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Advancing beneficial technology
Foresight Institute is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1986 on a vision of coming revolutions in technology that will bring extraordinary opportunities, as well as unprecedented challenges. Foresight’s mission is to steer those revolutions toward futures of Existential Hope.
If we push in the right directions — learning, teaching, arguing, shifting directions, and pushing further — then we may yet steer the technology race toward a future with room enough for our dreams.
—K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation
Join our reflection on creating positive futures
Foresight Hive Mind
April 25 @ 11:00 am - May 15 @ 12:00 pm PDT
Molecular Precision for Climate and Environment: Foresight Technical Competition
September 5 - September 6
News and Updates
05.11.20
Strengthened Communities: how can resilient and agile communities and orgs, in contrast to authoritarian regimes, emerge stronger as preferred global points for coordination?
Today Monday 05/11, 11 AM PT, 8 PM CEST
Discover our formidable panel:
Zarinah Agnew, Embassy Network: www.zarinahagnew.com/
Glen Weyl, RadicalXChange: www.radicalxchange.org/team/
Alex Gladstein, Human Rights Foundation: hrf.org/team/alex-gladstein/
--------> meet in the zoom room & enter the Hive Mind: foresight.org/hive-mind/ ... See MoreSee Less
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05.10.20
#ENTER THE HIVE MIND | Week 2 Videos, Summary & Join Weeks 3 on Cooperative Global Systems - mailchi.mp/foresight/hivemind-week2 ... See MoreSee Less
05.07.20
Tomorrow Friday 05/08/2020, 11:00 AM PT / 8 pm CEST.
How can we use the creativity around online experiences to jumpstart the economy and create innovative accessible virtual education, work, life?
Discover our fabulous panel:
Ingrid LaFleur, The Afrofuture Strategies Institute: afrofuturestrategies.com
Erica Frank, NextGenU: nextgenu.org/
Michael Morgenstern, Everything is Film:
Clarissa Rias Rojas, Global Young Academy: www.ekpapalek.com/
--------> meet in the zoom room & enter the Hive Mind: foresight.org/hive-mind/ ... See MoreSee Less
05.07.20
Today, 11 am PDT / 8 pm PDT: How can current work on privacy-preserving contact-tracing and other distributed ledger technologies be expanded to increase coordination across people?
Primavera de Filippi, Berkman Klein Center
Jeffrey Ladish, Foresight Fellow
Brian Behlendorf, Linux
Peter Eckersley
This panel is part of the Foresight HiveMind, our three-week global online workshop seeking opportunities for change from COVID-19. There is still time to join: foresight.org/hive-mind ... See MoreSee Less
05.06.20
Join us in less than 2 hours: 11 am PDT/ 8 pm CEST
How can emerging health awareness due to COVID-19 be leveraged to promote a focus on prevention of disease and aging as a root cause?
- Ole Mensching, Apollo Ventures
- Aubrey de Grey SENS Research Foundation
- Sonia Arrison Senkut, 100 Plus Capital
- Reason, FightAging
Part of the Hive Mind, our three-week global online salon seeking change from COVID-19. Enter the Hive Mind: foresight.org/hive-mind/ ... See MoreSee Less
This notification came in after the fact, but in terms of age related illness, what can we learn from children who have a much lower infection rate? And is it that they have an innate immunity or a more active thymus? It's not like children don't get sick. What is special about Covid19 and kids, then?
05.05.20
This unique #GivingTuesdayNow, we need your help:
We are a small organization, entirely funded by your donations. Through our technical competitions, strategy meetings, and public salons, we generate much of our impact and support our fellows, Feynman Prize winners, and many of you in developing beneficial technologies. We are working hard to bring Foresight’s comparative advantage to this crisis, support our community virtually, and help us together find ways out. That said, we are looking toward unprecedented times.
Any additional financial support makes a big difference, even in default times. Now, through the current crisis, your support is critical. Please help us deploy all of Foresight’s skill and expertise so that we can together emerge stronger into a new tomorrow. There are many silver linings; unlikely possibilities are unfolding rapidly into tangible opportunities for change, and we are awakening a global virtual community. We are ready to seize those opportunities but we cannot do it without your financial support.
With the start of shelter in place, we launched daily online salons to knit this community together, expand it globally and help each other make sense of COVID-19 and beneficial ways out. Last week we launched the Foresight Hivemind, a three-week global online workshop, to develop promising opportunities for change into action. The goal is to grow a global community of contributors so that the projects garner simultaneous support across the world. This event is donation-based to allow a diversity of minds to attend; we are humbled by how many of you have joined, currently 500+ participants across the world, many of whom meet daily to seek beneficial long-term futures in times of acute crisis.
We’re currently in a unique position and we’d love your help: While we’re worried about a potential economic downturn, we can also finally see that there's great unrealized potential for growing a strong global community around futures of Existential Hope.
Here are two concrete things we’d love to do with your help:
✨ Grow a Global Community With You: Our Bay Area community is amazing but there's a global hunger for positive futures and other locations don't have a good coordination point yet. One dream is to set up global nodes with many of you that people from around the world can zoom into and in the future visit in person to collaborate with like-minded folks on advancing tech for the benefit of life. Hiring a coordinator to help you set up a global Foresight node would be a major game-changer that you could enable with a donation.
✨ Communicate Existential Hope in Times of Crisis: Existential Hope is our website for onboarding the next generation onto futures of Existential Hope, rather than Angst. Many of you contribute to it but it is still volunteer-run. We recently started writing concise chapters on crucial building blocks of beneficial futures ( a draft on climate destabilization is available upon request) to be compiled into a coherent book that can be handed to a smart grad student to get them up to speed on what's at stake for civilization, and how they can plug in. We'd love to hire talented writers and layout folks to work with us and inspire the next generation that more is possible. Any financial support would make a big difference for having this book out soon; what better time to spread a message of concrete hope to the next generation than now?
You are welcome to direct a donation to a specific project by reaching out directly.
You can donate fiat and cryptocurrencies here and see different membership benefits here: foresight.org/donate/donate-or-sponsor/
Please support us now so that, rather than losing momentum, we can accelerate toward the grand futures, that, despite appearances, could now be closer than ever. ... See MoreSee Less
05.05.20
Giving Tuesday: How Your Donation Can Help Us Emerge Stronger Together - mailchi.mp/foresight/giving-tuesday-how-your-donation-can-help-us-emerge-stronger-together ... See MoreSee Less
Giving Tuesday: How Your Donation Can Help Us Emerge Stronger Together
We are a small organization, entirely funded by your donations. Through our technical competitions, strategy meetings, and public salons, we generate much of our impact and support our fellows, Feynma...05.05.20
Live in 2 hours! There is still time to join this fantastic online panel:
How can current loosening of red tape around COVID-19 interventions be extended to ease the way for high-impact science?
- Melanie Matheu, Prellis Biologics
- Jim O’Neill, SENS Research Foundation
- John Lewis, Entos Pharmaceuticals
- Robin Hanson, George Mason University
Part of the Foresight Hive Mind, our three-week online workshop seeking opportunities for change from COVID-19: foresight.org/hive-mind/ ... See MoreSee Less
05.04.20
Week 2 of the Hive-Mind starts today, and you can still join (free tickets are sold out but there are still pay-what-you-want ones)! - This Monday 05/04, 11:00 AM PT / 8 pm CEST
We will discuss the potential of Effective Investment & Philanthropy: can the current crisis lead to increase the funding of projects aimed at long-term resilience and scientific progress?
With:
Jaan Tallinn, Future of Life Institute, futureoflife.org/team/
Nils Regge, Apollo Ventures, www.apollo.vc/team/nils-regge/
Andrew Serazin, Templeton World Charity Foundation, www.templetonworldcharity.org/who-we-are/team/andrew-serazin-dphil
Christine Peterson, Foresight Institute, foresight.org/our-team/christine-peterson/
--------> Enter the Hive Mind: foresight.org/hive-mind/ ... See MoreSee Less
05.03.20
#ENTER THE HIVE MIND | Week 1 Videos, Summary & How to Join Weeks 2 - 3 - mailchi.mp/foresight/hive-mind-week-1 ... See MoreSee Less