Futures Thinking: Foresight You Can Use

Sep 16, 2025

Traffic tech irony takes center stage as the hosts discuss how innovations often don’t solve congestion issues without a systems approach. Futures thinking emerges as a mindset, emphasizing possible outcomes and collective engagement. The conversation intertwines playful scenarios—like living on Mars—with meaningful discussions on risk and ethics. Backcasting is highlighted as a way to navigate towards preferred futures while considering vulnerable communities. Finally, ideas on integrating futures thinking into education spark a vision for empowered learning.

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ANECDOTE

Traffic Daydreams Reveal Privilege

Sean describes being stuck in traffic and fantasizing about buying an eVTOL to escape congestion.
He and Andrew use that moment to illustrate how personal privilege and scaling change the problem rather than solve it.

INSIGHT

Tech Needs Systems Thinking

New technologies rarely solve complex problems without a systems view that includes people, behavior, and policy.
Andrew emphasizes systems approaches are essential to avoid trading one congestion for another.

INSIGHT

Futures Thinking: Mindset Over Fortune-Telling

Futures thinking is both a mindset and a set of methods for exploring multiple potential futures rather than predicting one.
Sean frames it as a way to navigate complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity with agency.

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Stuck in traffic and daydreaming about an eVTOL escape, Sean and Andrew use “flying cars” (and a new Blackmagic URSA spatial camera that gobbles terabytes) to make a larger point: tech doesn’t fix congestion—or much else—without a systems view that includes people, policy, and behavior. From there, they unpack futures thinking as a mindset, not fortune‑telling: exploring possible, probable, and preferable futures to make better choices today. You’ll hear how horizon scanning (signals, trends, megatrends), scenario building, and backcasting turn uncertainty into actionable paths—while avoiding “used futures,” reducing future shock, and stress‑testing for unintended harms, especially to vulnerable communities and the planet. The conversation ranges from SimCity lessons and Mars‑city thought experiments to risk innovation, protopian versus dystopian frames, and why the plural “futures” matters. They dig into where foresight lives in organizations (embedded roles and external consultancies), why every team needs it, and how to infuse K–12 without piling on: layer a futures lens into existing subjects and use pop culture (e.g., The Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future) as safe space for tough ideas. The episode closes on agency—concrete ways anyone can start practicing futures today—plus a timely reminder that we’re living in a moment of extraordinary promise and peril.

Strategic Foresight Toolkit [Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies]

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is a Foresight Catalyst for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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