💫 #001 For Future Reference
There’s a future | Affordable Vaccines | Face Mask 2.0 | Tales of future
Hi there! Welcome to the first For Future Reference collection.
One of the things I like the most is collecting insightful stories about what lies ahead. These are forward-looking stories, articles, social media posts, pictures, memes, it doesn’t matter. Anything that can give me a way of knowing better about the future.
I’m starting this personal project to share with you a short selection of those stories and thoughts, straight to your inbox. They inspire me to rethink political and cultural issues. All with an eye on the people and future-facing solutions they bring to the world’s most intractable challenges.
Tip: Ah, before you start your journey here, check out my playlist What Future? on Spotify. (Feel free to save it to your library, too!)
What future?
I’ve been always fascinated by the ‘future’. When I was younger, I kept thinking about a time where people would be all dressing like kicky astronauts in the streets and eating 3-course meals in capsules!
In fact, ‘tales of the future’ is a topic that raises many feelings and opinions. For some, looking into the future is the same as looking into a deep, dark tunnel: something is there, we just don’t know what. For others, like the award-winning futurist, designer, and author John A. Sweeney - someone I personally look up to, ‘the future’ is a resource to transform policy, planning, and strategy development processes in many organizations.
Whatever your lot, there’s a solid body of research and analysis about possible futures we should look forward to. This is called ‘Futures Studies’.
One of my favorite and insightful reads on the topic is this piece written by Sohail Inayatullah, known as one of the all-time best futurists. This is from his book There’s a Future: Visions for a Better World. Check it out!
But back to where we are now. The pandemic is not over yet, and no matter what your expectations about tomorrow are, one thing is certain: the year that never happened (aka 2020), has changed forever the way we interact with the future rushing towards us.
A future that starts with everyone having the chance to get the most cost-effective protection against disease: vaccines.
But do we all have vaccines?
Okay, the answer to this is certainly ‘NO’.
Actually, the issue of COVID-19 vaccine distribution has become quite critical. Distribution is strongly skewed in favour of high-income countries (and people!).
Greta Thunberg, for instance, has recently announced she won’t attend the upcoming UN COP-26 Conference in Glasgow unless vaccine access improves and countries can participate on even terms.
But when I read this NYTimes article about the NDV-HXP-S1, I thought that we are getting much closer to a point when the world will be producing its first low-cost coronavirus vaccine!
The article provides a little deep background on the protein engineering behind the production of vaccines. But the main story is that a group of structural biologists and scientists from the University of Texas at Austin2 are using a new molecular design to create a vaccine that is more affordable to address the wide disparity in vaccine access. In fact, they are setting up a new licensing arrangement that allows companies and labs in 80 low- and middle-income countries to use their new molecular design without paying royalties.
This new formulation is now entering clinical trials in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, and Vietnam. If it is proven to be safe and actually works in humans, this will be a game-changer that will allow more people around the world to have protection against COVID-19.
Meanwhile, we keep finding ways to stay safe!
And when it comes to protection, no doubts that face masks are amongst the pandemic’s most in-demand accessories. They now come in any shape or form. Check out this article to see what our face mask future looks like.
As some predict that face masks will have a larger-than-anyone-could-have-anticipated presence in our lives, there are many companies attempting to elevate the standard mask to something we could, theoretically, combine with our phone, or even having an amplifier to ensure your voice isn’t muffled.
This takes us directly to the recent announcement of the Xupermask: a high-tech version of the protective equipment designed by will.i.am and Honeywell, an industrial manufacturing and engineering company.
For me, it seems that masks will have so many features that even the latest smartphone could be jealous of!
For more background on the vision behind the project, check out this interview, with the singer, songwriter, producer, entrepreneur, futurist, and founder of Black Eyed Peas. He makes a strong case about what he calls a consumer appetite for masks that do more.
Tomorrow is another story!
I want to wrap up this list by sharing with you Stories from Tomorrow, a fundraising initiative on Instagram created by Casey Affleck and his mom, a public school teacher, last year.
They invited children and youth around the world to submit original stories about tomorrow, which are read by public figures from all walks of life. In partnership with Pledgeling, the project will raise critical funds to support Feeding America’s child hunger programs and Room to Read’s literacy and girls’ education programs.
You can expect everything from this: there’s love, hope, warnings, and everything in between in each of these stories.
Seriously, this project is incredible for so many reasons. It gives children and youth an outlet for them to process any kind of anxiety we all experienced during these stressful times. And it confirms what everyone knows already: writing is healing and empowering.
💫 My pick: A story called A World Before Ours, written by Afia, aged 11. The story is set 100 years from now and reflects on the ‘legendary year of 2021’. I listened to it with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Resilient, wise, and compassionate. Priceless.
Now that you reached the end of this, I wanted to thank you again for finding your way here. If anything you read here made you feel inspired about tomorrow, please share it with your network, for future reference.
Also, feel free to say hi to me on Linkedin and follow me on Twitter. And let me know whether one of these stories has shifted your perspectives about anything.
See you next time,
Rodrigo