Today

Tomorrow

Essential updates for change makers from the team at Today

#12

Strolling into 2020

Happy holiday season to each and every change maker in our community. We want to acknowledge the amazing year that we’ve had working on projects that have the power to change the future for people and the planet—but have also challenged and inspired us. For being part of this journey, we thank you sincerely.

The tabs of a decade past, present, and future

We know just how much you love a good thought-provoking tab (that’s right, we checked the data). So this issue we’re taking the chance to reflect on significant moments from the decade-that’s-drawing-to-a-close and allowing some time for musing on what the approaching decade may hold.

We’ll be back in your inbox next year, with no haunting ghosts of “if only we had...”, but always, “how might we create a better tomorrow”. Rest well.

Pauline Shoemaker, Front-end Developer.

1	A look back at how the experiment-based approach has transformed development economics in the past decade, a field that studies the causes of global poverty and how best to combat it.
2	Evidence that supporting green jobs and innovation may harbour economic prosperity, in addition to helping to reduce the harmful effects of climate change.

Jacob Zinman-Jeanes, Design Director.

1	It can be easy to admire new technologies that promise magical solutions, or to denounce modern developments as being counter to our nature as humans. This interview explores the origins of both mindsets.
2	This online magazine has built a completely self-sufficient website running off solar power and designed for minimal energy use. Low-tech Magazine explores past knowledge and technologies to solve current and future problems.

Penny McVey, Delivery Lead.

1	The UN sustainable development goals are celebrated for aligning business, government and citizens on purpose. But have we made progress over the last five years? The proof is in the (figgy) pudding.
2	Living closer together is becoming a rapid reality for urban dwellers. Here’s one firm’s vision on how we design future cities, with sustainability and community at the core.

Callan Rowe, Innovation Lead.

1	Some ‘light’ holiday reading, Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff is an important book laying out how data and big tech have supercharged the negative aspects of capitalism into something very anti-human. As we move into the next decade this new strain of capitalism seems poised to become the dominant model.
2	A more hopeful book from the CEO and founder of Kickstarter Yancey Strickler, This Could Be Our Future looks at how we might move away from the current default of financial maximisation towards a more generous and rounded idea of value.

Lennon Cheng, Senior Interaction Designer.

1	Buckle up for an insightful report on how technology has entirely transformed day-to-day food ordering and delivery in China.
2	Our daily usage of mobile apps and a little gamification might help scale up climate action, and it has already been happening.

Adam Morris, Chief Design Officer.

1	The 2010s saw us enter post-normal times; a period of complexity, chaos, and contradictions. It’s seen us faced with big, complex challenges that need creative and urgent responses. It’s the context that inspired us to create Today – a way to dive in and explore new ideas that might move us towards the world we want to see.
2	The World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils imagine what 2030 might look like if we get things right. There are some big ideas here that build on emerging trends, but the theme is leveraging technology to enable and amplify fairness, equality, integrity, and care.

Roberta Nelson, Partnerships Manager.

1	Can renewables power the world? This 10-year reflection on the energy sector makes me think it is more of a question of when.
2	A bright future starts with imagining its potential. These 10 short stories imagine a 2030 where technology is being used to create real, powerful and positive change.

Damon O'Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer.

1	Streets on fire: how a decade of protests changed the world.
2	As climate change worsens, a cascade of tipping points looms.

Philippa Abbott, Head of Design.

Social innovation has increased significantly in the last decade, helping scale human-centred design across governments, NGOs and industry. This has seen the development of a huge range of initiatives, global collaborations, reorienting around value based outcomes and embedding this within various sectors as way to build social value into enterprise, systems and services.

I’m really excited by biomimicry and how we move from thinking about designing from nature to mitigate our impact, to learning and designing with nature, towards cities and services that act as an ecology that mimic and learn from environmental systems. Human-centred design practices, service design, system design and ecology will merge with technology to enable this reality and help the transition.

Kathryn Denton, Delivery lead.

1	Leading the way: how Finland has built upon its culture of trust, equality and pragmatism to lead the world in flexible work.
2	Leveraging AI to create smart work environments, enhance collaboration for geographically dispersed teams and diversify and enable a more efficient remote workforce.

“It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.”

— Greta Thunberg

Innovation for fairer communities

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We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation as the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which we gather and work. This land was and always will be Aboriginal land—its sovereignty was never ceded. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.

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