Future Tense

Idea

To better amplify good ideas and meet the moment of distributed media, a think tank and university could partner with a publication to leverage the power of all three institutions. People shouldn't merely entrust the future to siloed "experts" who determine the development of technology and scientific inquiry in a silo removed from the rest of us. In a democracy, the citizenry should have a say on the technologies we prioritize and how we govern them in the public interest. For this to happen, we need to find new and innovative ways to engage the public on our technological futures and create more pathways for citizens to learn about where we are heading. That’s why New America launched Future Tense, the Citizen's Guide to the Future, with Arizona State University and Slate magazine.

Incubation

Thanks to its independence and belief in compelling storytelling, New America was able from its early days to partner strategically with media, publishing State of the Union issues with the Atlantic, an Ideas issue with Time magazine, and the influential "AfPak Channel" with Foreign Policy magazine. Then, in 2011, New America partnered with Slate and Arizona State University to launch Future Tense, a series of events focused on the societal impact of technology—and a permanent, jointly-produced section on Slate's website.

Impact

Future Tense is the most successful long-standing content-creating partnership between a think tank, a university, and a widely-read publication, holding hundreds of events organized around compelling questions (e.g., “Will the Internet Always be American?” “How Will We Govern Ourselves in Space?) and reaching millions of monthly readers for 9 years running. In addition to Slate, Future Tense's ideas journalism is also published by partners in Mexico, Brazil, India, and the U.A.E. An early Future Tense event challenging influential sci-fi writers and policymakers to consider how best to govern synthetic biology inspired the creation of Arizona State University’s Center for Science and Imagination, which holds participatory workshops for NASA and other entities aimed at injecting imagination into our designed futures. Working with CSI, Future Tense added a fiction project to its daily ideas journalism last year, publishing a monthly short story and companion essay. To date, three of these stories have been optioned by Hollywood studios for TV or movie adaptations.