We all think about the future. But futurists do it in a more structured way. In this conversation with Dr. Wendy Slusser of UCLA’s Livewell podcast, we explored questions of what it’s like to be a futurist. The podcast is available on the Livewell website, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. It is awesome to see the growing interest […]

Review: Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson This new entry into the Abundance territory is a wildly successful bestseller, written in the classic biz book bestseller style of charming or heart-wrenching anecdotes to illustrate the one basic idea of the book. The idea is that we need to build and grow our way to Abundance, […]

How do futurists use guiding images to imagine the future? In this short video, we explore how foresight professionals, strategists, and visionaries use guiding images to shape long-term thinking and innovation. You’ll learn how guiding images help corporations, academic programs, and foresight consultancies around the world explore scenarios, identify and inspire better decisions for the […]

While most of my time is spent looking for positive guiding images of the future, I think it’s important to look at a wide range.  In particular I’m trying to gain some insight into groups who want to return to the past.” I reported on the Bronze Age Mindset, and just finished Quinn Slobodian’s Hayek’s […]

There are aspects of everyday life that we consider so normal that we don’t even question them anymore. We recently discussed how everyone should have a job and go to work, but if we take a historical perspective we see that is a blip of human history. We assume it’s always been so and don’t […]

Curious about how professionals really “see” what’s coming next? At the UH Foresight Program, we’ve had the privilege of collaborating with more than 100 organizations—governments, corporations, non-profits—helping their teams expand their thinking and systematically prepare for the future. If there’s one foundational skill that sets effective futurists apart, it’s scanning: the discipline of spotting signals […]

If I offered you 100% of your salary without working, would you still go to work? What about 90%? 80%? 70%? My early feedback suggests audiences start getting serious about still going to work when I reach 50%! The post-work future is coming! Ironically, this is mostly looked at with fear and trepidation. Pause for […]

While doing some After Capitalism scanning over the weekend, I was surprised – or is it dismayed – by how many references there still are to “there are no alternatives to capitalism.” That was certainly true in the past, but we are seeing more and more ideas emerging about alternatives to capitalism. NOTE: Regular readers […]

Much, if not most, of the work looking at alternatives to capitalism spends a great deal of time focused on the past. This is important to do. I have an undergrad degree in history and I love and appreciate it. But … …we can over-do it. Too much work takes the vantage point that the […]

The University of Houston Foresight Program is kicking off another 5-day virtual boot camp on October 1st that will run on Wednesday mornings from 9am-12:30pm CST and conclude on October 29. We do require participants to do a minimum of 1-3 hours of homework in between the weekly sessions. The course is limited to 30-35 […]

Here is the third of the quarterly check-ins for 2025 on what the signals are saying regarding After Capitalism. (See Q2 2025 here.) Drum roll please! The Right’s War on Capitalism Some on the right are now making the same arguments against capitalism that we’ve heard from the left: “capitalism has made everything about the […]

Peter Hayward, former leader of the great Foresight program at Swinburne that was shut down, has been doing the amazing Futurepod podcast for the last several years. My recent visit was episode 228 ,,, that’s a lot of talking about the future! [Links to podcast here] Peter was kind enough to have me on to […]

I finally got to the brilliant Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel. It is exquisitely researched, informative, insightful, and well worth reading. It is a worthy edition to the ecosystem of ideas emerging around After Capitalism. It is hard-hitting. It is a take-down of capitalism in the sense of […]

The growth question earns a place among the top ten shifts for After Capitalism. Let’s start with the bad news. Growth is practically sacrosanct. We are taking on a fundamental myth-metaphor of human existence. Myth-metaphors don’t change easily and only with great difficulty. To challenge a myth-metaphor is to invite scorn, questioning looks, and whispers […]

HINT: Stick around for a chance to earn a copy of Imagining After Capitalism! Foresight student and chronicler-of-the-future extraordinaire Tristan Markwell (see his Notes from the Future) recorded a conversation with on “what’s happened with the After Capitalism topic since the book launch … and I really like how he sliced up our discussions into […]

A few weeks ago we touched on abundance on a cautionary note as we track the capitalism’s attempt to co-opt it with Techno-Capitalism brewing in the tech sector. The siren song is that we need to support entrepreneurs and the tech sector to stimulate the path to abundance. We are told, or rather it is […]

The After Capitalism plot is thickening. Check out this nice review of the book on Substack. But perhaps more interesting is who it came from and the work he and his institute are doing! Matt Orsagh founded the Arketa Institute to lend focus to his work on post-growth finance. His substack is Degrowth is the […]

Capitalism’s view of nature is that it is something to be conquered and exploited. The more science and technology has advanced, the greater our sense of dominance over nature has grown … to the point where we see ourselves above it. It’s become something we need to be protected from it. Nature is something to […]

Hopefully, the newly popular Techno-Capitalism will quietly fade away. But we know that hope is not a strategy and we may have to gear up to fight this. Our After Capitalism version is Tech-Led Abundance with the core argument being the move from a scarcity to an abundance mindset and redistribution of that abundance. Technology […]

A very nice review of Imagining After Capitalism by Tristan Markwell, a student in our Houston Foresight program [BTW, his Notes from the Future series is absolutely top-shelf!] I really like how he summarizes the images in a crisp fashion, but also do appropriate service to the seven key drivers getting us there. I can’t […]

(Last time we covered Shift #1 From First To Second Tier Values) Stop and think about our daily life. Our overriding purpose centers on our economic contribution. Am I doing my duty in terms of bringing in money, and then spending that money? Practically everything is monetized. Certainly, access to the essentials of life such […]

I have a new short piece on how Imagining After Capitalism relates to transformation (perfect for a little holiday reading). It highlights the “Image Analysis Template” that was developed to help us analyze as well as construct guiding images of the future. As a refresher, a guiding image is defined as “a positive aspirational view […]

Our biggest fear in writing the Activating the Future book and teaching the class is the head nod. The head nod is when something makes immediate sense. It seems and perhaps is obvious. It immediately registers an “I agree” reaction. Much of the content of the book and class will likely elicit such a reaction. […]

Another way to phrase this is: From ONE-RIGHT-WAY (traditional, modern, and postmodern) VALUES to MULTIPLE WAYS (integral) is the #1 shift needed for After Capitalism. Integral values are the first 2nd-tier type to emerge. The tier concept comes from Beck and Cowan’s (1996) Spiral Dynamics. The distinction is that holders of Tier one values believe […]

Here is the second of the quarterly check-ins for 2025 on what the signals are saying regarding After Capitalism. (See Q1 2025 here.) Drum roll please! Hyper-individualistic and Focused on Worth, the Manosphere Is a Product of Neoliberalism Neoliberalism encourages us to see ourselves as isolated individuals, responsible for our own success or failure. Among many […]

Note: I’m thinking of an occasional series of some key aspects of foresight, which I can in return relate to the future of After Capitalism. Let’s start with one of my favorites. It goes way back to my early days as a budding futurist when I repeatedly heard “we love your work, but we don’t […]

Brace yourself. If you’re not familiar with the Bronze Age Pervert, it can be shocking. I debated whether to indirectly promote this book by blogging on it, as it has some pretty abominable material. I netted out that it’s better to be aware of what is going on – no matter how reprehensible – than […]

I reviewed dozens of books and reports touching on aspects of After Capitalism. Ultimately, I selected twenty-eight works for deeper analysis with an image analysis template that I crafted specifically for this project. It was significantly influenced by the ideas and materials from a summer elective class offered by Houston Foresight in 2016 called “Images […]

“We are still here,” cried special guest Morpheus at the UH Foresight 50th Anniversary Celebration from May 1-3. Higher education has not been kind to foresight programs. Ours is the first grad program dedicated to foresight to make it to 50 years. Many have come and gone over the years, and we had our own […]

With the proverbial magic wand, and one change to make to facilitate the transformation to After Capitalism, I choose …. Shifting Values! Regular readers know I’ve been championing values shifts for some time (see Consumershift). I also cite Donella Meadows work on leveraging systems change, which asserts that that paradigm shift is the most effective […]