Gerdtalks #12 on August 1, 2022, was a very special Gerdtalks show with my guest Aline Frankfort, Shapership Leader, Visiting Professor, Club Of Rome Member. We discussed why we believe there is hope for the future. We live in a Perma-Change World, and lately an increasingly pessimistic view of the future and a strange new hopelessness seems to prevail – especially among the Gen Z & Y generations (see the charts below).
There are many reasons for this – beyond covid19, climate change, or the Russia/Ukraine war – but I reckon it may also be due to the fact that narrative about the future is dominated either by Big Tech (Meta, Google, IBM, Amazon, Baidu etc) or by Hollywood (or shall we say, “StreamyWood” i.e. Netflix et al). Most of what we see on our screens today seems to either involve technology quite literally saving us (resulting in the so-called singularity), or technology enslaving us (exemplified in the various black-mirroresque dystopias).
Aline and me think this is a lousy way to look at the future, and we think a more ‘protopian‘ approach is much better suited for society, and for shaping our future. We also believe that how we look at the future is existential – as futurist Barbara Hubbard (RiP) liked to say: ‘As we see the future so we act; as we act so we become'.
The original live-stream of this episode was blocked right after the stream due to a quite odd copyright claim by the Ted people – I used a short clip of Christina Figueres from a recent Ted Counterpoint show, bringing home some key points on optimism and climate change and was promptly blocked. Bizarre. In any case, above is the edited version (no Christina:).
Check gerdtalks.com for more details. You can download this video via Vimeo.
Check Aline's website as well.