Jamais Cascio is a San Francisco Bay Area-based writer and ethical futurist specializing in design strategies and possible outcomes for future scenarios.
Contents |
Jamais Cascio lives just outside San Francisco with his wife and two cats.[1] Cascio received his undergraduate degree from UC Santa Cruz and his ABD at UC Berkeley, and began designing future scenarios very early in his work. In the 1990s, Cascio worked for the futurist and scenario planning firm Global Business Network. In 2003, with Alex Steffen he co-founded the popular environmental website Worldchanging, where he wrote the plurality of the site's content, covering topics including urban design, climate science, renewable energy, open source models, emerging technologies, social networks, "leapfrog" global development, and ethical strategies which include a "bright green" approach.[2] After his TED Talk in 2006[3] and his essay "The Open Future"[4] he established his own blog presence at Open the Future[5]...with enough minds, all tomorrows are visible". In 2007 he was a lead author on the Metaverse Roadmap Overview.[6] He is a research fellow at the Institute for the Future,[7] and as scenario design lead along with Jane McGonigal for the "massively multiplayer forecasting game," Superstruct[8] in 2008.[9] Cascio is also a Senior Fellow for the IEET,[10] and a Director of Impacts Analysis for Center For Responsible Nanotech.[11] In 2009 Cascio was selected as Foreign Policy Global top 100 thinkers No. 72 and cited as a "guru of all things on the horizon".[12]
From 2003 to 2006 Cascio helped found and shape the popular bright green sustainability blog and online magazine about sustainability and social innovation Worldchanging.com.
At Worldchanging, he covered a broad variety of topics, from energy and climate change to global development, open source, and bio- and nanotechnologies.[9]
In 2006, Cascio presented a TED Talk at the TED conference "The Future We Will Create," in Monterey, California with his speech Jamais Cascio on tools for a better world; outlining possible available solutions for the emerging world climate and energy crisis. Using a strategy of focusing on positive outcomes and surveying a broad range of design solutions and possible applications including Cradle to Cradle, Open Source, transparency, collaboration, and devices and informational systems that help alter human behavior; Jamais advocated for an active and engaged immediate response to climate issues and peak oil concerns. Jamais also spoke of the cell phone as a primary device for rapid change; clearly outlining the emerging role of the mobile phone as a device that goes far beyond simple personal communications and suggesting some possible expanded informational applications.[3]
In early 2006, Cascio established Open The Future as his online home, a title based on his WorldChanging.com essay, The Open Future. At OTF he writes on a large number of emerging topics emphasizing the emerging transparent and open society.[5]
Cascio currently serves as Director of Impacts Analysis for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.[2]
Cascio is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.[10]
Cascio was a speaker on the "On The Edge of Independent User-Creation In Gamespace" panel at the 2007 SXSW Interactive Festival.[13]
Cascio is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Future where together with Jane McGonigal in 2008 he helped create and administer the large scale collaborative multiplayer game Superstruct as an advanced strategy to engage lots of other hopeful thinkers in the pursuit of possible strategies and positive outcomes of a proposed future scenario occurring in 2019.[9][7]
Cacsio specializes in "Big Picture Thinking", systems thinking, and foresight methodologies. Carefully crafting scenarios of possible future outcomes Cascio is constantly examining emerging social trends in design, technology and ecological whole systems thinking in order to elucidate and amplify the possible benefits of an open and transparent society where information is available to the many and not concentrated in an act of holding power in the hands of a few.[14] His writing of Transhuman Space: Broken Dreams (2003) for the GURPS science fiction role-playing game series "Transhuman Space" established Cascio as a speculative futurist. He speaks and writes frequently on the use of future studies as a tool for anticipating and managing environmental and technological crises. Cascio's work could be classified as techno-progressive. His strategies include possible scenarios of Pandemic, Meteor impact, climate refugees, geoengineering, nanotechnology, AI, machine ethics and the emerging global cultures created and maintained virtually all with ready at hand bright green solutions that merge the technological and the ecological with modern collaborative media. His work is focused on the key drivers and signifiers of change,[15] including the ethical implications of FoxP2 and animal consciousness, the Cheeseburger footprint,[16] fabbing technologies,[17] and a responsible model for molecular manufacturing.[14] Cascio sees the fundamental tools of change as transparency, collaboration and access to information.[14]
(incomplete list)