welcome to thinkfuture
what you get
Every week:
Tuesday: a text post insight from me on helping you to imagine, build and live your ideal future
Wednesday: a video post from my podcast “thinkfuture” with interviews spanning the spectrum of technology, ai, philosophy, innovation and the future
Friday: a text post from the archives, on innovation, startups and the future
I’m a self-professed polymath, so it’s a little bit of everything, but it all boils down to:
“using technology and philosophy to build yourself a better future”
about me
Since I was very young, I have always been fascinated by the future.
I grew up in a working-class family in a suburb of Toronto (Scarborough—coincidentally in the same neighborhood Mike Myers grew up in). My dad wasn’t big on imagination—I distinctly remember him walking by the living room and scoffing at us watching “Superman” on our black and white console TV saying:
“Men can’t fly!”
Of course they can’t, not yet. But in the science fiction that I couldn’t get enough of, they could.
Even after lights out, I’d sneak a flashlight under the covers so I could read about the world of the future, a future full of promise and technological marvels.
"Star Trek" particularly captured my imagination
It offered an optimistic vision of the future where humanity united for the greater good, powered by groundbreaking technology.
This drove me towards a career in tech (I think Star Trek probably launched more careers in tech than anything else), with a focus on innovation and the future. to be innovative, you need to embrace diverse inputs from many different sources, using that input to create juxtapositions and trigger new ideas.
I had a deep-seated desire to turn those fictional visions into reality and eventually made my way to Silicon Valley to live among my people (fellow techies) and, through various roles, amassed over 400 patents in a number of different areas. I ran the innovation program at Yahoo! and was a key contributor to the patent portfolio at Wells Fargo.
As I progressed through my career, I realized that a lot of the tech industry is focused on the tech itself and not on the true value of the tech: its ability to lift our burdens.
At the same time, I realized that by looking outside of tech to bring in fresh ideas, i have become a polymath—interested in everything.
But of course, that would not do in this world of niching down for the algorithm.
So I looked back through my career, seeking a “through line,” the core concept of what I’ve been striving to do all of my life. I found this:
“using technology to be a better human”
But that didn’t go far enough.
I needed people to think about the future and their future and take whatever steps they needed, with the help of technology (and these days, it’s mostly in the form of AI), to achieve that better future.
thinkfuture: imagine it. build it. live it.
talk to me
This is not a lecture; it’s a conversation.
Send me a message via Substack anytime.
