Jane McGonigal, Ph.D. and Curtis Sittenfeld: Imaginable

What if we could imagine the future and even plan for it? What if there was a way to feel secure while still bracing for the next “unthinkable” event? What if we could still feel hope for the future while squarely facing its challenges? Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., a future forecaster and world-renowned designer of alternate reality games that are designed to improve real lives and solve real problems, not only believes we can imagine the “unimaginable” but wants to teach us all the skills necessary to face the future with what she calls “urgent optimism.”

Why is she so confident? In 2008 and 2010, McGonigal and her team ran simulations that predicted human behavior in the face of a 2020 global respiratory pandemic in precise detail, from social distancing to masking to wildfires and even the spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and the unbridgeable political divide. Cut to 2020/2021, and not only were McGonigal’s predictions proven correct, but her findings have also shown that the participants in the simulation found themselves less shell-shocked when COVID-19 hit, as they had already prepared for specific outcomes and were able to act and adapt faster to change.

In her new book Imaginable, McGonigal, the director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future, uses games, scenarios, and simulations designed specifically for the book to help us build our collective imagination, dive into the future before we live it, and envision, in surprising detail, what our lives will look like ten years from now. She currently teaches the course “How to Think Like a Futurist” at Stanford University and is the lead instructor for the Institute for the Future’s series on the Coursera platform. Her previous books Reality is Broken and SuperBetter were both New York Times bestsellers, and her TED talks are among the all-time most popular and have more than 15 million views.

McGonigal will be in conversation with Curtis Sittenfeld, the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, and Rodham, and the story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It, which have been translated into thirty languages.

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