I've spent the last ten years working with frameworks for thinking about the future

but there's one I've grown obsessed with in 2020

it's called the Four Futures framework, and it's an amazingly powerful tool for thinking about what comes next

thread 👇 2. The Four Futures framework says any model we have of the future falls inevitably into one of four categories:

– Growth

– Collapse

– Discipline

– Transformation

you can apply this framework to the future of *anything*, including your own life

let's dive deeper

The pandemic is doing wild things to education.

This chemistry professor used Cameo to get Snoop Dogg to send a message to his class:

https://twitter.com/kawaiitlyn/status/1300689418961915904

more 👇 2. This history professor blew up when he included an easter egg in his syllabus

a request for students to send him a YouTube link of their favourite 90s song.

https://twitter.com/jsench/status/1301927621542936579

1. I was head of research and analysis at @trendwatching for seven years

advised brands from Google to Marriott, and many in between, on consumer trends

spoke at conferences everywhere

here is the simple, powerful framework my team used to spot emerging trends

*thread 👇* 2. New trends in human behaviour and mindset are made of two building blocks

(i) change and (ii) fundamental human needs

the key?

new trends emerge when *change unlocks new ways to serve fundamental human needs* such as convenience, value, security, or status

let's go deeper

The first Wednesday news instalment of New World Same Humans drops later today 🔥

To say I'm in love with the new title image would be an understatement...

1. Last week, Obama implored citizens to vote in the November Presidential election.

Students in the UK protested over algorithmically-generated exam results.

Two seemingly disconnected snapshots of 2020.

But I think there is a deep underlying connection.

*Thread* 👇🏼 2. That connection is to do with the way the individual is situated within modernity.

Modernity was a project to serve human needs. It was informed by the Enlightenment vision of humans as, above all else, free and rational individuals.

In this week's New World Same Humans I wrote about a trend called The Represented Self.

It's about the proliferation of algorithms through our daily lives, and the impact of that on our behaviour 🔮

*thread* 👇🏼 We live in a set of overlapping spaces: social, economic, creative. And we’ve become accustomed to the idea that many of those spaces are shaped by algorithms.

But this is still day one.

Right now, change seems fast and chaotic. This week's New World Same Humans is about finding structure amid the chaos.

Specifically, it's about three emerging trends.

Each one will help shape the strange decade that lies ahead of us 🔮

newworldsamehumans.substack.com/p/new-world-sa…

/THREAD 🔎 Truth Verticals: a new ecosystem of armies in the information war.

New communities will assemble around subject-specific verticals, and work to disseminate the truth.

They will use new tech to expose deepfakes, and tell new stories that make the truth compelling.

In this week's New World Same Humans...

The pandemic has prompted a Great Unbundling. Some highly consequential industries are coming apart.

The common denominator amid all this change?

It's the human need for learning.

/THREAD The industries that are falling apart aren't doing so in a random way. They're coming apart at the seams.

That's because most industries are bundles: collections of services tied together and delivered in one package.

This piece on the faith it takes to build a business, the current existential crisis in the travel industry, and hopes for a new radical localism by Skift founder @rafat is insightful and actually pretty moving:

skift.com/2020/07/30/thi… I think/hope it's true that the reimagining of local networks is one of the big trends of the 2020s.

The last few months have done so much to remind us of the power of local networks, resources, and people in a globalised world.

This week in New World Same Humans: we need to talk about neural networks.

Sure, a lot of the GPT-3 hype was naive. But look: some of the anti-hype is naive, too. That is, it trades on ill-founded assumptions about the nature of minds.

Thread...

newworldsamehumans.substack.com/p/new-world-sa… I’m not here to pour fuel on the fire of naïve GPT-3 hype. But it seems to me that it’s no longer a trivial matter to defend the idea that neural networks such as GPT-3 are not minds. Because that defence relies on us knowing things about minds that we don’t, in truth, know.

I agree with everything Emily Maitlis said but you have to admit it was not impartial.

'Boris Johnson has blind loyalty to Cummings' is not a matter of fact, it is a subjective opinion. And if we let that go or pretend otherwise, we embolden the enemies of the BBC, who want to run it down and minimise it's role in British life.

We amplify the voice of people who would have a UK version of Fox News.

The new Ipsos Global Trends Survey reveals 'climate emergency' is the most strongly-held shared value worldwide 🌎

A full 80% of people across 32 countries believe ‘we are heading for environmental disaster unless we change our habits quickly.’

I have some thoughts... That finding has been driven by recent highly visible events, such as the Australia wildfires.

Also new global movements for change, such as XR, and the arrival of charismatic leaders, including Greta 💪

But...

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The story that @carolecadwalla is telling becomes more amazing and terrifying with each passing week theguardian.com/technology/201… .@carolecadwalla Amazingly diligent, fearless and powerful investigate journalism. Crucial questions about how Brexit was won. Please listen to her.