ep. 06: Strategic Foresight; Envisioning a Bright Blue Future for Louisiana
In this episode, globally renowned strategic foresight specialist, journalist, and Reinvent Futures founder Peter Leyden takes a moment during his Mardi Gras visit to New Orleans to discuss his ‘positive future casting’ work and what he sees as emerging technology breakthroughs in the key fields of energy generation, biotech, and artificial intelligence. He draws on his early-career first hand experience as a oil rig roughneck in Louisiana, and as a young journalist in the deep south, to contextualize the potential for Louisiana to become a global driver of Blue Economy innovation.
Peter has had a long and storied career as a foreign correspondent, keynote speaker, and consultant, including as a Managing Editor in the early days of WIRED magazine. He has worked with industry and government leaders around the world to help them navigate the global challenges and transformations that are looming in the coming decades. He discusses his most recent project, The Great Progression, which lays out in detail how ongoing technological and societal tipping points are opening up new avenues of human progress and evolution, and ultimately offering us hope that as a species we are on the verge of overcoming many of the seemingly intractable planetary environmental challenges facing future generations.
Peter Leyden
Peter Leyden has spent his career in a wide range of roles figuring out the future, explaining what’s probably coming next, and helping envision how we can build a better world. Since coming to San Francisco at the beginning of the digital revolution to work with the founders of WIRED magazine, he has become a thought leader on the future, new technologies and megatrends.
Leyden has given keynote talks for the last 25 years on roughly a monthly basis as a futurist and tech expert working through Keppler Speakers. He is the coauthor of two influential books on the future that were published in multiple languages, including The Long Boom, and he now writes popular online pieces like his latest The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050.
Leyden is the founder of Reinvent Futures where he works as an advisor taking what he knows about the future and giving strategic foresight to senior leaders of organizations. He’s also a longtime host of physical and virtual events that convene top innovators from diverse fields impacting the future, and in 2023 Reinvent Futures will launch The Great Progression series.
Leyden ended up as managing editor of WIRED magazine in the heyday of the 1990s and he subsequently founded two of his own media startups focused on the future. He learned the futures business working at the pioneering strategic foresight and scenario planning firm Global Business Network, with the legendary Stewart Brand.
Leyden spent a four-year cycle helping transition politics to the internet and served on Barack Obama’s Technology and Media Advisory Committee in his groundbreaking 2008 campaign. Leyden started his career as a journalist, including working as a foreign correspondent in Asia for Newsweek magazine, and has traveled to more than 50 countries.
He graduated summa sum laude at Georgetown University in Washington D. C. and has two master’s degrees from Columbia University in New York.
More at PeterLeyden.com
OTHER EPISODE REFERENCES AND LINKS:
BIG THINK; The Great Progression; Peter’s most recent work explores how “The world isn’t ending! But we are likely at the beginning of a profound transformation”.
The Long Boom; A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity; Peter’s seminal book written with Peter Schwartz and Joel Hyatt, based on his work as a Managing Editor in the early days of WIRED Magazine. Written in the mid 1990’s, he lays out a series of transformative trends and technologies that will shape the world leading up to the year 2020.
The Transformation (the 34 minute Long Now Foundation video version) is an overview presentation of Peter’s five part Medium article series of the same name; a series of stories about the future history of America & the world from 2020 to 2050 as told by a Gen Z character in 2100.
Peter’s San Francisco-based and Silicon Valley-focused What’s Now speaker series is part of his Reinvent Inc. work. It includes a deep library of recorded conversations with globally renowned and remarkable thought leaders interviewed in the context of elite gatherings of innovators from a wide range of fields.
Synthetic Biology [Wikipedia] is one of three key technology frontiers (along with renewable energy, and artificial intelligence information systems) that Peter sees as a key phenomena shaping the future of humanity and our relationship with our natural environment
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