Future Today Institute

🔒 Cybersecurity watch: the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has reported that, earlier this year, hackers took control of multiple Ecovacs Deebot X2 robot vacuums across the United States. Hackers were able to bypass the four-digit PIN to access the robot's video feed, remote control feature and speaker system. They then used this access to hurl profanity and racial slurs at the unuspecting product owners. Think about all of the smart technology in your home. It's not just Alexa or Siri or Google Assistant anymore. It's smart televisions, thermostats, lights, appliances, doorbells and so much more. These devices have access to our most personal spaces, collecting data and, in some cases, even watching or listening to us 🤖 The implications of these hacks go beyond just immediate privacy invasions. If a simple vacuum can be turned into a vehicle for harassment, what happens when bad actors target more critical systems? The trade-off between convenience and security is becoming increasingly clear – smart technology requires smarter security. #Cybersecurity #Smartdevices #Dataprivacy

It’s time for another Foresight FAQ! On today's docket: what’s the point of trend reports? Look, trend reports are like movie recommendations 🎥They make you aware of emerging technologies and forces of change – just like hearing about a great film clues you into its existence. But here’s the thing: if you don’t actually watch "The Godfather," what purpose does the recommendation serve? Sure, it might help you answer a Jeopardy question, but it won’t really enrich your life. The same goes for trend reports. Simply reading them isn’t enough. You have to engage with the insights, integrating them into your strategy and making decisions based on the findings. That’s how a trend report goes from being a collection of interesting ideas to something that truly shapes your company's future 📈 There's another key point: trends don’t exist in isolation. They show us what we can know about the future, but they don’t account for all the things we don't yet know – the uncertainties. If we rely solely on trends, we’re only getting half the picture. So, what’s the point of trend reports? They're to help your company identify the forces shaping the future and empower you to act on them, so you can successfully navigate change. #StrategicForesight #TrendReport #Trends #Uncertainties

This weekend a few of our Future Today Institute employees stumbled out of Manhattan and into... Wonderland? That is, we visited the New York Botanical Garden to check out "Homegrown Wonderland" – a mycelium-based pavilion 🍄 At FTI, we are always exploring how innovations in materials and design can reshape the spaces we live in. This structure uses #mycelium bricks, developed from the root structure of mushrooms, as a key building material. The #biomaterials company behind the bricks, Ecovative - the mycelium technology company, is also using mycelium to create food, textiles and packaging. An example of circular design, the bricks from the Botanical Garden's Homegrown Wonderland will eventually be composted and the timber reused – hinting at a future where buildings grow, adapt and return to the Earth 🌱

Check it out: Future Today Institute Founder & CEO Amy Webb delivered a keynote speech at last month's United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit 🌎 Her message? As technology continues to evolve, we must use #strategicforesight to align on shared goals for a sustainable future.

The Future Today Institute team is hard at work on our 2025 Tech Trends Report, building on the insights from the 2024 edition! This past year's theme, the technology #supercycle, explored how the intersection of #AI, #biotechnology and #connectables is reshaping the fabric of our world. The supercycle – traditionally, a sustained period of booming demand that drives structural economic changes – will touch every aspect of society. The 2024 report covered 16 industries and technologies, from financial services and insurance to #Web3. If you haven't checked it out yet, now’s the perfect time to dive in before the next wave of trends arrives! 🚀

🏔️ In discussions about #climatechange, we often focus on the immediate effects like rising temperatures and increased droughts. But as the article below highlights, we need to look beyond the surface and consider the next-order impacts. Case in point: #Switzerland and #Italy are redrawing borders due to melting glaciers. This time, it’s a peaceful agreement – but what happens in the future? As once-uninhabitable land becomes accessible, could we see tensions rise over territorial claims? Could conflicts emerge over newly valuable resources? 🚩 When something like climate change stands to reshape our global landscape, #strategicforesight allows us to consider and act on plausible outcomes.

An essential part of our work at Future Today Institute is closely monitoring legislation in order to understand the potential impacts on business, investment and innovation. The vetoing of one such bill, California's #SB1047, has left us with a range of new uncertainties that could shape the future of #AIregulation. Here are some key areas that we'll be monitoring: ‣ Will the next version of the bill be more sweeping or more narrow? ‣ Will it focus on use-based regulation? ‣ Will there be an emphasis on algorithmic impact assessments? ‣ Will #AI safety advocates align with anti-technology groups? ‣ How will public sentiment influence regulatory decisions? ‣ What compromises will be made between innovation and safety? While there is so much yet unknown, two things are for sure: the conversation around AI regulation is far from over, and even companies that aren’t yet using AI will feel the ripple effects of these decisions.

What will #AI look like in 2030? According to Amy Webb, we're due for Personal Large Action Models - or "advanced AI agents designed to replicate and emulate our unique decision-making processes" 👀 Amy and other experts break it down in The Wall Street Journal. https://lnkd.in/eGBVP_bv

We're thrilled to share that FTI Founder & CEO Amy Webb will once again return to the SXSW stage as a featured speaker! Austin, here we come! 💫

A truly brilliant analysis of #foresight from renowned computer scientist and mathematician, Rear Adm. Grace Hopper, in a recently released 1982 lecture to the National Security Agency: “Along came a gentleman named Henry Ford with two concepts: standard interchangeable parts and an assembly line, and he started to build Model Ts. I think we’ve totally forgotten how tremendously that changed the world. You could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black, they cost between three hundred and six hundred dollars, and people started to own cars. Naturally, had once they had cars, they demanded roads, we built them. Gas stations appeared, garages were stocked with interchangeable parts… People found they could move to suburbs and drive to work – and then of course they wanted to shop near home, so we had to build shopping centers. I think we’ve forgotten the tremendous developments that followed from the Model T Ford. Now, whether you recognize it or not, the Model Ts of the computer industry are here. We’ve been through the preliminaries of the industry – we’re now at the beginning of what will be the largest industry in the United States, and I’m quite worried about something. When we built all those roads and the shopping centers and all the other things, and provided for automobile transportation, we forgot something. We forgot transportation as a whole. We only looked at the automobiles. Because of that, today, when we need them again, the road beds, the railroads are falling apart… If we wanted to move our tanks from the center of the country to the ports to shipped them overseas, there are no flat cars left because we move all the cars on those racks on the roads now. If we wanted to move coal to replace oil, there are probably not enough hopper cars to move both the grain crop and the coal – and the truth of the matter is we’ve done a lousy job of managing transportation as a whole. Now, as we come to the world of the microcomputer, I think we’re going to be facing the same possibility. I’m afraid we will continue to buy pieces of hardware and then put programs on them, when what we should be doing is looking at the underlying thing, which is the total flow of information.” Watch the full video, titled "Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People,” below👇