Wendy McGuinness, Reluctant Futurist, Live from TEDx Auckland

Wendy's going to discuss that now is a good place, but also the dangers of now and how to excape out of now. They came up with the concept of timelines, and the biggest one they could think of was the timeline of the planet. So she's showing some fossils, the first one is 2.3 BILLION years old. Now she's taking us on a little journey through evolution, with the next fossil being 535 million years old.
 
Two fossils later, we're at 120 million years old, and then 50 million years old. If you took a baby born 180,000 years ago and raised it today, it would work exactly the same -- no evolutionary leap in our bodies for the last 180,000 years. If you get the perspective of all this time that has come before, and think that you are the starting point for everything to come, you can start to realise that this is our watch, it's our responsibility.
 
Futures Studies: The Theory
Three sights: hindsight, insight and foresight.
Three Ps: Probable future, Possible future, and Preferred future.
Four steps: Define, Explore, Build, Use
 
Quick example of hindsight, insight and foresight: around 97 billion people have been born so far. Of them, 90 billion have died. Of the 7 billion left, 3 billion live on $2 or less a day. Of the 4 billion now left, half are too old, too young, or too sick, and you're left with the 2 billion people who are in the best position to shape the future of the planet.
 
They're using an evidence=based approach to their work. They've identified four probable futures, but haven't identified a preferred future. To do this work, you need to know what the global drivers of change are: climate change, political systems, terrorism, etc. These are divided into primary change agents (can't change them) secondary change agents (can change them) and wild cards.
 
Matrix of poor/well NZ/world -- ideal is of course well NZ and well world. It could be well NZ and poor world -- an island paradise back in the jungle -- but that was a fail. Poor NZ poor world was a big FAIL. Poor NZ and well world (missed the global bus) was also a fail. The only winnable outcome was a well NZ and well world -- we are this one great organism.