The Next 20 Years

For this last episode of our podcast series we have invited James Ludwig to talk about how the things we build and the things we make will have to change in the future. James is the VP at Steelcase Inc. Spearheading their Global Design and Engineering. James is occupied with the human capacity for invention, and for his presentation, he will talk about how future cities, buildings, and products will abandon the idea of the machine and embrace the living organism. Instead of viewing our latest technological achievements as the pinnacles of our imagination, we should figure out how to fuse these technologies into an ecosystem that we want to be a part of.

For this episode of 'The Next 20 Years', we have invited author Tor Nørretranders to offer his take on we better resonate with our surroundings in the future. Tor is author to a host of books on topics ranging from faith and consciousness to modern civilization. In his presentation, he will introduce you the concept of resonance, and how it is the cure for a world out of sync with its surroundings and itself. 20 years from now, if we haven't learned it by then, a certain phone call will force us to.

This episode is all about food. More particularly the modes in which we consume food in the future. We have invited David Zilber in the studio to talk about this topic. David is a former chef at Danish restaurant NOMA, acting most recently as its head of fermentation. he now works for Danish bioscience company Christian hansen, developing natural solutions for food longevity. For his presentation, David is going to talk about 'The Anti Restaurant' of the future. How we are going to abandon the restaurant, as we know it, and waste a whole lot less in the process.

Christian Groes is a gender studies researcher at the University of Roskilde and specializes in gender, sexuality, sexual transactions, sexualt capital and female erotic power. For his presentation he will tell you about how our ways of relating to each other will be transformed in ways we cannot imagine. How in the realm of love, sex, gender, relationships, marriage, dating and living together, we will enter another phase of connecting.

Martin is brand consultant to some of the biggest brands in the world, and the bestselling author behind a host of books about consumer behavior, most famous of which was his study that showed that nearly half of all ad campaigns have zero or negative effect on the consumer. In his presentation today, Martin will tell you about the profound moment that we exist in today, with technologies that have stripped us of empathy, physical contact and natural transitions between work and private life, and how we over the next 20 years will try to release ourselves from these technologies, so that we can regain our sense of empathy, physical contact and natural transitions.

How will the convergence of new technologies create new demands in the workplace? This is the topic of Louise Opprud's presentation on the future. Louise has worked at the Danish state department's innovation lab in Palo Alto, where she worked with some of the most creative people in the tech industry. Now she leads the company New Ways of Working, studying the impact of automation and AI on society. In this episodes she explores the demands of these new technologies on the people around them, on how we need to literally change our minds to stay relevant.

What if the first person to turn 1000 years old is already born? Aubrey de Grey famously asked this question back in 2008, and it might seem abstract or beyond what we might deem realistic. Nonetheless, Aubrey aims to end aging, so that a person could grow old, never dying from old age, and the technologies that would see him succeed exist already.

Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister takes a look at the importance of beauty for the way it makes us feel and how we behave in public. Stefan will take you on a trip from when beauty disappeared from art and architecture, giving way to funcionality and pragmatism and into the future, where, he argues, beauty is going to play a much bigger role in our daily lives.