Imaginable - Jane McGonigal

Partial Excerpts (antilibrary)

Copyright

2022

Introduction

Welcome to the Age of Unimaginable Events and Unthinkable Change

Chapter Six: Look for Clues

For futurists, the raw material is clues. We collect, combine, and build future scenarios out of clues to how the future might be different.

I call this way of looking at the world strangesight

Strangesight is a precursor to foresight

you have to fill your brain with clues. And there is one kind of clue, in particular, that futurists are trained to detect and work with: signals of change.

A signal of change is a concrete example of how the world could one day be different.

You know you’ve found a signal if you can tell a story about it

The philosopher Sam Keen has said, “To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions

Since that day at the park, I’ve become a user of drone technology myself, so I can gain firsthand knowledge and work through my own discomfort

A chance encounter with a signal of change can help you cultivate your curiosity about important new technologies, ideas, and social movements. And it can inspire you to try doing something different yourself, right now

I started donating regularly to Witness, an organization that helps people use video and technology to document injustice and protect human rights

My husband, a writer and filmmaker, started incorporating drone footage into his own videos

Finally, I added “drone infrastructure” and “drone surveillance” to the ethical technology trainings that I help run for the Institute for the Future—so that participants in our trainings, from city mayors to Silicon Valley executives, can be in conversation with each other about the long-term risks and benefits of transforming our skie

Alan Watts wrote, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”4 You’re less likely to be shocked by the future, or to feel left out of it, if you jump in to be a part of the changes that are already underway

how do we transmute that raw material into a story about a possible future? Here’s the fastest way to turn a signal into a scenario: describe a world in which the signal of change is no longer strange.

Many of my students tell me that looking for signals of change is the most enduring habit they’ve picked up from my classes

Chapter Seven: Choose Your Future Forces

Picking just a few future forces to track over the next few years of your life is a relatively small commitment with a potentially huge positive impact. I recommend doing one search a month, to learn just one new thing

At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of twenty-four future forces that I recommend to inspire your next search for clues.

Now let’s play with a scenario inspired by a future force that makes many people hopeful: the reinvention of higher education and new opportunities for affordable, lifelong learning

This is a future force I think about a lot. Ten years from today, my twin daughters will be applying to college—if they want to go to college, that is

There is one possibility in particular that makes me want to stand on a mountaintop and yell, “HEY! Does anyone else think this is an amazing idea? Does anyone else want to make this future too?”

One of the game’s participants flipped the fact “Today, college students have to pick a major, like biology, business administration, English literature, or political science” to “Ten years from now, college students have to pick a grand challenge, like climate action, ending poverty, gender equality, or zero hunger.”

careers, instead of being about choosing an industry or profession, would be more about deciding what problem you want to help humanity solve—as an engineer, mental health counselor, filmmaker, journalist, investment banker, nutritionist, marketing creative, social worker, or whatever else you might do with your days

she’d been part of a project by design students and faculty at Stanford University to imagine how learning might change between the years 2025 and 2100, and this was one of the top five futures they’d come up with

I’ve considered homeschooling my daughters around a different grand challenge each year

I’m right at the start of that magic ten-year timeline when it comes to thinking about my family’s possible higher education future. Maybe that’s why I can feel so wildly optimistic that this ridiculous, at first, idea is possible—and that I can personally help make it so. I know I can’t sit around for the next decade and just hope it happens

Future Scenario #6: “Have You Declared Your Challenge Yet?”

Declaring a major used to feel like a personal decision, but declaring a challenge feels like joining an epic mission.