The Craft of Forecasting Our Possible Futures: A Conversation with Jane McGonigal

When it comes to big social and economic shifts, no one can predict the future; the level of complexity is just too great. Scenarios let us construct plausible, internally consistent visions that help us frame the range of possibilities and the kinds of issues we are likely to confront along the way.

So I’m sharing the next scenario with you as a small step toward action. If you take a mental time trip to this future, maybe you’ll see something that excites you too, or expands the vision, or identifies a risk or obstacle that I haven’t seen yet.

expert scenario designers at the Institute for the Future

This social imagining can take the form of two people keeping their own handwritten journals in separate notebooks, writing down a few thoughts each day, and then trading the journals at the end of the simulation to compare the futures they dreamed. Or it can take the form of a group email, with all participants replying daily or weekly with a new

The scenario I want to simulate first is: