Johannesburg South Africa
from $15,000
Protopia Futures is a life centric design and collaborative foresight platform that centers previously marginalized perspectives. Its mission is to inspire a new wave of future visions, showing how a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach, alongside disability and neurodivergence inclusion, can foster regenerative economies for the decades to come and chart an actionable path towards a positively interdependent and compassionate future world. In practice that means designing technology that expands human potential, not just intellectually and physically but also creatively and emotionally. Good tech must not silo us into homogenous groups. It should truly foster curiosity and connect us more intimately to our own bodies, to each other, and to all life on earth.
Those who control the fantasy control the future. The fictional narratives of the future end up influencing real future making, so the question worth asking is what bias science fiction creates in terms of the AI opportunities and risks we end up pursuing or, even more importantly, ignoring. AI will supercharge hybrid warfare and facilitate social and geopolitical fracturing. So how do we ensure that generative AI tools are used not just to simulate or distort our past and present reality, but also to foster population scale resilience and futures literacy, and to prototype more expansive future possibilities?
I challenge the determinism of both dystopian and utopian narratives, and instead suggest a pathway toward future visions that are truly inclusive and actually livable. My futurism is defined by informed hope, yet firmly anchored in contextual, complex human and environmental realities on the ground, rather than one-size-fits-all techno-solutionism, prone to short-term hype cycles and rapid obsolescence. Challenging the outdated future narratives is vital. What if the future could be everything we hope for, but not what we expect?
