Collaborative Foresight: How to Game the Future

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About Course

You’ll never have a complete picture of what’s possible in the future if you look at it from just one point of view. The best way to expand your vision? Engage as many people as you can, and “game out” the possibilities together.

In this course, you’ll learn how to use collaborative gaming techniques to go beyond your own thinking and see many, many different sides of the same future. Over the past decade, the Institute for the Future has pioneered new methods in “massively-multiplayer foresight.” You’ll learn how to adapt these methods to get diverse, surprising views of what’s possible, build your empathy for other people’s futures, and reduce your risk of being “blindsided” by the future. This course features content from the Ethical Operating System, a tool created by the Institute in collaboration with Omidyar Networks’ Tech and Society Lab. It’s designed to help technology companies anticipate risks and prevent unwanted consequences of the things they build. Whether or not you work in tech, the Ethical Operating System will give you the chance to participate right now in an urgent future forecasting game. The stakes of the game are the future of truth, privacy, democracy, security, and our collective well-being. It’s a unique opportunity to join creative and strategic forces with people who are making the tech that’s inventing the future, and with fellow futures thinkers like you. Many thanks to the Enlight Foundation and the Enlight Collaborative, which provided a grant to support the creation of this course.

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What Will You Learn?

  • Design and run a multiplayer forecasting game
  • Game out hard-to-predict consequences in any future scenario
  • Anticipate long-term harms of new technologies and how to prevent them
  • Create diverse, inclusive futures thinking communities

Course Content

Week 1: Introduction to Collaborative Foresight

  • 1.1 Survey about the future!
  • 1.2 Welcome to this course – Meet your professor, Jane McGonigal(video)
    01:30
  • 1.3 Why the Future is Like a Game(video)
    06:21
  • 1.4 Collaborative Foresight Skills Brief: Your
  • 1.5 Introduce yourself!

Week 1: Introduction to Gaming the Future

Week 1: How to Play a Massively Multiplayer Forecasting Game

Week 2: The Future Wheel

Week 2: 5 Future Scenarios to Game

Week 3: Introduction to Positive and Shadow Imagination

Week 3: The Future of Empathy

Week 3: Advanced Positive and Shadow Imagination

Week 4: Leading Edge Interviews

Week 4: The Four Future Feelings Tool

Week 5: What’s an Epic Win?

Week 5: The Equitable Future Card Game

Week 5: Congratulations! You’ve Successfully Gamed the Future!

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