Alice in Futureland

The Age of Electric Swans


Listen Later

The future has a new metaphor to think with: Electric Swans.

For a generation, we’ve lived with the language of Black Swans—those sudden, unpredictable shocks that upend systems and expectations. Later came Green Swans, signals of systemic shifts in response to the climate crisis, pointing us toward regeneration and resilience. These metaphors helped us navigate turbulence and think beyond the short-term.

But now, a new kind of swan is taking flight.

Electric Swans represent the disruptions born not of catastrophe or ecology alone, but of energy itself: electromagnetic, informational, biological. They are not random events but living signals of the new energetic landscape. When accepted, they ripple outward across industries and societies, generating vast new opportunities. They remind us that the real frontier is not out there somewhere in the future, but rising all around us, right now, in the invisible fields and frequencies we inhabit. Hello, we’re Alice and we are always in a state of wander.

A Thesis of Energy

The central thesis of Alice’s journey is deceptively simple: energy, in all its forms, is the next great frontier of innovation.

We are used to talking about renewable energy, grids, batteries, and solar arrays. But this story runs deeper. It’s about energy as the hidden substrate of life itself: electromagnetic fields shaping quantum biology, frequencies guiding cellular repair, the resonant architectures that connect brain, heart, and body.

Already, we see this frontier emerging in unexpected ways. Fabrics woven with electromagnetic threads. Health solutions built on biohacking and resonance. Electroceuticals that don’t merely treat symptoms but tune the body back into coherence. The twenty-first century is discovering what ancient traditions always hinted at: that energy, in its most subtle forms, is as real and transformative as steam engines once were to the nineteenth century.

The Call for Conscious Leadership

But to step into this world requires something more than new technologies. It requires new ways of being.

Amidst the flood of ideas, the endless screens, and the data streams that never pause, lies a deeper expanse of human potential. It begins in the body. The body as interface. The bodymind as compass. Leaders in this emergent landscape are not those who dominate with command-and-control hierarchies. They are those who are tuned-in. They can listen for resonance amidst the noise. They can sense patterns in the apparent chaos. They wield disruption not as a blunt force but as a musical note, struck at the right moment to shift the entire composition. They will thrive in the coming era of Physical AI.

Conscious leadership in the age of Electric Swans is about embodied coherence. Growth is no longer solitary, it resonates outward, amplifying through networks, creating platforms where others can awaken, contribute, and thrive. Such leaders do not merely navigate the future. They become conductors of energy, channels through which the potential of the collective flows.

The Bodymind and the Science of Qualities

This is not a metaphor alone. Candace Pert’s work on the bodymind revealed decades ago what science continues to confirm: thought, emotion, and biology are inseparable. Neurotransmitters and narratives are entangled. The heart and the brain form a single resonant circuit. Coherence is not poetry, it is physiology.

Electric Swans illuminate this truth. They reveal that “innovation” is not separate from the lived body, from the pulse of emotion, from the chemistry of connection. Leaders who grasp this, who embody heart-brain coherence, who understand resonance not only as metaphor but as method, hold a power that transcends conventional strategy. They become the pioneers of what might be called “the science of qualities”: a way of knowing that does not reduce but integrates, that sees the beauty in emergence, that honors syntropic living systems.

From Knowledge to Being

This is also a turning point for futures work itself.

For decades, foresight and futures studies were rooted in the pursuit of knowledge, of constructing scenarios, of understanding what might happen. But today, the center of gravity is shifting. The real work is embodied futures: exploring existence, essence, and being.

It is not enough to predict the future.We are called to create it.

Futures thinking has evolved from a mapmaking exercise to an act of world-building. And in this act, the Electric Swan becomes a guide: not an omen of disruption, but a current we can learn to ride.

Riding the Light

To live in the age of Electric Swans is to live in a landscape where energy is no longer background, but foreground. Where leadership is measured not by control but by embodied coherence. Where the work of foresight is not to forecast but to shape.

The leaders who thrive in this world will be those who embrace the impossible possibilities. They will ride the lightning not as a storm to be feared but as a wave of transformation. They will stand at the edge of quantum possibility and step forward, not with certainty, but with coherence, courage, and an openness to emergence.

This is not just a path to personal or professional growth. It is an invitation to rediscover what it means to be human in a world alive with hidden fields, resonant frequencies, and electric swans rising all around us.

Am I Mad?

Or, more fittingly: is Alice mad? The answer is no. The real madness is believing we can craft a future we want to inhabit with the same tired tools of futurology, linear projections, deterministic charts, stale narratives recycled until they collapse under their own inertia. That is the madness of the status quo.

Alice suggests something different. We insist that futures worth living cannot be conjured from fear or prediction alone. They must be imagined into being. They must be storied, played, and rehearsed as if they were already whispering back to us from the horizon.

And so we offer a portal: a card game called Am I Mad?

Here, you are not an observer of forecasts but a participant, a Mad Explorer, wandering through the kaleidoscopic terrains of Alice in Futureland. Time bends, loops, and folds in upon itself. Ideas sprout like wild organisms, carrying the shimmer of what-could-be. With a deck of conceptual cards, you navigate this speculative wilderness, assembling vivid narratives of Electric Swans taking flight, technologies that rewire daily life, philosophies that expand the human condition, discoveries that feel like déjà vu from a future not yet lived.

This is where the work of foresight shifts from epistemology to ontology. Where imagination is no longer an escape but reconnaissance. In Futureland, we don’t just map possibilities, we rehearse them. We remember the futures we most want, and in the act of remembering, we bring them closer.

Because in the end, the future is not built. It is remembered—one Electric Swan, one story, one act of coherence at a time.

Craving more?

📘 Alice in Futureland books🎧 Alice in Futureland podcasts🧠 Alice in Futureland game Am I Mad?

Thanks for tuning in.For more wanderings, become an Alice in Futureland subscriber—it’s free.

Invite your friends to this mad tea party and let’s see how many things we can learn before breakfast.

©2025 Alice in Futureland



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aliceinfutureland.substack.com
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Alice in FuturelandBy “Hello, I am Alice, and I am always in a state of wander.”

  • 5
  • 5
  • 5
  • 5
  • 5

5

8 ratings