How to predict the future with Jane McGonigal

The TED Interview

TED

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Future forecaster and game designer Jane McGonigal ran a social simulation game in 2008 that had players dealing with the effects of a respiratory pandemic set to happen in the next decade. She wasn’t literally predicting the 2020 pandemic—but she got eerily close. Her game, set in 2019, featured scenarios we're now familiar with (like masking and social distancing), and participant reactions gave her a sense of what the world could—and eventually, did—look like. How did she do it? And what can we learn from this experiment to predict—and prepare for—the future ourselves? In this episode, Jane teaches us how to be futurists, and talks about the role of imagination—and gaming—in shaping a future that we’re truly excited about. Jane’s new book, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today is available now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you listened to Talk Radio recently?
0:03.0	Let's talk about this war on white people.
0:05.0	That's a pro-quiling, it's good for you.
0:07.0	Bill the Keystone pipeline, deport illegals, build the wall.
0:10.0	I'm Katie Thornton, host of the divided dial,
0:13.0	a new five-part series from WNMC's On the Media,
0:17.0	about how the American right came to dominate Talk Radio
0:21.0	and how one company is launching a conservative media empire
0:25.0	from the airwaves.
0:26.0	Listen every Tuesday and on the media feed.
0:37.0	Hi there, I'm Stephen Johnson.
0:39.0	Don't worry, you're in the right place.
0:41.0	This is the Ted interview, and I am the new host.
0:44.0	If you're curious about who I am and where Chris Anderson went,
0:48.0	I'd really encourage you to listen to last week's episode.
0:51.0	Chris interviewed me, and then I flipped the script
0:55.0	and asked him a few questions.
0:57.0	It was a great conversation.
0:59.0	But now on to this week's show.
1:01.0	If I were to ask you what you were thinking about
1:04.0	right before you pressed play on this podcast,
1:07.0	there's a good chance you were thinking about the future.
	...

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