The Futurists

This week on The Futurists we are joined by renowned journalist and a true renaissance man, Monty Munford. Monty has appeared on the BBC, written for Forbes, The Telegraph and contributed to TechCrunch, Mashable, Fast Company, Huffington Post, Wired, MIT Technology Review, The Independent, The Guardian, Financial Times, and The Times of India. He explains why he’s had to become a futurist to do his day job better, and why tech continues to be so disruptive to our social order. 

On this weeks futurist we have the return of New York Times Bestselling Author, Kevin J Anderson. In this week’s episode Kevin takes on a journey as to how technology has dramatically changed his connection with his readers for the publication of new books, including multiple very successful Kickstarter campaigns. We talk writing for the Dune and Start Wars Universes, and dive into Dan Shambles, the detective every zombie needs.

Legendary sci fi author, astrophysicist, and NASA advisor David Brin rejoins the Futurists for a special first anniversary show. Topics include: Wall Street’s insatiable AIs, Karl Marx and capitalism, the magic of competition, Hollywood tropes, self-preventing prophecies, the flaw in Asimov’s laws of robotics and hope for a positive sum game. 

This week The Futurists speak with Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of Code for America. Jennifer served in Barack Obama’s White House as the US Deputy Chief Technology Officer where she launched the US Digital Service. In this episode, Jennifer reveals the tactics to surmount the myriad obstacles that thwart government agencies when they seek to deploy digital technology to improve the delivery of services to citizens. 

Dr. Cain Elliott discusses the digitization of the legal industry, driven by client demand not lawyers. Topics include the broken business model of legal services, political barriers to change, and the transformative potential of legal tech.

Theo Priestley is a Futurist based in Scotland and he’s mentored Silicon Valley startups, has written hundreds of articles on AI, IoT, Web3, Metaverse, Fintech and he’s the author of “The Future Starts Now” . He has a habit of making some big bets on the future, but also he’s not afraid to put out his thoughts on the future as they develop. Priestley is a contrarian at heart though, and his futurist lens comes from the conflict between technological advancements, policy development and human nature. It’s not always clear which of these will win out as the future unfolds, and Priestley is not afraid to play off this uncertainty.

This week on the Futurists, Dan Jeffries, Managing Director of the AI Infrastructure Alliance and CIO at Stability.AI talks the doomsayers attacking ChatGPT, and the overblown fear over AI. Jeffries argues there are historical precedents for human adaptation to the disruptive technology of AI, but that learning to live with another intelligence might be a bit more challenging.

This week on the Futurists we catch up with Fox/CNBC tech commentator Shelly Palmer as we dive into the implications of ever pervasive technology in our lives. Shelly, has been following consumer trends for 2 decades and is a mainstay at events like CES, but he says AI is a different sort of beast. We dive into how technology will augment and change our lives moving forward.

This week on The Futurists we get into the future of cybercrime and personal security in the smart world with renowned “security guru” Bruce Schneier. The author of over a dozen books (his latest bestseller being “A Hacker’s Mind”), Lecturer on Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Congressional advisor and Media personality. Will AI and Quantum kill passwords? How secure will your DNA records be? The answers might surprise you. https://www.schneier.com/blog/about/

Julian Bleecker of the Near Future Laboratory has developed a novel way to forecast: he constructs prototypes, products and artifacts from future scenarios. Then he designs the marketing material, including ad campaigns and brochures and catalogs, to interrogate the wider impact on consumer society and human behavior. These techniques are set forth in Julian’s book, The Manual of Design Fiction: A Practical Guide to Exploring The Near Future.  https://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/