Jamais Cascio

Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2009, Jamais Cascio writes about the intersection of emerging technologies, environmental dilemmas, and cultural transformation, specializing in the design and creation of plausible scenarios of the future. His work focuses on the importance of long-term, systemic thinking as a catalyst for building a more resilient society.

Cascio's work appears in publications as diverse as the Atlantic Monthly, Metropolis, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy. He was featured in National Geographic Television's SIX DEGREES, its 2008 documentary on the effects of global warming, and on History Channel's SCIENCE IMPOSSIBLE, its 2009 series on emerging technologies. Cascio has spoken about future possibilities around the world, at venues including Amplify09 in Sydney, Mobile Monday in Amsterdam, the Singularity Summit in San Francisco, and the TED 2006 conference, "The Future We Will Create," in Monterey, California.

In 2009, Cascio published his first non-fiction book, Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering, praised by Foreign Policy as “the most subtle analysis yet on the subject.”

Cascio has long worked in the field of scenario development, and is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Future, offering insights and analysis to IFTF’s government, non-profit, and corporate clients. In the 1990s, he served as technology specialist at scenario planning pioneer Global Business Network, and later went on to craft scenarios on topics including energy, nuclear proliferation, and sustainable development. In 2004, Cascio was asked to join the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, where he now serves as Senior Fellow.

In 2003, he co-founded WorldChanging.com, the award-winning website dedicated to finding and calling attention to models, tools and ideas for building a "bright green" future. In his time at WorldChanging, Cascio wrote the plurality of the site's content, covering topics ranging from global development to climate science to social network technologies. In March, 2006, he started Open the Future as his online home, writing about subjects as diverse as robot ethics and the carbon footprint of cheeseburgers.

Cascio has applied his scenario development skills in the entertainment industry, advising multiple television and film projects, and designing several well-received science fiction game settings. Cascio lives outside of San Francisco, California, with his wife, two cats, four Macs, and the requisite hybrid cars.