I've been thinking about the future a lot. More than usual. Sometimes it feels like the focus on what is yet to be overshadows what is. But in this case, for me - right now, the future has to be the focus. My industry project demands it. 

As I mentioned last week, we are working with the US Department of Energy, specifically an office that deals with the issues of energy and environmental security. The office works to develop strategic foresight around these issues, a deep sense of what is to come. Our project is an effort to humanize and make vivid these future scenarios. 

This focus on the future isn't limited to intelligence offices in the government. It pervades our cultural dialogue. Ours is an era of rapid change where the future quickly becomes the present. Other than the raw building blocks of life, relationships and shelter, everything else is supposedly being re-factored by the future. The future of journalism, the future of music, the future of the book, the future of memory, the future of knowledge, the future of capitalism, the future of the car, the future of entertainment, the future of food, the future of the future. These are the questions of the day. A Google search for "the future of" returns 534,000,000 results. So, we are obsessed, it's official. Is this a new thing, a new cultural obsession? I'd say the human spirit has constantly yearned for an understanding of what could be, hence the adulation of prophets and the grand praise of accurate predictions. 

But what happens to the present? To things we know? To the things that are? How will our lives change. That's one of the major questions we are trying to answer with the Department of Energy - how are these potential futures going to impact our lives? The nature of the issues are more daunting and significant than the future of the book - they are the future of humanity and life as we know it - but the theoretical impacts are similar, how do we relate to change and what can we do today to make the inevitable a positive development. 

At the MDM this notion of the future sets a steady beat; it's our metronome; technology has always been the driving force of change, be it the first prehistoric tool or the next invention from Apple; the MDM is a space for the application of technologies. Applications in both the obvious realms, digital entertainment, and the not so obvious, arthritis education. We strive to be change makers and students of potential, not bound but what we are familiar with. Our collaborative, interdisciplinary approach is the current that propels us forward. 

A common thread between the office my team and I  are working with at the Department of Energy and the methodology of the MDM is the notion that an understanding of the future is collaborative. No one discipline, no one expert, has the answers but only collaboration can paint a picture deep enough to be meaningful. 

As the future creeps in to the present, disrupting our habits and routines, the sense that we have to deal with the implications and opportunities as a group makes it all a little easier to tackle.  Be it our environmental future or our digital future, only with united minds will we be prepared.

 Ryan Nadel is a second year student in the MDM program.