Is the Fusion Future actually bright? That depends on us.
At the start of a year dominated by headlines about pandemics, climate crisis, AI anxiety, global injustice, and massive inequity, it’s completely understandable to feel pessimistic about our collective future.
Sometimes optimism feels like
🎻 a violin in a void.
And yet—this year marks 10 years since I began writing about the changes reshaping our world. Ten years of studying economic shifts, cultural transitions, technological upheaval, and what they mean for real people and real communities.
Here’s the surprising thing: I’m more confident in the promise of this moment than ever.
That confidence can feel wildly out of step with the daily news cycle. Reuters. Axios. The Wall Street Journal. Doom scroll long enough and hope feels irresponsible. But this work—on the Wise Economy, the Fusion Era, and Future-Ready Change-Making—isn’t naïve optimism or artistic defiance. It’s not a Pollyanna belief that technology will magically save us.
If that’s what I were offering, you’d be right to call me foolish.
What I am saying is this:
Every era is shaped by two powerful forces—just as they always have been:
🔧 Technology – the tools available to us
🧠 Culture – how our minds, values, and systems evolve alongside those tools
From cave paintings to written language, from oxen and steel to steam engines and internal combustion, technology has always reshaped not just how we work—but how we live, organize, and relate to one another.
Today, we’re at the very beginning of technologies and cultural shifts whose full impact we can barely imagine. And two trends stand out in ways that past generations could never have fathomed:
🌐 Near-infinite access to information (at least in theory)
🌈 Growing recognition of the vast range of human experience (for some, though not all)
These forces give us unprecedented opportunities to learn from one another, to understand complexity, and to unlock human potential that generations before us could only dream about.
But let’s be clear:
🚫 This isn’t prophecy
🚫 Nirvana is not guaranteed
🚫 Progress is not automatic
The macro-trends are pushing in the direction of higher human actualization, better communities, and more humane systems—but they don’t ensure those outcomes. That part is on us.
From my own “front-row seat to the first wave of the collapse of the Industrial Era,” I’ve seen the damage massive economic change can cause. Not just to balance sheets—but to lives, families, cities, and generations. This work exists to help us avoid repeating those mistakes, or at least to reduce the harm when change inevitably comes.
We will get things wrong.
We will face resistance, fear, outdated assumptions, and cynical manipulation.
Even the most committed change-makers will take losses.
The question is whether we learn how to put those losses to use.
✨ This post is just a small clip from the full Future Here Now newsletter.
The full edition goes deeper—offering analysis, practical activities to help you think and work differently, and a private space to discuss these ideas with others who are navigating the same uncertainty.
👉 If you are a Future-Ready Change Maker, this is for you.
Here’s how to go further:
📩 Subscribe to Future Here Now on Substack for deeper insight, tools, and community
📚 Buy the books on the Wise Economy, local futures, and systems change
🎤 Contact us to explore speaking engagements, workshops, and strategy sessions for your organization or community
The Fusion Future isn’t something that happens to us.
It’s something we help create—or fail to.
If you’re ready to engage, learn, and lead in this moment of transformation…
start here. 🚀
