Sarah is a trend forecaster, futurist and social scientist with a background in studying youth culture and social media.
A high-tech neighborhood that was slated to rise along Toronto’s waterfront, Quayside was the brainchild of Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation arm of Google parent company Alphabet. Projected to create 44,000 jobs and $14.2 billion annually in GDP for Canada, the interconnected smart city would’ve housed residents in 12 timber high-rises designed... See more
The longer view is coming into human consciousness in part because of the radical danger of the immediate moment – which is that humanity might create a mass extinction event and wreck Earth’s biosphere for all the generations of humans to come, plus of course the many species that would be driven to extinction.
People understand things through narratives, including the future. Everyone is the science fiction writer of their own life. When hoping for a good life, and thinking about what might bring that about, we are utopian writers; when fearful that bad things will happen, we are dystopian writers.
The Goop-ification that marked the last decade of consumerism (as exemplified by Gwyneth Paltrow’s feel-good nostrums) shows increasing signs of decay as shoppers, especially Gen Z, exhibit a more critical eye.