Portals to Beautiful Futures

About

The PORTALS report imagines possible futures arising out of today’s disasters. It is the latest installment of the annual Trends to Watch series, curated by Exploration and Future Sensing team to support Omidyar Network’s mission of reimagining systems to build more inclusive and equitable societies.

Created in collaboration with Guild of Future Architects, the 2021 report distills four open-ended provocations, designed to stir imagination and action, from a yearlong process of collective foresight. Between November 2019 and February 2021, the Guild invited 1,000 people to participate in a series of virtual sessions asking how systems that shape our daily lives could become more just and inclusive by 2036. A critical part of looking ahead was also looking back at how we arrived at today’s social, economic, and political realities.

Role: Exploration and Future Sensing Fellow; Collaborator
Organization: Omidyar Network

Here are the provocations:

1. What if shared well-being became the standard of success for our nations?

2. Are we ready to move from an era that rewards extraction to one that prioritizes regeneration?

3. How will we move from an era of destabilizing information into an age of trusted wisdom?

4. Can we dismantle industrial-age silos between work, home, education, play, and community?

Each one pairs with a “Spectrum of Possibility” exercise to stir your own thinking about how imagined futures could become reality. Taken together, we hope that these provocations offer useful foundations for people working now to build tomorrow’s systems.