What if, instead of restaurant and store information, we could access historical, artistic, demographic, environmental, architectural, and other kinds of information embedded in the real world?

Microlearning, an abundant ecology of

■ Sensemaking: the ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed ■ Social and emotional intelligence: the ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions ■ Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at coming up with solutions and responses beyond

To construct a perfect scenario would require having answers to all the uncertainties—and if we had those answers, we wouldn’t need to create scenarios!

That is why, when developing scenarios, it is helpful to focus on larger transformations that underlie them and that are irrefutable, the ones we truly believe will inevitably come about. These larger transformations point to a direction

If you want to build a ship, don’t gather people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Socialstructed governance, as exemplified in the New Agora scenario, has four key elements: rich and open data for making informed decisions; sophisticated decision-support tools for exploring alternatives and uncovering complex interdependencies; engagement platforms for wide citizen involvement and deliberation; and microparticipation of regular

Think about maps, for example. Maps of all kinds (political, economic, ecological) aggregate data to create representations of reality. But these are top-down views, often representing political and power relations that determine what gets mapped and what gets left out as much as how things are

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.