20+ Futures

Challenge the future with us

What are the 20+ Futures?

Imperial Tech Foresight has a rolling annual programme of exploring the plausible futures of the world in 20 years. 

Ideas about the plausible future come from the Imperial research and academic community. A community who are not only making explicit advances towards the world of tomorrow, but by thinking through the implications of their work, have tacit knowledge of the plausible future.

This program is expressed through in person events (open and closed audience) e.g., TF2038 Shifting Realities, online events (presentations and roundtables) with archives of material including video recordings e.g., TF 2040 Intentional Creations and documents e.g., TF2041 Scenarios – Computation, Energy and the Planet (and our article on how to apply them).

The programme is developed for the Imperial Business Partners (IBP)Members of the IBP programme have early, and in some cases exclusive, access to parts of the research expressions.

Nature meets future

Tech Foresight 2042: Nature Meets Future

These ideas will help businesses overcome our increasingly wild and turbulent economic and political world. As our technologies move from mechanistic and controlled to interconnected and unpredictable, we need lenses to examine them through to start to navigate the next 20 years.  Lenses, we propose, that nature has already armed us with.

Navy blue square with white writting.

2041 Scenarios: Computation, Energy and the Planet

Four scenarios presenting four competing visions of the year 2041. Each provides a different account of how emerging technologies will help meet ever-increasing demand for computation and the energy it requires. Developed with input from Imperial’s world-leading academic experts, we hope they will prompt the question, ‘What would it mean for us if this came true’? Dive in and explore some possible ways that technological innovation could drive forward societal and economic change.

Tech Foresight 2040: Intentional Creations

The series of three sessions, brought leading academics from Imperial College London to discuss how science and innovation can enable intended positive consequences, as well as featuring startups from Imperial’s own ecosystem that are tackling the challenges and creating societally and economically valuable solutions.

Tech Foresight 2039: Needs and motivation

Tech Foresight 2039 we explored technology’s impact on the physical, emotional and safety needs of human experience. Attendees were able to explore what might be next on the technology horizon to help future-proof their businesses and organisation

Tech Foresight 2038: Shifting realities

Researchers discussed how we can adapt to the shifting realities brought on by new technologies and how others are responding to radical technological change.