Top Ten Futurized Episodes of 2021

By Futurist Trond Arne Undheim, PhD, author of Future Tech (2021) and Health Tech (2021), and host of two podcasts, Futurized and Augmented.

Do you know what the future looks like? I’m joking, even for futurists, it’s obviously hard to know. However, the ten Futurized guests and episodes we have picked as our top ten of 2021 came close. Futurized goes beneath the trends, tracking the underlying forces of disruption in tech, policy, business models, social dynamics, and the environment. We published 56 episodes of the Futurized podcast in 2021, each featuring great guests and enthralling topics, so competition was stiff. Prioritizing where we were particularly fascinated with the guests, who typically are authors, executives, founders, or futurists, and also convinced of the wide reach of the topic, we ended up dancing around augmented reality and the industrial and consumer metaverse, artificial general intelligence, medical technology, geopolitical technologies, regenerative business, consciousness in space, executive crisis, investing in sci-tech innovation, all the way to the future of entertainment.

Industrial-grade Mixed Reality with Urho Konttori (@konttori), co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Varjo

Urho Konttori, a thrilling, soft spoken Finnish Entrepreneur, speaks about emerging industrial use cases where Varjo’s headsets with 50x consumer grade power has achieved human eye resolution which is a game changer for the automotive industry as well as for teaching astronauts how to dock at the International Space Station (ISS). For me, the takeaway is that industrial mixed reality has now come of age. It is only a question of few years, until large swaths of industry and a plethora of professionals will depend on it to do their job. The pandemic could not have come at a bigger inflection point for the industry.?

How Executives Handle Crisis with Stephynie Malik (@stephyniemalik), Host, Spin It podcast, Founder, Smalik Enterprises

Stephynie Malik has the unique experience of being a serial crisis manager for business executives who wound themselves up in serious trouble and need a perspective on how to handle it. What are the strategies to use to best handle it? We discuss the intricate and unknown back stories that unfold in executive life and how to help resolve the problems that occur. I thought this was a particularly enlightening episode because it reminded me that despite disruptive change, one thing remains constant, and that is the feebleness of human nature faced with the increased opportunity to live a life of excess without concern for crisis until it hits us, personally, morally, or culturally.

The Future of Medicine is Invisible with Bertalan Meskó (@Berci), Director of The Medical Futurist Institute

Bertalan Meskó is medical doctor, yet a champion for the consumer, deeply fascinated, but not captured by, technology’s marvels and its potential for medicine. Bertalan's notion that the future of medicine is invisible, seamless, and preventive is a great vision to have. In my own forthcoming book, Health Tech: Rebooting Society's Software, Hardware and Mindset, which he was kind enough to endorse saying it “helps us peek into the near future of medicine”. Bertalan is brilliant in testing and commenting on all gadgets, startups, and cures he sees as they appear, making us all aware of the opportunities.

The Geotech Decade with David A. Bray (@ACGeoTech), Inaugural Director of the GeoTech Center at the Atlantic Council

David A. Bray is a fascinating guy with a keen intellect and is highly attuned to possibility. We talk about the Report of the Commission of Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data (GeoTech Commission). The report, released in spring 2021, provides an extensive set of recommendations for the United States and its like-minded allies to thrive in a decade defined by data and technology collaboration and competition. The recommendations would make great impact on the proactive role of the United States in the world of technology and risk at large, and would make one small step towards a better decade. I'm particularly thrilled by David's comment that this is destined as much towards innovators and entrepreneurs as towards governments and policymakers. That's what governance will take as we move more deeply into this decade. The important stakeholders are changing, the shapers of tomorrow are not the shapers of yesterday.

The Metaverse Reality with Mark van Rijmenam (@VanRijmenam), PhD, Futurist, Founder of Datafloq & Mavin.

When I interviewed Mark van Rijmenam in the spring of 2021, I was unaware that the metaverse would get such increased press attention because of Facebook’s name change to Meta. Nevertheless, we talked about?the increasing blending of online and offline worlds, reality and virtual reality, into a hybrid reality. In the metaverse, we might find sovereign identities where people and bots work, play, learn and consume, operating in an increasingly virtually empowered world. We discuss the potential of an impending productization of that hybrid reality with unforeseeable consequences. The metaverse, for all the hype, is just another version of the internet. It might be a badly designed version, though, and that is not helpful. The upside, perhaps, is that as people embrace virtual worlds, they might get some needed break from a tough reality. However, at the moment, the metaverse is looking like it will be productized way early in its lifecycle and that will limit the creation of the kind of innovation space that spurred the internet into a broad humanity expanding platform.

Investing in Sci-Tech Futures with Shahin Farshchi (@Farshchi), Partner, Lux Capital

Shahin Farshchi gets to invest in science and technology that he thinks will shape the future. That is just cool. In this conversation, we talk about investing in emerging science and technology ventures at the outermost edges of what is possible. My takeaway is that investing in sci-tech futures will always be risky, exhilarating, and important. The impact of deep tech is never given, and even one wrong turn can be costly, both for VCs and for society. The future is also uncertain. Having said that, engaging with the future in this tangible way is the only way to explore what might be and what might become. As Shahin says, it takes unconventional investors to partner with iconoclastic founders.

The Future of Consciousness with Divya Chander (@dchander), PhD, Neuroscientist, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

In this conversation, we talk about how Divya Chander became a physician, neuroscientist, futurist, entrepreneur with the twin passions for exploring the brain and space. I ask her what dreams are. We discuss heightened states of awareness and get to the topic of consciousness: what is it and how to alter it? Divya gets into optogenetics: targeted activation or silencing of light-sensitive protein channels selectively expressed in neurons and how she uses the EEG waveform to monitor brain activity during anestesia. We talk about the Augmentation movement: who are they and what do they want? We explore the body's electric circuitry and eventually get to space travel within and beyond our solar system. Divya is helping to figure out how to create human hybernation and is also involved with SETI, the search for extraterrestrials. Finally, we discuss the need for regulation in outer space. My takeaway is that in outer space, and when space traveling humans come back, I shall fear humans more than the unknown, such as aliens. Beyond that, I find human augmentation both fascinating and frightening. What will the impact ultimately be?

Futuristic AI with Ben Goertzel (@bengoertzel), CEO and founder of SingularityNET and Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society

Ben Goertzel is a celebrity in AI circles and somewhat controversial, too. We discussed Sophia- the robot, singularity, transhumanism and how to define intelligence. He also has a great hat. What’s not to like about this interview? My takeaway is that futuristic AI will continue to fascinate, whether we ever get there--or not. It is a Janus-faced future the proponents of Artificial General Intelligence are exploring. Will it solve more problems than it creates? In reality, it’s not a question of when we get there --un less we suddenly find ourselves needing that level of intelligence for an existential survival issue for our race, but how we get there. At some point, we likely will. But whether it will take 50 or 150 years, I’m less sure about.

Regenerative Business with Alan Moore (@alansmlxl), Designer, Consultant, and Author, founder of Beautiful Business.

I was fascinated by Alan Moore for his calm, solemn, and soothing authority on important matters. We talk about what regenerative business practices truly entail which is to go well beyond sustainability. We discuss how beauty gives us the oxygen needed and how we need to reclaim it, giving ourselves, as architects, designers, creators or innovators, the permission to think about that mysterious, awesome concept and reality of beauty. My takeaway is that reclaiming the concept of beauty is transformational both on a personal and a planetary scale, but it cannot happen without introspection, courage, and the power of example. Wonder, joy, and walking in nature can approximate beauty and can give us the inspiration to pursue it in our professional lives. The effects would be healing for the planet, which seems really needed right now, objectively speaking.

The Future of Entertainment with Brimstone (@entrancetohell), entrepreneur, professional wrestler, radio host, actor, author, musician, philanthropist, food critic, and video game hero.

Despite a small bit of success, it is still rare that we have big celebrities on Futurized. When Brimstone expressed interest, I was at first skeptical, then intrigued. We talk about what the next decade looks like in Brimstone's sphere of entertainment, comics, and wrestling. Entertainment has been here since the beginning of time, from storytelling around the bonfire, to hunting, to Greek theater to gladiators. Everywhere we go, it is about entrancing an audience and standing out from the competition by being unique. What does the future hold? What can all of us learn from a master entertainer?

That was the top ten Futurized podcast episodes of 2021 roundup. Stay tuned for next season of our podcast and let me know who you think should be on the shop to light the way towards the coming decades. Make sure to subscribe on Futurized.org to always listen to fresh episodes.?