So at the TCG conference the last day they had a speaker named Andrew Zolli. He is "a foresight and global trends consultant who analyzes critical trends at the intersection of culture, technology, and global society". He was really inspiring - gave one of those speeches where it's hard to describe what he actually talked about, but it fundamentally re-aligns something in your brain so that you see the world in a new way. He talked about how and why you can't really know the future, because we aren't wired to be able to really focus on the slow moving issues that will fundamentally change our world, like climate change, but are drawn to less profound but more accessible imperatives, especially those with human faces, like catching Osama bin Laden. He talked about how the shifting demographics of our country and our planet will create a world that is, in fact, more like the pre-industrial world in all sorts of significant ways; and that these changes create marvelous opportunities for the arts in the next 50 years.
Zolli is curator of a futurist organization called Poptech. They have a cool website, which you can check out here. There's a bunch of videos from all kinds of forward thinking people giving presentations. They are a little long, 20-30 minutes, but well worth the time.
Here is one I really like: It's Elizabeth Streb, who is a choreographer, but she calls herself and "Action Inventor" - she pushes the possibilities of human movement to the limits. Check out this video. Watch the whole thing, if you can. It's worth it. But if you can't, go to 8:30 remaining to see the piece "Ricochet" where the dancers hurl themselves up against a piece of plexi like crazed acrobatic insects, and to 6:40 remaining in the movie to see the thing with the dancers and the swinging cement blocks. It's really crazy great.
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