Terrain with Derek Woodgate

What if the key to understanding tomorrow lies not in boardroom predictions but in the rhythms of a DJ's turntable? Derek Woodgate, with his 30+ years as an experimental futurist, takes us on a fascinating journey through his unique approach to futures thinking that blends underground arts with rigorous analysis.

Derek reveals how his background in music management (working with bands like Swans and Sonic Youth) and his immersion in early digital communities shaped his distinctive methodology. "Think like a DJ," he explains, involves deconstructing concepts completely before rebuilding them into something revolutionary. This process requires skills beyond traditional analysis – demanding intuition, comfort with paradox, and the ability to see connections where others don't. 

• Bringing music, art, and cultural experiences into futures work through "think like a DJ" methodology
• Breaking concepts down to their elements and reconstructing them with fresh perspectives
• Finding "colors that are missing" and identifying rhythms between the beats when analyzing trends
• Leveraging intuition and creativity alongside analytical skills for deeper futures insights
• Balancing professional futurism work with real-world immersion in emerging cultural movements
• Developing new educational approaches that break down silos for complex problem-solving
• Working with AI as a collaborative tool while preserving uniquely human foresight abilities
• Understanding "rebel laboratories" and underground innovation that signals future directions
• Living the future rather than just studying it to better anticipate coming challenges

If you'd like to connect with Derek, you can reach him at [e-mail] where he welcomes conversations about futures thinking.

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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):
Coming up on today's show.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Those skills are absolutely necessary, right.
There are other parts of this,which are about intuition, which
are about creativity, which areabout abstractions, about
dealing with paradoxes, aboutcreating hybrids from things
that literally do not fittogether, that are connecting

(00:27):
links, right, that are aboutbeing able to see things and
have really insights, and takeinsights from an idea, from a
concept, from context that otherpeople don't see, and then
finding other perspectives forthat and turning it on its head

(00:48):
and asking questions that arevery different.
You know what's missing.
What are the rhythms in betweenthe beats, right?
What are the?
You know what colors aremissing.
You know these types of ways ofthinking about stuff, which, to
me and I think that's part ofbeing a success in many ways of

(01:08):
applying the thing like a DJ.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Welcome back to the Think Forward show.
I'm your host, steve Fisher,and today we're here for a great
conversation with one of themost experienced and insightful
futurists in the field.
My guest today has beenexploring the frontiers of
tomorrow for over three decades,long before futurists in the
field.
My guest today has beenexploring the frontiers of
tomorrow for over three decades,long before futurists became a
trendy job title on LinkedIn.
He brings a rare combination ofanalytical rigor and creative

(01:34):
imagination to futures thinking.
He's not just predicting what'scoming next, he's helping
organizations and communitiesactively shape the futures that
they want to create.
His work spans everything fromemerging technologies and
cultural shifts to businesstransformation and societal
change, all while maintainingthe crucial balance between wild
possibility and practicalinsight.

(01:56):
What I find fascinating aboutour guest is his ability to see
patterns where others see chaos,to spot the weak signals that
herald major transformationsbefore they become obvious to
everyone else.
This conversation will changeyour assumptions and expand your
horizons.
Whether you're a seasonedstrategist or someone beginning
to think seriously about thefuture, this conversation will
challenge your assumptions andexpand your horizons.

(02:17):
Welcome to Mapping Tomorrow'sTerrain with Derek Woodgate.
Derek, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Thank you so much, hey Stephen, great to meet you.
It's a different environment.
I like it.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
I know I was thinking about this.
I followed your work for manydecades and since I was a young
budding futurist and doing thework, we were all doing that
work.
But I was reflecting on, likeyou know, connecting with people
.
You know it just would be byemail or phone call.
Like you know, you live inanother part of the world and

(02:53):
just being able to have a videochat and and be able to, you
know, communicate like this andcollaborate is, uh, to me a
blessing these days.
Um, you know you.
You know those, know those whoare futurists.
Probably, I'm sure know youalready.
There are many that might not.
I think the best place probablyto start is who are you?

(03:13):
I know you're a man U fan.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I am and an Austin, and an Austin, yeah, that's true
.
Who am I, which I shouldactually very little do with my
bio.
And someone said to me recently, can you just explain who you
are as a futurist?
I said, sorry, is that how yousee me?
And I was like you know?

(03:38):
And I'm like, okay, well, I'llstart.
So I actually did thepresentation.
Some of our colleagues wouldhave seen where I went through,
how I became a futurist, butliterally from the beginning of
my life to today and then morelike now.
But the reality is that who Iam.
I think it's a sort ofimportant question, right.

(04:03):
So who I am professionally andDr Gerard Woodgate, the
president and chief futurist ofFutures Lab Inc.
Which is a company I founded in1996.
So you know, I've been around.
I've been teaching as well inthe last 15 years at various
universities, introducing inmany cases, future studies and

(04:25):
departments for future studiesand building those centers, but
also, at the same time, creatinga whole range of
transdisciplinary courses inwhat we call futures-based
courses.
That means that they have anelement of futures to them in
the sense of about the future,and there are sort of bits of, I
suppose, we take from intro tofuture studies within it.

(04:47):
So at least you understandabout this concept.
It's about you know the wholeconcept of working with
unstructured knowledge andunknown worlds, all that stuff.
But actually they're sort of acombination really of advanced
pedagogy, future studies andwhatever the domain is.

(05:08):
So you know, future multimediaand entertainment is what I did
in six or seven universities andthings like smart cities as a
mirror of human organization.
I played with that part of it,a mirror of human organization,
nice type of organization.
I played with that part of it.

(05:29):
And then the other side of thatis, of course, I'm consulting
with a whole variety.
I mean it's been over 170clients by now, over 70, yeah,
and if you go to the website Ithink there's about 70,.
You know case studies and niceendorsements and some wonderful

(05:50):
people from whom I'm verygrateful over the years.
But yeah, I mean I've sort ofbeen in most parts of future
stuff, right, you know.
So I've worked from realhardcore deep futures or deep
foresight, you know long-termthree-year projects, two-year

(06:12):
projects and so on and so forthto literally introducing future
studies to children in Africa,you know, in Rwanda and Uganda
and so on and so forth at a verybasic level brought into their
other subject matter.
So I did that with UNESCO and Idid it with the Norwegian

(06:35):
government.
I'm working on some projectsthere and so I've sort of, over
the years, covered a very broadspectrum of futures work, as
most of them would say.
So that's the professional part.
Now the other part of me, whichis far more me, is actually the

(06:59):
bit that I think I bring tofuture studies.
So the first aspect of that isI'm an old person, some would
say a very old person, but youknow I have a very young life so
I can't.
But I sort of grew up I mean, Iwas in university in the 60s

(07:20):
right, so 64 to 68.
I grew up on, you know, beats.
I grew up on Fluxus, I grew upon all forms of, you know,
innovative arts, certainly a lotof improvisations, improvised
jazz.
I was lucky enough that myfather, who was a fabulous guy

(07:41):
he's a biochemist, but you knowthe love of my life in actual
fact wasn't my real father.
He was my fabulous guy, he's abiochemist, but you know the
love of my life, in actual facthe wasn't my real father, he was
my real uncle.
My father had died and my uncleand aunt actually adopted me,
but notwithstanding that, he'smy father and he took me to
everything.
He was brilliant.
He's like you know oh, there'sa Dadaist exhibition.
Let's go to the Dadaistexhibition as a teenager.

(08:02):
Let's go to the Darlingsexhibition as a teenager, you
know.
So this ability to be, or thisopportunity I mean this is a
fabulous opportunity to actuallycome face-to-face with a lot of
sort of creative but also, youknow, renegade type of influence

(08:24):
in my teenage years really ledto pretty well who I am together
with, which I will admit nowthat because I've adopted and
because I'm, whatever, lots ofdifferent reasons, I had
abandonment issues and I grew upwanting to be like recognized
all the time.
Right, that was my thing.
It was recognition Telling meI'm be like recognized all the

(08:45):
time.
Right, that was my thing.
It was recognition Telling themgreat guys, you know.
So I was in a band from the ageof 14 through to 21 and then
later I started off in the bluesband, the blues chorus, who
were actually really good orwent on to be famous, and then I

(09:07):
was in a soul band after that.
But then later in life, in my30s, I was in a pretty
well-known band, camouflage, andthat was.
I suppose you'd say sort of itwas rock, but it had a bit of a
hard edge to it, so it was sortof a little bit cross between
punk and rock.
Yeah, I mean, I used to act inmovies and I did all sorts of

(09:34):
stuff back then, but I thinkwhat was good about that was
that I brought these two thingstogether, this sort of a very
openness, rebelliousness or whatI call rebel wisdom.
This sort of very openness,rebelliousness, what I call
rebel wisdom, together withbeing, you know, demanding.
Pretty well, I mean, that'ssort of who I am Demanding, some
sort of recognition for thebits I do.

(09:55):
It's a horrible thing to say inmy therapy set Okay, it's good
you did that because youachieved a lot, but at the same
time, really bad behavior.
I think that you sort of feellike that's actually probably
what I brought to the table.
So I joined the foreignimmediately after my master's 26

(10:19):
.
And I'd been living in Croatiaprior to that and I did my
master's in Croatia.
That's because I went toCroatia when I was 16 on an
exchange.
I spent a year at a high schoolthere, so I was in Croatia and
they actually posted me back toCroatia.
Of course it's during the Titoyears and self-management and

(10:41):
all the other aspects, and I'dactually done my master's on
aspects of that, so that'spretty cool.
And then I got posted to a fewother places.
I lived in Bulgaria, all sortsof places For 14 years.
I was with the Prometheus.
I came out.
I joined the VF Corporation,which was at the time the

(11:01):
largest clothing fashion group.
It's, you know, lee Jeans,wrangler, all the stuff that you
know from the US in particular.
It was the biggest US company,but you know it's like Eastpac,
all those you know, all the 10sport, every brand that we sort
of utilize every day.
It was good for me because Itook a different.

(11:23):
I was based in Belgium and Itook a different perspective.
I ultimately ended up becoming aglobal strategist actually
originally a European strategistand then I became on the team
for global strategy, which meantmore and more I was working on
these long-term investmentprojects in countries that we've

(11:44):
hardly ever heard of, where wecan find cheap manufacturing,
and one of the things I wasworking on specifically was
political risk, economic risk,because most of the time you're
investing for a 15-year cycle.
So I sort of got into futurestudies more through long-term

(12:05):
planning.
And then I began to read and Iknow you did as well, you know
Future Shock and everything elseand I got sort of interested in
the principle.
And then I read RichardSlaughter's New Thinking for the
New Millennium.
And I read another book whichwas fantastic which was actually

(12:25):
called New Technologies for theNew Millennial.
And I read another book whichwas fantastic it's actually
called New Technologies for 2050.
2046, actually, so it was 96.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, I've read them both.
I know both.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
So they actually really inspired me to sort of
think about well, how can I youknow work within that domain and
what can I bring to the table?
So at that time, in 1996, Iformed two companies.

(12:57):
I formed the Futures Lab Inc,which is still my main source of
income and interest, andeverything else I do today, yeah
.
And then I founded a companycalled Fringe.
So Fringe Corps was my.
You know I like to have thesevanity projects, right.
So I was being in a band Lessthan being in a band.

(13:20):
Being in a band was a realproject, but being active was a
vanity project, right.
I mean, that's just hey,someone's paying me to do it,
loved doing it, did it for a fewyears, made some money out of
it, could do my other work atthe same time, enjoy.
But Bridgecore was my vanityproject.
I'd always wanted to run afringe magazine, so a

(13:41):
progressive cultural magazinethat was really on the edge.
Then it was the time of zinesand I did a magazine To run a
record company, To manageartists and to utilise all that
stuff that I'd actually built upover those years Through this
networking With these strange,you know, fringe Sort of groups

(14:04):
and to make money, Believe it ornot, I actually did.
You know fringe sort of groupsand to make money, Believe it or
not, I actually did.
And it became reallyproblematic and I wrote for 10
years.
I know if you're interested inmusic, you'll know I was manager
of the Swans for seven years.
I worked with Sonic Youth yeah,yeah, yeah, I worked with Sonic

(14:25):
Youth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I worked with Sonic Youth forabout a year and with Sonic
Youth side projects with LeeRonaldo.
Actually, I think the last timeI worked with him was, you know
, 2014,.
Around that area they're prettygood friends.
I did a lot with Jake Maskis,so a lot of the New York crowd.
But it took me into this wholeworld and if you look up

(14:48):
Frenchcombe magazine I won't gointo too much here, but it was
interesting because it was aninsight into the future that has
really made me the type offuturist that I am today.
So I think without that I wouldhave been very much a business

(15:08):
futurist in the more traditionalsense, but it allowed me to
bring together these otheraspects of my interests in life
progressive culture with thefuture, certainly a lot around

(15:31):
emerging technologies, and I'vebeen part of the well for a long
period, I knew quite a lot ofwhat was happening on the early
social media platforms.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Many, I would say, younger future people listening
probably don't know what thewell is.
Maybe you could, because it'sit.
It was such a seminal part ofearly internet and early
communication exactly that whatwould?
How would you describe the wellto somebody?

Speaker 2 (16:01):
well it's I mean, it's principally a social
network in the terms that wetalk about today.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Right, with all the mechanisms.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
With all the mechanisms, right, yeah, right,
we had obviously message boards,we had a whole lot of different
systems that we could use tocommunicate.
We communicated pretty wellaround the planet actually, but
it brought me into time, intocontact with a load of people
who you know still, my friendsand people I associate with

(16:30):
today.
So, john lipkowski, with youknow, with bruce sterling, with
you know a whole group of peopleand later people who joined
right I mean obviously who whoin fact became really important
and became part of those earlySouth by Southwest interactive

(16:50):
programs.
So a lot of them I met in thelate 90s or early 90s, so in 92
onwards, through South by and soon.
It's funny you bring that up.
Dougie Ratchkoff.
You know a whole host of them.
So that became also a very bigpart of what I was sort of

(17:15):
involved with from those early90s through to when I actually
formed Futures Lab.
So what I brought into FuturesLab immediately was this sort of
idea that actually these guysare amazing, they are the people
that actually brought us socialmedia, they're the people you
know actually that brought usPCs, that brought us half the

(17:39):
communication systems that wewere beginning to have.
And I realized that there wassomething in progressive culture
and what I mean by that is sortof the underground arts and
other forms of culture and thearts that really generate very,

(18:04):
very different ways of lookingat things that I can leverage
because it's familiar to me andI know a lot of those people but
, moreover, that I can see thatthere are the seeds.
I wouldn't say they were weaksignals in the sense that we
talk now about weak signals, butthey were very early signals

(18:27):
and I don't know if you've readFuture Frequencies, but you know
of course a lot of that book isabout that and interviews and
stories, all sorts of things Idid with people around sort of
late 90s, early 2000s, whetherit was into extreme bio-art,
like Zaretsky.
You know, katz, and these typeof people and people working

(18:49):
with you know.
A lot of people I worked withearlier were the early techno
people right.
Early hip-hop, early techno,bringing those things across
which, today, when I considerthat and I look at things like
IndieTronica and I look at DarkWave you know Darkwave and
Spoken Word and these thingscoming together, I don't know
Afro Surrealism and all theseother types of movements and I

(19:15):
can see again this newreflection of a lot of those
scenes and movements and onesort of analyzes where they came
from, what they do, what theymean, what their impact is, what
their implications andramifications for the future are
.
One can find a considerableamount of new knowledge within

(19:37):
that, particularly in theaspects of rebel laboratories
and working withtransdisciplinary sciences,
building stuff that some of itwe don't really want to know
about, but a lot of embryodevelopment and research and
stuff like that, some newspecies.
So to me there was this reallygood connection between who I am

(20:00):
, my broad sphere of interestand what I thought I could bring
differently to future studies.
So rather than just go, youknow, on a fairly straight line,
into everything I was readingand what I could see was future
studies, I became foresight.
I sort of took my own sort ofapproach.

(20:22):
I think you know that I used tobe called the revolutionary
futurist and then, as I startedto work more around the world,
people said, well, you can'treuse that.
So I then sort of had this sortof renegade sort of.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, people have different connotations of
revolution, right, it's likewhen you hear that.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah.
So now you know, I've sort ofmoved on a bit from that and
most people talk about me as anexperimental futurist and that's
part of the reason for that isbecause I do a lot.
So it's slightly different toStuart and Jake, for whom I have
incredible moral respect.
I'm really happy with whatthey've brought to the table

(21:00):
because they're much youngerthan me and I don't think they
build off the stuff that I did,but I've been doing a lot of
that.
You probably know Plutopia andall but Living the Future Labs
and all that stuff early 2000s.
But I think that I'm reallypleased to see they made
something of it and really tookit by the stretch, and I think

(21:23):
that's really cool.
I've gone more into a bit moreof the improvisational,
experimental side of things andI feel like it's one of those
areas that are really missing.
What I tend to do the last 20years, I suppose, or whatever,
is to try and develop a wholerange of techniques not

(21:48):
processes, but techniques of howto work within future studies,
to think and break down,particularly sort of like real
deep down.
Take every concept, everycontext, work on it from
multiple, multiple perspectivesand come at it anew, imagining

(22:13):
the abstract, remixing, thecreative imagination, all these
types of things that I work withBody data, space, which came
out of a pledge, so from atheatre piece back in London in
the 90s.
So the sources of where thiscomes from are amazing, I think,

(22:35):
and I don't want to go on toomuch about this, but the answer
to your question.
You've got a really, reallylong answer, but no, it's a
journey.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
I think the thing is that everyone.
You're one of the few people Imean.
Would you consider that there'skind of two parts to this is,
would you consider your journeythrough as a future as to get to
that?
Accidental or intentional?
That's the way you found thiswork and got into it, because it
seems like you kind of found aniche or you found an approach.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, yeah, I don't really.
I think it's organic yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
I find so many people come to this accidentally, like
they kind of discover it andit's like wow, like very few
people come to this accidentally, they kind of discover it and
it's like wow, very few.
I guess one of the rareexceptions is when they're young
.
It's like I want to be anastronaut or I want to be a
doctor.
No, I want to be a futurist.
It's more of the mindset ofthat.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
It's like people find it.
I think the mindset was alwaysthere.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
But I think what future studies did was framed.
It was a professional framingof a way of thinking for me and
it allowed me to come at it,which is one of the great things
about an early and fluid atthat time a very fluid

(23:56):
profession where one could sortof like feel very free about how
you could sort of approach itright.
So, yes, it was.
You know I'm going to go backon all the.
You know the history, youstudied the history, so you know
all the backgrounds which Icame back late.
Right, I mean to be fair.
People like Peter Bischrup youknow all the backgrounds which I

(24:17):
came out late.
I mean to be fair.
People like peter bishop, youknow, um, uh, particularly
because I I contacted him in 97or something and I said, look, I
understand there's this programthat used to.
You know I've come out, youknow long-term planning, but
this, this all seems really,really exciting and we had a

(24:37):
long discussion on it and, to befair, we became friends and
colleagues for a long, long timeafter that and you probably
know that many of his studentsthat he felt were aligned with
my way of thinking became mycolleagues and worked for me for
many, many, many years, rightlike Wade and so on and so forth

(24:57):
.
So I think I mean I'm verygrateful to those people, oliver
Markley, you know those peoplethat have actually helped me
structure all this.
The bridging of whatever youwant to call it progressive

(25:18):
culture, this sort ofexperimental arts and stuff with
future studies, was organic forme because it's just where I'm
in my mindset.
But these guys were the peoplethat framed it for me, were the
people that framed it for me,that have made who I am today in

(25:41):
many ways as a profession right.
So I can argue after 30 years.
Obviously I've contributed,hopefully, a lot to the film and
stuff.
You know there's always someoneright.
There's always, you know, amentor of some description,
however, that mentor functionsto whom you've got to be really,
really grateful and there weremany mentors before that.

(26:02):
But in the sense of the futuresense, these were the people who
gave me the confidence anddirection and pathways to make
it a profession.
I think that's the difference.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
When I think about the field and you mentioned,
like Peter, people in the UHprogram which I'm also a
graduate of and want to do morework to support that I feel like
the term we have a brandingchallenge, an issue, because
it's funny, you mentioned thephrase long-term planning.

(26:38):
That is not sexy, like futuristis a really cool word, but it's
always befuddled me why morestrategy teams, just in general,
didn't take this into accountbecause there's a lot of
short-termism in the outputs andthe outcomes that they have.
But what do you think are the?
When you talk to people aboutwhat you do, do you think what

(26:59):
do you think are the biggestmisconceptions people have about
what a futurist does?

Speaker 2 (27:04):
I think it's an interesting question and I
always recall I think it was1994, 2004, at an AP meeting
when we were asked, three of uswere on stage and asked to
explain what a futurist is.

(27:25):
And I was lucky, I was up firstand I just spent a long time
probably a year or so in workingout what I thought futurists
did, because I wanted a taglinefor my website and I said for me
, I'm in the future potentialand that was it and that was my

(27:48):
tagline.
That's good.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
I'm an uncertainty navigator.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
There you go, and that's the business I'm still in
.
It's still on my website, right?
Yeah, all these years later,the next person and I know names
here, in fact I can't remembersome aspects of it, but you know
it came up and they explainedwere trying to explain what a
futurist did, and someoneshouted from the audience that
was the elevator speech right.

(28:14):
And someone shouted from theaudience yes, we want an
elevator speech, but not anelevator in the Empire State
Building.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
The hundred story elevator pitch or the.
We'll go with the AndrewSullivan, the Sullivan in
Chicago, the eight story, thefirst skyscraper, the eight
story skyscraper with the guywith the hand and controlled
elevator with the, you know, theeight-story skyscraper with the
guy with the hand-controlledelevator, exactly, yeah, yeah,
that's pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
That was funny, right , but to be fair, that was
probably my reality a yearbefore that, and so I think the
misconceptions are really drivenby our inability, as a
profession, to tie down what weare as a profession, right.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
So let's unpack, let's unpack.
That that's really good forpeople listening because I think
people, I bring it peoplelistening because I think people
, I bring it many people.
And I just went to the springgathering um, the 50th
anniversary for uh, and therewas the we'll call it the 80s
panel.
They call it the 80s panel.
These are people that have beenteaching for a while there.
I would call he called what didandy call him?
The elder council of uhfuturists.

(29:29):
Yeah, but they look, they werevery much about.
You're not going to be purelydoing this type of work.
It's going to be kind ofstealthy and I did a lot of that
for years, brought it intoproduct work, brought it into
innovation work, called itsomething different, because a
lot of people sometimes theycan't just the framing of it,
just the way you position itright, it has to be theirs.

(29:50):
Yeah, let's kind of go a littledeeper.
Yeah, well, we have achallenges.
What do you?
What do you think they are?

Speaker 2 (29:59):
well, I think, first of all, it depends on where you
come.
One of the principal challengesand a lot of people disagree.
So people said to me, um, indubai, november, I said, oh,
you're a purist.
I'm probably the last personthat I would think of as a
purist in anything.

(30:19):
But there you go.
But notwithstanding that, inthat particular case I was, and
one of the reasons was that Iwas saying that the fact that
there are whatever 40,000 peopleon LinkedIn who call themselves
a futurist is not particularlyhelpful to the profession.
I mean, now, a lot of peopledisagree with right, but then,

(30:41):
you know, that's why we get thedebates on linkedin with people
saying, well, is it a trade oris it a profession?
Now, when we sit out with theI'll just take the apf, as in
the ws, the APF and we start outand we say, well, we're forming

(31:01):
, you know, a new association,the Association of Professional
Futurists.
Ago that there would be afairly by now, that there would
be a fairly clear understandingof what that profession consists

(31:22):
of.
That's the sort of thing.
Going back to the elevatorspeech, that it would be really
simple, because you don't ask,I'm a university professor,
right?
You don't ask me what I do.
You might ask me what topic Iteach and where I teach, but
you're not going to ask me whatI do.
Everyone knows what I do.
You might ask me what topic Iteach and where I teach, but
you're not going to ask me whatI do.
Everyone knows what I do.
If you're a doctor, I mean,they'll ask you what field of
medicine you're in, but notgoing to question whether you're

(31:45):
a doctor or not a doctor.
Right, you're a medical doctor,and that pretty well applies to
most professions.
And what I suppose disappointedin a certain way is that I
spend my whole life, actuallyprobably now not saying I'm a
futurist, because I'm not reallyeven sure that that contributes

(32:06):
in truth to or reflects anymore on what I do.
Okay, and you know so I sort ofa lot of the time I come from a
very different angle fromsometimes from the science

(32:28):
perspective, sometimes more ofthe you know I have this whole
thing about science meets magic,right?
That's my concept on futurestudies in general.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Are you taking that from the Arthur C Clarke?

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Actually I didn't, but I mean, I could have done.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, technology sufficiently in the future looks
like magic.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Exactly so.
I think that it's become.
Maybe it's slightly easier onceyou're you know, once you're
established, okay, it's sort ofeasy, because people don't
really they know who I am.
I suppose what I've done andthere's so many case studies and

(33:14):
other things on the website,they're not really coming to me
and saying we need a futurist orsomething it's more about.
We need you, which is a littledifferent, right?
I mean, that's a differentperspective.
But for many, many years whenthat was not the case, when I
was building a company, I thinkI was lucky to be at a time when

(33:35):
there was building a company.
I think I was lucky to be at atime when there was a much
clearer understanding of what afuturist did in terms of what
they contributed to the processin corporate in particular and
remember that was before therewere corporate futures.

(33:57):
Very much right, there weren'tso many corporate futures.
So now, I mean now, if there'scorporate futures, I'm a topper,
right?
Yeah, I mean literally right.
And so you know what hashappened.
I've got much more intoeducational and ministerial do
you think the role is is?

Speaker 1 (34:15):
do you think it's a job or a skill set, or both?
Probably both.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
I mean, I always thought well, it's obviously a
skill set and you know more andmore.
I suppose it's difficult whenyou teach it and when you, you
know, when you see, when you'reworking with students and you
understand where the issues areand what sort of the major sort
of parts of this, those skillsare absolutely necessary, right?

(34:44):
So there are skills in futurestudies, in foresight for all of
us, that are very linear, arevery MBA in many ways, are very
sort of.
I don't say anyone can do them,that's not true.
And then there are other partsof this which are about

(35:11):
intuition, which are aboutcreativity, which are about
abstractism, about dealing withparadoxes, about creating
hybrids from things thatliterally do not fit together,
that are connecting things right.
That are about being able tosee things and have really

(35:32):
insights, and take insights froman idea, from a concept, from
context that other people don'tsee, and then finding other
perspectives for that andturning it on its head and
asking questions that are verydifferent.
You know what are the?
What's missing?
What are the rhythms in betweenthe beats, right?

(35:55):
What are the?
You know what colors are therhythms in between the beats,
right?
What are the?
You know what?
What colors are missing.
You know these types of ways ofthinking about stuff which to me
and I think that's part of thebeing success in many ways of
applying the thing like a dj,because think like a dj is to
take a concept or content andfully deconstruct it, so you
break it down to all theelements within it and then you

(36:17):
have this whole process of howyou begin to reconstruct, build
it up into something new and sothat every concept and every
context you begin to reallyreally stretch it to such a
degree that you're seeing, youknow this whole sort of
embodiment of the idea and Ithink that that allows us to

(36:43):
think differently.
So those skills are quite tough, right?
You see it, when you're workingwith people, you start to see
abstractism, very difficultpeople thinking in the abstract.
You know this whole thing ofimagining the abstract.
When you ask people what colouris missing, they go what are
you talking about?
And my friend so my friend,david Coulter, who used to be
with the Poets and has played,is a composer now but played

(37:04):
with just about everybody overthe years.
He actually taught me thatbecause he said when I finish a
composition, the first questionI ask myself is which colour's
missing, and I'm sort of youknow, I was chatting to him
about it, and so one learns,right, from all these odd people
around, and I think that one ofthe points about it is is that

(37:26):
a skill set?
Yes, it's a skill set because itdemands types of critical
thinking, types of, should wesay, of thinking techniques that
a lot of architects and this isvery true of the golf they
don't necessarily learnthroughout the whole of their

(37:46):
schooling, and so you know,you're trying to get them to.
I mean, remember, they couldn'thave art, let's say, in
mentality they don't have art ordidn't have art on the walls.
Right, my art's rebellious,right.
So I have a lot of stuffbecause I worked a lot in music
people.
So I have people who, you know,luckily have some really great

(38:07):
stuff that I got pretty cheaplyfrom artists who did record
covers and stuff like that, butthey're really way out, right, I
mean, you know, and so somepeople look at that and they go
what was that all?
And, to be fair, in the 70s,60s and 70s, that's how it was
in the Royal Academy, right,david Hockney wasn't accepted

(38:30):
initially.
So it's not, it's just a timeissue.
And what I'm trying to say toyou is those skills are my skill
set.
I don't know if they'rerelevant to other people, but I
do see them as a skill set andtherefore, yes, I think there
are a lot of skills to realfuture studies and there are a

(38:54):
lot of skills from because Icome from the academic part as
well, from the theoreticalperspective, and I normally go
into post-modernism.
You know, I was doing thisthing last week on the future of
security media and no one inthe group knew who McLuhan was
now like or any of thepost-modernists, so they'd never

(39:15):
read.
I mean, not surprisingly thatthey've not read Deleuze and
we're post-postmodernists now.
So not really relevant.
But at the same time, if you'vestudied media, most of the time
one would be familiar with that.
So it makes it difficult someof the times to understand the

(39:39):
broader sense of what we bringto the table as futurists.
It's not just the skills, it'snot future studies per se,
that's one bit that you expectto go through a process, you
expect to use a framework.
Yeah, of course everyone wantsto see how you got there, but
quite honestly, that's not whatI think I necessarily bring to

(40:02):
future studies.
I think my unconscious and mysubconscious is what I bring to
future studies.
It's the experience of alifetime that I can see things
and I can go.
Oh my God, that's crazy.
What if I do that?
It's the names of songs.
You like music.
The names of songs, they'recrazy, right, I mean, they're

(40:23):
crazy.
And the names of bands, they'rewild.
And you think, well, how didthey put those together?
I write poetry as well, right.
And I just spoke on wood.
How do you pull that stufftogether?
That's amazing, right.
And so there are these elementsthat are different depending on
what you do.
Now, how do you bring that into, shall we say, governance or

(40:48):
government thought?
Now, most of my clientscurrently are in that area, but
I still do it.
I still make them think thatway, even though it's completely
alien to the way that theyactually think.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Well, what makes you know?
We talked a lot about theindividual, and then the skill
set.
Like what, since you've workedwith so many over the years?
Like what makes an organizationbetter at integrating this than
others?
What are factors?
I have obviously my ownopinions, and I think anybody
who's done this work would, butwhat would be your?

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Well, I think there are a few things here.
I mean one is and I have thatissue all the time I tend to
work in the third horizon mostof it, you know, but because of
backcasting rolling back thefuture, as we call it we
obviously get.
We have these two extra stagesto our process of seven and
eight, if you want to call itthat where we actually do the

(41:42):
beginnings of implementation.
We actually develop early stageprojects and do the
implementation part of theproject, and the reason for that
is I'm trying very hard to getmy clients A to actually start
doing the work, moving along thepathway towards whatever their
preferred future is.
And, secondly, it gives meextra funding.

(42:05):
And, thirdly, it gives me anopportunity to keep asking how's
it going?
Have you actually made progresswith that?
What's going on?
Can I help more?
Can I do this?
So I think that there's thissort of part of that where where
what's going on if we're notcareful, is we're getting pushed
back towards innovation, right?

(42:27):
Everyone wants a quick fix youmentioned.
So I think that's one of theissues, because if you go in and
you say, well, you know most ofmy work's in the third horizon,
I'm going to give you a 2040 or2050 vision, I mean, then
you've got to be.
You have to explain.
Now, when you've got a lot ofexperience in this, you have a
lot of clients you've obviouslycreated over the years.

(42:51):
Quite a few things have actuallyhit the market, whatever that
you can talk about, like finallytook it, and so, yeah, it's a
little different because youhave some examples of how you
got there and what you did, butI still think there's too much
to do with all clients wherethey're looking for equipment.
Two, I think one of the issuesis that most of the time,

(43:15):
because we've not established aprofession of being a really
unique skill set and a reallyunique whatever an approach that
lots of people think they cando it themselves, well, we do
that.
We do that.

(43:35):
We've always done that.
What do you mean?
We've been doing that for years.
What are you talking about?
What's the difference?
So then you're actually in thisprocess of having to, let's say
, if you didn't have a lot toshow, it would be difficult to
explain the difference.
And I think the third area Iwould say is that, because there

(43:55):
are so many futures, we'vereally cut off the pricing, the
fees that people are prepared topay for future studies has
dropped massively.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
Yeah, and it's going to continue.
One of the things I want totalk about is AI, because I've
been seeing a lot in that, theimpact of that in the field.
But projects themselves likehow do you help companies or
even individual leaders, how dothem, to measure the impact of
success of it?
Right, it's like you thinkabout work and other in other

(44:34):
parts of the fields that are inan organization.
There's usually like distinctoutcomes of what is successful,
right A delivering the producton time, launching revenue, or
marketing campaigns that havecertain response Right, there's
things that measure how have youhelped clients?
Or what's your opinion of theimpact, how to measure the

(44:55):
impact of the success of thistype of work.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
Well, moving on from the what we call the APF, which
is different things, there'ssomething I do do, because I
don't do it with clients.
That's something for us.
With the client, there are twothings.
So the first thing is has theclient?

(45:20):
Have you convinced the client,the bosses or whoever it happens
to be, to start the process?
And that's why I added stage ofprocess.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Just to do the work, just to do the future.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Just to do the future , yeah, just to be on that
pathway towards that future.
There's a pathway.
I mean, we roll it back, we doback-counseling, but there's a
pathway towards that, and sothat pathway does have a start
point and we would say the startprojects to get you on that
process, projects to get you onthat process right.

(46:03):
I mean, one of the ways oflooking at it in the short term
is did they ever start?
Right and so and so, havingadded extra stages I'm using the
word stages because it fits inwell with what we all understand
for houston to the stage ofcourse I.
It allows us to be engagedlonger at a different level with

(46:24):
the client, right?
So now you're looking atresource management, performance
management system.
You're looking at thatbusiness-y type of part of all
that, right, which is nothing todo with what I was talking
about earlier, about theprogressive culture or something
idea, right?
This is real work.
This is understanding.
You know, what talents do youhave?

(46:45):
Are your competency matchingwhat's been successful in the
last few years?
What skill sets have you usedthat have actually you could
take now?
What other projects do you havein the line that could perhaps
attach to this that could makeit easier.
How can we bring together thevarious technologies?
What's happening in yourtechnology development size?

(47:05):
We can actually latch on tosome of those and change the
dynamics even of the scenariofrom the very beginning of how
we're going to move forward,because we know the end game.
Unless it really is, productdevelopment is not going to be
the end game that we envisageright Now.
It was easier when I was workingwith corporate clients for many

(47:27):
, many years because I could nowsee that a lot of work we did
actually became a reality.
So I have proof points.
Right, it's really nice to taketo a client and they can see
that.
They know that we did thingsright.
But the first few years youdon't have that.
If you're working 10 to 15years out, you have none of

(47:47):
those proof points.
So you have to find other waysof demonstrating what you
brought to the table.
For example, I was working withNisei years back in 1998 or so.
Pardon, I don't know if youknow what you're talking about.
You like cars.
I was working with Nissan yearsback in 1998 or so.
Part of I don't see much.
You like cars, automobilemanufacturing, changing the

(48:09):
mainframes incredibly expensive,difficult and a long time right
.
So you know that wasn't anoption, but they wanted to
expand the idea of space withinWell, real space and the idea of
space within the vehicle.
I saw I had a frontline panel ofexperts, diverse experts, and

(48:31):
the people I brought to thetable came from NASA.
They were spaceship designers,they were people from
Bilkinson's who worked withglass developments.
They were people that couldtalk to me about the
relationship, the psychologicalrelationship, between the inside

(48:51):
world and the outside world andhow spatial narratives get
developed and so on.
So what happened was I was ableI mean, the space guy I've
worked with a lot, you knowexplained to me that spaceships
don't change.
So you have to look at how thetechnology there's loads and
loads, more technology, moreexpectations.

(49:12):
How do modular systems work?
How do you, you know,redimensionalize all this type
of stuff?
And the same with you know, ifyou, if you actually expand the
amount of glass looking to theoutside without it being
dangerous, right from a, youknow, if you're in a crash or
something, that of course youhave a feeling you have much

(49:32):
more of a relationship with theoutside world.
To talk about that when youdon't have a problem or when you
don't have a full outcome isthe only way that you can
actually begin to convince thatthe way you think about things
is really different and thatwhen you start to think about a

(49:55):
windshield and you say, yeahwell, I had all these
conversations with Ford'swindshield manufacturers
built-in sons, and they talkedfor hours about laminations and
God knows what else, and then Irealized that surely it's a
vision aid.
Why can't it be a vision aid?
Why can't I make it a visionaid?
What can I add to this thatmakes it a better vision aid?

(50:18):
Can it take off yellowing atnight?
So what I came up with, I meanit's funny.
Actually you should ask thisquestion because it's a really
difficult question to ask.
But I worked with Nokia andthey were doing these watches
and they were looking at how tobuild watches that would be for

(50:39):
mountaineers, that they couldactually be able to see around
the mountain to see what wasactually going on.
But what I understood was, Isaid, well, should it be a watch
?
I said, look, one of thegreatest things that you have is
the left wrist.
Is real estate, right?

Speaker 1 (50:56):
That's true, it's familiar real estate.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Forget about everything.
I mean fine, but this was longbefore implants and other types
of you know.
this was back in the yeah, butyou're using the familiar to
extend to the possible or theamount you know to imagine right
, yeah, so part of I think theanswer, the true answer, is that
you've got to demonstrate thatyou've got to demonstrate

(51:22):
Because we can't demonstrate.
You know a lot of the actualwork we've done, because if I'm
working on future weaponry forthe Ministry of Interior,
obviously it's not something Ican talk about right, but I have
to demonstrate my thinking.
I have to demonstrate how I canactually connect, disconnect,
how I can see something in weaksignals that we don't normally

(51:46):
see, and so that becomes mypitch.
Right, that becomes my pitch asto proof points.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Where things are now and how the field itself I mean,
of course, this discussion withfuture studies and people
understanding the.
It started, you know, roughly70 years ago with you know work
at Rand and how it's evolvedover the years.
But now we're at an interestingpoint.
I think the next phase is, youknow, in in in my book, super

(52:21):
Shifts, I talk about a futuresoperating system.
It's kind of like how do youmake it active and usable?
Right, you can like do aproject, right, you can have
something as an end statescenarios, write a report, right
, so forth.
But then there's an ongoingnature to the signals, work, the
evolution, you know the newtypes of insights.
Ai can be, I think, a blessingbut a curse, because it allows

(52:44):
you to synthesize a lot moreinformation and allows you to,
maybe even as a collaborationpartner, find insights.
But what do you think that thefuture of the field and even the
profession?
Do you think it willdemocratize the access for
people because they can ask itthings and they can do other
types of work?
What is your take on where thefield itself is evolving and you

(53:08):
can AI support?
But where do you think thingsare headed these next?
So let's be futurists, for thefuturists it's actually funny.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
That was the title of the 2003, I think APF meeting
and I think it's actually reallyfun.
The future of futurists, thefuture of futurists the future
of futurists, and I still thinkit's funny.
That's a topic we're stilldiscussing.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Well, they just had at the gathering, they actually
just had a Adam Coward.
Dr Adam Coward did like asession.
I think they're going to updatethe paper, like what is in the
field for the 2020.
So, yeah, yes, you're, you'reyou, and they weren't there.
It's like you know that's um,it's being discussed.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
But yes, I'm a part of that original conversation,
so I know and I had to apologize, which is why I brought it up.
Yeah, I had to apologizeprofusely, by the way, about not
being at 50th anniversary, butI'm in the middle of a project
and it's quite all right yeah.
But I think that okay.
No, it's just one of many, manytools and many new ways of

(54:09):
doing things that, um, you know,I don't do think think like a
DJ the way I did with cards backin 2004.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Right, Well, I love the way you describe it as what
a dj does?
Many people think it's likemixing that you.
There's a deconstruction, ohtotally yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Well, I mean, and I worked with dj spooky right in
2010.
I've worked with him sinceactually the 90s, but I was
actually on a panel with him atsouth by southwest in 2010 and
we were rapping about stuff andafter that I said, because I put
him into a couple of showswhich is my French core part,

(54:48):
utilizing for Plutopia and stufflike that and also the Future
of Music Festival that we did inHouston it was sort of funny,
really, because I was asking Isaid, right, okay, this is what
I think you do, but tell me whatyou really do, right?
So we got into all this stuffaround.
You know well, let's see howmany colors there is, and that
was really interesting.

(55:08):
So it allowed me to really do adifferent job.
But it also allowed me to usetechnology including sort of
references back to technology,to DJ shoes to actually build
the system, which is an AI-basedsystem that I now use today.
Right, which I discussed Ithink there's a lot of

(55:30):
information on it in Exploringthe Future of Universities using
experimental came out threeyears ago, I think, in Futures.
So I think that there are many,many technologies.
I think we've got to sort ofstep back from this and really
think about you know, what arewe doing with visualization?

(55:52):
I mean, I've got to say anotherfact what are we doing,
particularly as we are certainlywith simulation immersive and
deep, immersive 3D or even 4D,where we can, some scenarios,
right?
So the last group of scenarioswe did we just built six of them

(56:13):
are three-dimensional scenarioswhere you can actually go
through and actually be part ofthe scenario.
You're living the scenario asyou're going through this 3D
world, this immersive world.
So there's a lot of differentother technologies VR, ai, all
the things we can think aboutthat we can bring to play.

(56:36):
I think the thing about AI isthat, of course, I've worked
with Mike and other people whodo a great job, but all of whom
understand that the human aspectof insights and so on is very

(56:57):
important to this.
Now, I've actually been workingwith Mika Houghton for the last
year on.
I can't tell you all about itbecause we're about to finish on
a whole AI program processrelated to future studies, but

(57:20):
not to the trend collection partof it.
Nothing to do with other stuff,much more about stuff I was
talking about earlier, about thethinking part of future studies
, right, the insight.
Now, what I found first.
So we've been training the AIfor a year from sources that

(57:48):
well, the obvious sources, butalso many, many, many sources
that actually have no bearingwhat you traditionally think
related to future studiesObviously, many of them being
mine, right, but from all sortsof things, from biochem to
whatever, everything right.
And what I've been working withit on is to teach it to think

(58:10):
to a certain degree like me andto try and understand my.
So fill it with stuff from mysubconscious and with my
unconscious.
I mean, it's pretty possible,right.
So that gives a much deepertype of response to any question

(58:33):
than it would if you just letit do it with chachi chichi beef
, and it's quite interesting.
We've got some really greatresults, but you know, for
example, I'd wanted initiallyI've got a new book coming out
and I want it.
That's been coming out for aboutnine months, and the reason it
stopped is because I wanted tobring out a totally different

(58:54):
version as an AI book, and whatI found was it's lost its soul,
completely right, and that'swhat actually drove me to begin.
And then I realised that Iremembered one of the things
that I did learn from Jesus.
He wrote a book called RhythmScience, in 2009, I think, and

(59:20):
he made an online book as well.
The online book actually hadnothing to do with, had little
to do with the actual book.
What he did, he took the main,what he felt that the readers
had told him through the reviewswere the main concepts in the
real book, and he made theonline book just based on those

(59:44):
concepts.
So it was a very different view.
I remembered that back in theday.
Actually, in general and I wasthinking about that with mine I
was thinking I don't want an AIversion of my book.
You know, what I want is to sortof push AI to see what it could

(01:00:06):
actually deliver from more of acontextual perspective or a
conceptual perspective of theideas I've got in my book.
So how does it see some of thetopics that I'm playing with?
Does it see them from a very,very different perspective?

(01:00:30):
Can it actually break it down?
Can I keep training it andpushing it to break it down with
new perspectives?
Can it add new perspectives?
Can it actually go through theprocess of data, information,
knowledge, wisdom?
Is that possible for my AI todo that right?

(01:00:52):
Is it always going to be in theknowledge part, right?
Can it actually add any wisdom?
And so we've been working onthat too, and we've achieved
some pretty incredible results.
Soon you'll hear about it.
So yeah, I think there's a role,right, lots of different roles,
both for AI and all the other.
But do I think that ultimately,it may replace the futurists in

(01:01:18):
the way that we think of themtoday?
But do I believe there's a rolefor speculative design?
Do I think there's a role forall of the essence of what we do
, not necessarily the processesand procedures of what we do,
but the essence of what we'rebringing to the table.
And you know, you can call itanticipatory, whatever, you know

(01:01:40):
, I don't really those are allwords.
To me, if it can solve thatissue of demonstrating to me
this true idea of futurepotential in any format, then I
think that it will have donesomething amazing.
And I do believe that AGI youknow all the self-developing AIs

(01:02:02):
and so on will be unbelievableand will be far beyond what I'm
even thinking it can do now ortalk about.
But you know, I see I've done alot of thing on the future of
work right, of workspaces andthings like that the work sphere

(01:02:22):
and I've been working probablyabout four or five years now,
with quite a few organisationson what we call HMR Human
Machine Research rather than HRand a lot of the elements are
sort of within, that is,understanding both machines and

(01:02:43):
humans as intelligent assets,rather than one in a support
role and the other in adifferent part of the system.
More like, they've got jobdescriptions.
And what are those jobdescriptions in any particular
part of a process, the modelthat you're working with, right?

(01:03:03):
How do you allocate thoseassets, going through exactly
the same processes that youwould for a human with the
machine Also, that's aninvestment model.
So what are the risks you'reusing?
What's the performancemanagement values you're using?
What metrics are you using?
What effectiveness andefficiency and all these types
of things?
And when you start to think ofhumans and machines as a package

(01:03:29):
, well, both individually, as apackage, with those roles, and
you start to look at theframeworks that you can bring to
bear on this, to see where theyou know, do I want to invest in
this back-end machinery at theend of the day?
Because if I have more people,you know it's all the sort of

(01:03:51):
typical thing, right?
What are the future jobdescriptions that can go with
that job.
What's the potential formigration of current skills into
the new skills?
All these things are part ofthis, right, and so I feel like
we've got to do the same forfuture studies.
Right, we've got to sort ofreally understand yes, there

(01:04:13):
will be machines, agents,whatever you want to call them
functioning within our field,them functioning within our
field, but you know they're asimportant as we are, maybe, but
we need to be sure how weallocate the usage of both and
what those intelligent assetsbring to the table and where

(01:04:35):
they're both beneficial.
And now they're crossovers onthat right.
Should we be using both?
Should we be using both?
For when I talk about, you know, imagining the abstract, should
I do it with a machine and doit myself?
You know what sort of differentresponses am I going to get.
The lazy way of going aboutthis is just to use the.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
AI.
Right.
Well, that's the yeah, that'sthe crutch, that's the lazy part
right, I mean that's, butthat's not.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Then you know, if we want to be a profession, if we
want to be these superhumanfuturists, then we need to wake
up right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Well I think about.
It brings to my mind you know,the tools that we have at our
disposal right, Especially like,say, let's take signals, work
right, people are looking forall kinds of fringe.
You know you're trying tosynthesize.
When you don't have a full team, you're on your own.
It's hard to do and it's hardto keep track and hard to keep
and it's easily something thatcan just kind of push to the

(01:05:34):
side when to deal with lots ofunstructured data and lots of
information.
You know AI can be.
It can be a resource or avirtual, a digital twin, like
you can create a digital twin ofa futurist right to do a lot of
that work To your point.
Yeah, you could be lazy andhave it spit out scenarios or
spit out other things, but youwant to be able to leverage that
and I think that the those whocan use it in a proper way, the

(01:05:58):
potential is going to make itstand out that if you don't use
it, then it's.
You're just.
You know it's like I I don'tknow why this popped in my head.
I just think about mowing thelawn.
You can have a sitting ridingmower that's got power right.
That's huge.
The big ones that are just likeand you know.

(01:06:19):
Then there's the push mower.
That's just literally manual,it's like, it's essentially like
sith blade, like you're justlike you're just pushing along
with a, with a cylinder, andit's like when you don't have,
you don't have to.
Um.
But let me, is we kind of kindof wrap this kind of move toward
the, this conversation?
One thing that you know I liketo ask kind of some the short,

(01:06:39):
kind of quick questions andyou've read, you know obviously,
so many books over the yearslike what do you think provides
and like and think aboutpossible futures?
Like what's something thatprovides really like that in
fiction or non-fiction,insightful glimpse into, like
our pot, like the future,possible futures, like what
you've been reading or what youmight have seen?

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
yeah, I mean I think there are multiple.
So if you went, if you go to myum goodreads, you'll obviously
get a very good breakdown answerfor that.
But you'd be surprised.
I don't read now so muchbusinessy type books are what

(01:07:24):
would be perceived as fairlystraight books I'm looking at
totally different I supposeyou'd say types of books really
and I read a lot of substackstuff.
I'm very present on substackright in terms of who I follow,
what I read and so on, becauseit reminds me very much of the

(01:07:48):
early days of bloggers, wheneveryone said bloggers this is
ridiculous.
You know, most of my friendsback in the day, like Dougie and
all these people were bloggers,right, and they're the people
at the sharp end of what's goingon, right.

(01:08:10):
So I tend to they're the peopledeveloping this stuff.
They're not the people who arereviewing it, they're the people
who are actually, you know,coming out with original work.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Well, who are some of your favorite Substack authors?

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Oh, yes, I read.
Oh, because I usually putMonocle on.
Well, of course, I can gothrough them.
There's a guy called John Titlewho I really really like.
He's a technology guy, so letme turn there are, and let me

(01:08:47):
come back on that because I'dlike to give you a quick thought
.
The other part I would tell youregarding that is, obviously, I
watch a lot of Netflix, likeeverybody else does, but I also
think it's important that Ifollow, you see, what I would

(01:09:25):
say from the well particularly,it would be that living the
future is the most importantfactor.
Okay, so it's how to put it.
It's not enough to sort of readabout it, pretend that you know

(01:09:48):
what's going on.
You've got to live it.
I think that's you know whetheryou're living it through
reading something or whetheryou're living it through, I
don't know, still going toobscure events.
Or you know being part ofunusual groups or constantly

(01:10:12):
being in touch with your networkof experts, you know from MIT
or Georgia Tech or somewhere.
All these are part of thatreference right of where
information comes from, and it'snot.
I mean, there's a differencebetween deep scanning, deep

(01:10:34):
horizon scanning and, justliterally our everyday
relationship with the future.
You mentioned earlier aboutyoung people should always be
part of the future and so on,but I think we should too.

(01:10:55):
That's the point really.
What do?

Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
you think is out there the next decade?
What's a bold kind of signalfor you?
I don't like to use the wordprediction, but what do you
think is out there right nowthat excites you?

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
What excites me?
I've always believed that yousort of have to live the field
Okay, but it's not good enoughto just keep reviewing stuff.
I mean you can't liveeverything right, but there's
lots of things you can and youknow.

(01:11:34):
Part of that, I suppose, is ifyou're I don't want to use the
word progressive in the Americanpolitical perspective, but you
know just a progressive but youtend not to stop.
You know you're not a much.
You know you're made to say, oh, let's go to a Led Zeppelin
concert or something you knowbecause you're out there
following, looking at somereally weird stuff that's going

(01:11:56):
on out there and understandingor trying to see what's
happening with rhythm and grind,rough sound or stuff like that
which is really on the edge,because you want to see what
those people are doing, whatlifestyles they have and how
those lifestyles are going tomature, if they are, or are they

(01:12:16):
just going to die, right?
I mean, you know like sort ofthe neo-punk scene is big at the
moment, but what does thatactually mean, right, in terms
of, you know, future movements,as I mentioned earlier, future
scenes and so on and so forth,time at this whole, maybe more

(01:12:44):
from the human perspective, ofwhere we're going.
What can we expect from thesocieties, particularly working
in UAE and so on, where 90% ofthe population are Northern
Emiratis?
Now, what sort of society isthat going to bring?
What does that look like in thefuture?
How do we deal with all thesemixed cultures?
So I'm much more, I think,trying to understand those

(01:13:10):
aspects of where we're goingright.
So, yes, I can talk to youabout transdisciplinary sciences
and what I know is comingtogether what I see from things
like neuroforensics nowadays andwhere neuroscience joins in

(01:13:30):
with media and marketing, andwhat that's going to mean for
hyperpersonalization.
Yeah, of course, they're allparts of our life.
Obviously, look at some of thegeopolitical things and discuss
those, but in reality, I don'tknow that that is so helpful

(01:13:58):
unless you're really playingwith this and seeing how you can
apply.
And remember I said to youearlier that I'd developed all
these courses for variousuniversities right over the past
few years and what wasinteresting about that to me was

(01:14:22):
that I was able to createcourses that were all
transdisciplinary.
And the fear at the beginningwell, who's going to teach this?
Right, I mean?
And I said, well, you have theprofessors here.
They're just not.
They're all in silos at themoment and we've got to find a
way of interesting them, youknow, getting them interested

(01:14:43):
enough to want to be, you know,part of some new ideas for
courses.
So I developed these you know,some 25 or something new courses
, and it got me thinking abouthow we that we're not going to

(01:15:06):
really move forward, I mean inreal terms move forward.
Yes, we can have advances inmedicine, we can have advances
in, we can have advances inscience.
What's going to happen ingenetic engineering and all that
, and we can all talk.
I can talk about that for hoursand hours.

(01:15:26):
But what I really would like tosee is real progress in from K
through 12, all the way through,in the way that we revisit what
education really is for thefuture.
Because unless we can do that,I think it's going to be really,

(01:15:50):
really difficult.
And so I suppose I see for methat's going to be one of my
areas.
I don't know if you know, Iwrote a book on the augmented
learner where I looked at therole of multimeter enhanced
learning, with foresight basedlearning designed to accelerate

(01:16:13):
the delivery of higher levels ofcreativity.
I create this whole new learningsystem based on it.
But what, to me is criticalabout it is that it gave me the
opportunity to really study andunderstand still how we're

(01:16:34):
actually learning things, howwe're actually learning things,
and I feel like all the timeit's siloed, it's just literally
not going to take us anywhereand we're not going to find real
solutions to really complexsituations we're going to turn
up with.
I mean, if you want me to saywhat I think is going to happen

(01:16:57):
with artificial nature, what Ithink is going to happen with
artificial nature, what I thinkis going to happen with, you
know, interspecies,collaboration, plant
intelligence or I don't know, onthings like, you know, social
alliances in the future, ofcyborg fashion or transhumanism
and cyborgs and whatever I mean.

(01:17:18):
I can talk about all this stuff, right, I mean because that's
my job, but that's not going tomean very much unless we can
bring up society to be ready toeven vaguely interact with any
of that.
And I mean the big part ofsociety, not the

(01:17:42):
quasi-intellectuals that I spendmy life with, and intellectuals
, not that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
It's.
You know it's as much as I'msaving in the 529 plan for his
college.
I don't think college is goingto exist in the mid.
I don't think in 10 years theremight be other institutions
like Harvard or other ones thatmight still, because of their
large endowments and theirinstitutions.
But I think it'll.
Decentralize and fracture isprobably the wrong word, but I

(01:18:35):
think it'll.
I think it will allow for a lotmore scaffolding, like lattice
type of like acquiring differentknowledge parts and me.
You could affiliate yourselfwith a school, but yeah, that's
a.
That's a crazy bit, bit crazy.
The other one I I just thinkwe're headed for in.
You know, super shifts.
I have this like subspecies ofhumans.

(01:18:57):
I think we're going to.
I think we're headed for in.
You know super shifts.
I have this like subspecies ofhumans.
I think we're going to.
I think we're going to we talkabout.
You know we're tribal people.
Humans are tribal.
You know just some way weorganize nations, the way we
fight, I think, and even justthe divide here in the united
states, in other parts of theworld too.
It's always that left, right orwhatever, this, this versus
that.
I think there's going to be atribalism of those who are

(01:19:18):
enhanced, those who areintegrated in with technology to
a consciousness.
There's going to be groups ofhumanity that's going to just
wall itself off because, just byvirtue of what you have
connected to your body or you'vechanged, those are my like, we
um out there.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
But yeah, it's interesting how you come about,
because actually, sort of like,so, when, when it comes down to
work right, futures work thenyou, then you've really got to
begin to believe, to understandhow all this fits together right
.
That's the time when you beginto sort of see how this fits

(01:19:58):
together.
So, let's say, I'm working onthe future of rehabilitation
prisons, I'm working on 2040.
And you start off with smartprisons, how that changes and
the whole attitude towardsrehabilitation and so on.
Then you start talking aboutimplants towards rehabilitation
and so on.
Then you start to move on inplants and then you go on to a

(01:20:20):
variety of systems ofunderstanding more because you
can, or neuroscience, orpredisposition towards crime.
Then you start to think of,well, what can I do here to
really, you know, work onremodeling humans, and as it

(01:20:40):
goes on and on and on, you getto see a place for all of this,
so it fits into having some sortof real meaning to it, and
every one of those parts isethically really questionable.

(01:21:00):
And then you start to say, well, that's impossible.
And then you start to sort ofbegin to study what's happening
in rebel science, what'shappening in underground labs
around the world, in China, inthe UK, in the States and so on.

(01:21:21):
What's the DIY side ofbioengineering, of genetic
engineering?
And when you think about themaker movement from the early
2000s and how that progressedand where that's come today, and

(01:21:42):
then you think about the earlywe talked about it earlier with
the well and the early computergroups and so on and so forth,
and you can begin to see thesenew themes emerging that are
being pushed by illegal labsunderground.

(01:22:08):
We talk about the corridors of,you know, underground
development, the underbelly ofinvisible studios and all this
stuff, but they really arehappening of underground
development, the underbelly ofinvisible studios and all this
stuff, but they really arehappening.
And so there's a sort of a life, which is why I talked about

(01:22:31):
actually trying to live thefuture, to live the future.
To me, that's where I feel I atleast can begin to understand
where the challenges are and thereal radical ramifications of
what we will be seeing in thenot-too-distant future.

(01:22:53):
Interestingly like theconversations we're having now
over ethical AI and everythingelse.
I mean, first of all, it shouldhave happened earlier,
obviously, but I mean popularisttoday, right in a way.
And yet we're not havingdiscussions on recombinant

(01:23:16):
species, on robot love.
What's really happening withvirtual objects If we have the
full metaverse, a holisticmetaverse?
What's cybercrime, what'smetacrime going to be like in
the metaverse?
What's going to happen to thedark parts?
All these areas which you know,literally are all part of our

(01:23:41):
lives.
It's like we sort of see lifemost of the time as this sort of
top level.
As you know, sahil would say,right, the bit above the water.
And yet that's not really asNetflix reminds us.

(01:24:02):
That's actually not life for somany people, and I think it's
strange like I mean to answerthose sort of questions of what
do you see?
I see all these things becausethey are all part of where life
is going.
They may not impact massivegroups of people, but they will

(01:24:26):
be there and at points in timethey could very easily.
If we have clones, micro clonesthat can carry, you know, mini
nukes, then what's happening inlabs today is really really
important, right?
So there's sort of a differentside to, I suppose, what I see

(01:24:50):
is happening out there.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
Well, I don't want to Right.
Where can people find,obviously, the Futures Lab.
Where can they learn more aboutwhat you do and connect with
you?
I would assume LinkedIn.
It's a good place.
But, yeah, where they findFutures Lab, where are the
things that they can?

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
I would.
I mean, well, you can find mein loads of.
I'm like my daughter.
My daughter's a rock star,right?
So the one thing I don't haveto carry a picture of my
daughter, I just go to Googleand find thousands of pictures.
Now, I've not quite reachedthat yet, so I'm living in the
shadow of my daughter, but atleast you can find plenty about

(01:25:35):
me on the web and I'm very openabout communication.
Obviously, I've got books andstuff and papers and whatever,
but I'm always happy, alwaysvery happy to have one-on-ones
whether it's on Zoom or whateverit happens to be with anyone
who's really interested and Ilike to respond.

(01:25:57):
You know I'm not an influencer,but I'd like to be a person
who's happy to respond to anyonethat has any question about
anything I've talked about.
You can reach me at dwoodgate,at futures-labcom, Anytime, and

(01:26:19):
you know I'll probably end up ina WhatsApp call or a Zoom or
whatever it happens to be.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
I encourage everyone to connect with Derek.
Thanks for being on and we'lltalk soon.

Speaker 2 (01:26:33):
Yeah, absolutely, thank you so much.
I love the hosting, I love theprogram and I'm very grateful
for absolutely.
Thank you so much.
I love the hosting, I love theprogram and I'm very grateful
for the invite.
Thank you Anytime.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:26:43):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
Thanks for listening to the Think Forward podcast.
You can find us on all themajor podcast platforms and at
wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as wellas on YouTube under Think
Forward Show.

Speaker 1 (01:26:57):
See you next time.