May 25, 2022
Futurists of the World takes on Oceans
What types of Oceans will Earth’s future generations inherit and how will this directly affect their upcoming futures?
Written by Emmanuelle Naranjo, Future Synthesist
Hello everyone and welcome to the first of many articles authored by our expanding team here at Futures & Foresight. This month’s article is penned by Emmanuelle Naranjo, our resident Trend Researcher who is passionate about all things Culture & the Internet. If you’re new to our Medium page, we usually choose a random topic and then proceed to have a casual conversation with everyone that joins us in our Twitter Space to talk about that topic’s future or futures that we are hoping manifest or do not manifest into reality. Last month to celebrate and commemorate Earth Day, we explored the future of oceans and the planet.
Here are a few snippets of what our Co-Hosts: Victor Sarat and Emmanuelle Naranjo and guests Matthes and Deepshika had to say during this Twitter Space:
“How important do you think the health of our oceans is to humanity? The ocean is one of the few places on this planet that we haven’t had the opportunity to really explore. And so for me, especially coming from a cultural context, there has been so many different cultural connections globally with the ocean, with water and regardless of what society you lived in, water is always important. The ocean is really important and I know more emphasis has been put on the health of our planet’s oceans, seas, lakes, and ponds over the past couple of years, but for the longest time, people just kind of ignored it. I think they had this thinking of, ‘Oh, nature will somehow sort it all out!’ Now we have large trash islands in the middle of the ocean, so I felt it was a really relevant topic and especially because the futures of oceans also intersects with other futures, like the futures of food. I know in the past year and a half in regards to seafood, they’ve been really interesting, innovative products being put out, like vegan versions of seafood, which if you would think, like 10 to 15 years ago, you wouldn’t think that would have been something that would have been popular or even invented.” — Emmanuelle Naranjo (Trend Researcher)
“One of the things that I like about the oceans topic is that I like to actually think of it as another metaphor about thinking about our many futures. For me, the ocean is so vast, it’s so big, and we haven’t explored everything and so that’s one way when we’re talking about futures is we haven’t talked about everything about the future it is so mysterious, it is the same as the oceans. I don’t know, for me, it’s a little scary, oceans are a bit scary. When I first walked into or got into and swam into the ocean for the first time and tasting the saltiness of the oceans, I felt a bit overwhelmed. I’m like, ‘Oh My God, this is so scary. All these waves pushing against me.’ I guess in that moment, I felt vulnerable, weak, small compared to the ocean. I can’t believe that there’s so much pollution going into the ocean and not treating it as a valuable part of our Earth.” — Victor Sarat (Foresight Advocate)
“I feel like I have a bit of a opposite feeling towards oceans. For me, it’s more of a great unknown, ocean life is still so undiscovered and so alien, and there are very few dark spots on land for us humans right now, but for the ocean there’s still many places that we haven’t been able to go to and that we haven’t been able to explore. I think of these Sci-Fi discussions that are also sometimes happening in the space and how sometimes ocean life also seems so much more alien to us than maybe life on land. I think for me that’s the great challenge, how can I empathize as a human with an environment that is, as you said, Victor, is kind of threatening even to humans and how can I have some sort of cultural understanding of the essence that this space nonetheless has for me? ” — Matthes
“When I was thinking of the futures of oceans, there were two things I was thinking of. I was thinking more in terms of technology and the new business models that are evolving in terms of technology. There are so many drones that are coming in which are able to clean the oceans and they are able to collect the data, which wasn’t possible earlier, so that’s something I’m excited about. The other thing which I found really fascinating, just the other day, I attended this session by a company called Beach Token and what they are doing is for anybody who does anything good in terms of beach cleaning or any of those efforts, then you get a token or NFT in exchange of your actions and then how that whole business model is built. I think I’m really excited about all these new business models that are coming, especially around Blockchain and NFTs, which are addressing these social good areas and seeing a use case in terms of beaches was also good to see. All the technologies that are shaping our perception of ocean life and even the cleaning efforts would be the use of technology.” — Deepshikha
Hey, you made it!
We hope more thoughts and questions were inspired while reading about our thoughts on the Futures of Oceans. Some more insights and observations were shared and discussed by our excellent hosts and amazing guests, but we like to keep these articles brief. Let us know, in the comments below, if you have a future or futures you would like to share with us!
We thank you for taking the time to read our article, and if you like this short recap of our conversations, please consider supporting us! Another option is to join us during our live Twitter Spaces so you can network with experts and professionals, and share your own thoughts and questions with us. You can also be featured on here, too!
Make sure to follow our Medium page and all our other social media accounts (@5cenarios) to be kept up to date on all of our future events. You can also check out our Patreon page to see what else you can receive while supporting us!
Until next time, Keep futuring!
This is a short recap of an audio-only conversation that was held in Twitter Spaces on April 22nd, 2022.
