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"In a world of 7 Billion people every organization and individual has a unique role and special responsibility. Working together, incremental actions will create exponential results. Take action today, you can make a difference in others' lives."

2020 Media Futures is an ambitious, multi-industry strategic foresight project designed to understand and envision what media may look like in the year 2020; what kind of cross-platform Internet environment may shape our media and entertainment in the coming decade; and how our firms and organizations can take action today toward capturing and maintaining positions of national and international leadership.

IN library - Open-source foresight project on future media 2020 Media Futures is an ambitious, multi-industry strategic foresight project designed to understand and envision what media may look like in the year 2020; what kind of cross-platform Internet environment may shape our media and entertainment in the coming decade; and how our firms and organizations can take action today toward capturing and maintaining positions of national and international leadership.

Our role is to build citizenship by awakening people to the value that social responsibility creates for us - individually, in our businesses, in our communities, in our countries and in the world. To build a solid foundation for the future, we have to find the balance between what we take and what we give. If we believe this, we must remain critical of our actions and choices.

Over the next few decades, the global food system will come under renewed pressure from the combined effects of seven fundamental factors: population growth, the nutrition transition, energy, land, water, labour and climate change. The combined effects will create constraints on food supply and if action is not taken, there is a real potential for demand growth to outstrip increases in global food production. Effects on developing countries would be devastating. Developed countries will be affected too. Expectations of abundant and ever cheaper food could come under strain. The UK can no longer afford to take its food supply for granted.

"Project Anticipation is the website of the UNESCO Chair in Anticipatory Systems awarded to Roberto Poli, University of Trento. Formally speaking, the chair's activities will begin January 1, 2014. However, since the project is on the many forms of anticipation, and a crucial aspect of anticipation is taking antecedent actions, the project's advance publication shouldn't come as a surprise."

" Ask yourself Is your organisation being digitally disrupted? Does your future strategy lack clarity and buy-in? Is your analogue business model ready for the digital future? Do you currently balance the timeless wisdom of your organisation with timely and future-compatible strategies and action? Are your teams inspired by your brand's 2020 Vision? Do your leaders and staff suffer from change fatigue?"

Beyond the Tipping Point?' is a documentary film about climate, action and the future. It is a free resource for groups to provoke discussion and open up debate. ..Imagining the Future, Acting in the Present: a day of debate and reflection on climate change, ethics and belief for students 

Keep a gratitude journal. Write down and record what you are grateful for, and then when you need to reaffirm your good lot in life, look back on the journal.Remember the bad. If you do not remind yourself of what it was like to be sick, unemployed, or heartbroken, you will be less likely to appreciate health, your job, or your relationship.Ask yourself three questions every evening. Fill in the blanks with the name of a person (or persons) in your life. What have I received from ___? What have I given to ___? What troubles and difficulty have I caused ___?Learn prayers of gratitude. One Emmons suggests in his book from the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh: Waking up this morning, I see the blue sky. I join my hands in thanks; for the many wonders of life; for having 24 brand-new hours before me.Appreciate your senses. One approach: Practice breathing exercises.Use visual reminders. For example, Emmons has a refrigerator magnet in his home bearing this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery … today is a gift."Make a vow to practice gratitude. "Swearing a vow to perform a behavior actually does increase the likelihood that the action will be executed," the psychologist notes.Watch your language: It influences how you think about the world.Go through the motions. Research shows that emotions can follow behavior.Be creative. Look for new situations and opportunities in which to feel grateful, especially when things are not going well.Though he practices these techniques, Emmons acknowledges that maintaining an attitude of thanksgiving is hard work even for him."Most psychologists study what they're bad at," he says.

" The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free. "

"This illustrates the lesson that access to information doesn't necessarily encourage proactive action."

Rapid change and increasingly complex operating environments create challenges beyond the reach of traditional responses. IFF's response generates new possibilities for more effective action and the capacity to realise them in practice. Practical hope and wise initiative. International Futures Forum has established Praxis Centres to make this capacity available to diverse clients, partners and challenging circumstances. IFF Praxis Ltd is based in Scotland, UK. IFF US is based in San Francisco, California. Other praxis centres are planned elsewhere in the world, in response to demand. The following pages explore what working with IFF can offer in practice. We look forward to hearing from you.

"The image below this post comes from the latest IMF working paper (May 2012) looking at the "The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology" (opens pdf) which attempts to take both the models of oil availability - that proposed by geologists and that by technologists and work out what the likely price implications are going to be to 2020. An internal working paper that "does not presume that there is a constraint on how much oil can be taken out of the ground. It prefers to believe that extraction rates will depend on the price that will be able to be charged for the final product", it makes the wonderfully understated point that "the future may not be easy". I continue to be amazed at the number of people I meet, sitting in leadership positions, who are unaware of this issue. I have heard from colleagues of engagements in the past couple of years with groups of senior decision-makers who have refused to discuss the issue as they believe it to be a fringe problem."

The image below this post comes from the latest IMF working paper (May 2012) looking at the "The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology" (opens pdf) which attempts to take both the models of oil availability - that proposed by geologists and that by technologists and work out what the likely price implications are going to be to 2020. An internal working paper that "does not presume that there is a constraint on how much oil can be taken out of the ground. It prefers to believe that extraction rates will depend on the price that will be able to be charged for the final product", it makes the wonderfully understated point that "the future may not be easy". I continue to be amazed at the number of people I meet, sitting in leadership positions, who are unaware of this issue. I have heard from colleagues of engagements in the past couple of years with groups of senior decision-makers who have refused to discuss the issue as they believe it to be a fringe problem.

gets people involved in a variety of creative challenges - a way of crowdsourcing behavioural change

Andrew Craig hit the start-button on a balmy Albany April day. His Landcruiser unhooked from the household power, then the twin electric motors cut in and moved it quietly down the drive. The silence disturbed some people when HydroElectrics first took over the V8 market, so they'd bought the audio option that simulated the sound of a historical V8 engine. Now the only time you'd hear anything like that was when the amplified "chugga, chugga, chugga" of a Harley Electro Hog drifted through the open window.

When it comes to changing the way we use energy, cities are at the centre of the action, says Manish Bapna, managing director of the World Resources Institute.who reports here on the recent meeting of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.