The conversation regarding catalysts that drive human action has been fascinating. This poll initially launched back in February has had a great response – with some great insight. Please take the poll if you have not already.
One of our Lessons from History was the presence of catalysts that drove actions that ultimately shaped our future. The major catalysts of the second revolution were astounding levels of innovation,
World War One, The Great Depression, World War Two, and the eventual democratization of innovation. What catalysts force stakeholder actions that ultimately shape our emerging future? Please help me build on this list and identify the most significant catalysts. Choose all catalysts that you feel will contribute – or add anything that I am missing. For a deeper description of catalysts, please see the lessons from history post.
Reimagining the Future 
While there are a lot of catalysts which are forcing the future as we foresee today , I feel innovation is the most relevant of these catalysts. It is at the heart of every change happening around us.
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In no particular order:
The Internet
Remote Work
Task-based Work (Gig Economy)
Populism
Climate Change & Refugees
Digital Propaganda
Surveillance Capitalism
Biosphere Degradation
Bio-tech
Nano-tech
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Hi Frank, it’s Rosie England (Anthony’s mom). I stumbled upon your post and participated in your survey. I added Political Intolerance to the list. I posted an essay on the topic a few months back, and got a lot of positive responses. Futurism is entirely new to me, but I have a great interest in Social Science, which is why it caught my eye, however, I pretty sure I’m out of my league here…
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Surely pace of innovation is an outcome, while the catalysts are Demand and Necessity (‘…mother of all invention’)? Paranoia and fear unfortunately still affects decision makers all too often, and unrest etc are symptomatic of frustration with abusive, corrupt administration. Given that we are still looking to the future, I would hope the following will once again drive stakeholder actions:
– Exploration and Compulsion to Evolve (scientific endeavour)
– Problem solving (hunger, education, health, environment)
– Need for Economic and Technical efficiency (to counter waste, impact, loss etc)
– Opportunities to improve current state of human condition (elevate thinking, improve progress etc)
– Preservation of Freedom and need for Transparency and Accountability (reduce political inefficiencies, corruption, bureaucracy etc)
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[…] explore these themes, I launched a Poll focused on catalysts. A look at history is very instructive, as several dynamics from that period […]
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It’s interesting that items 2-4 (climate change, geopolitical instability and societal unrest), which represent about half the votes, seem highly correlated.
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