Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” May 2, 2025

Urgent:  This is the most important TED talk you can watch. If you are concerned about AI--and you SHOULD be--Tristan Harris' brilliant and heartfelt 15-minute presentation offers the most clear and concise definition of the problem humanity faces regarding AI I have yet to hear. It also offers a detailed description of what we, as [...]

By |2025-05-01T20:20:18-05:00May 1, 2025|Future|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” May 2, 2025

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” April 25, 2025

Thought Leadership: Generally speaking, I am an optimistic person with regard to the future. However, three trends are now converging that are seriously challenging my outlook on the future. The first and nearest term trend is the rise of authoritarian political regimes around the world, including the U.S. The second trend is the rise of [...]

By |2025-04-24T17:30:37-05:00April 24, 2025|Future, Humility|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” April 25, 2025

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” April 11, 2025

Thought Leadership: One definition of leadership is the following: “Leadership means making happen what otherwise would not.” This, however, begs the question: How do leaders “make happen what otherwise would not happen”? One answer is that effective leaders use new, different, and better questions to probe the future. To this end, I like this quote [...]

By |2025-04-24T17:31:02-05:00April 10, 2025|Future|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” April 11, 2025

An Open Letter to My Fellow Futurists

My Fellow Futurists: I am writing to all of you in the spirit of open, honest inquiry. I am deeply concerned about our collective future and feel that we, as professional futurists, thinkers, imagineers, and creators of the future, have a moral obligation and responsibility to use our respective voices and platforms on behalf of [...]

By |2025-03-02T15:11:19-06:00March 2, 2025|Future, Humility|Comments Off on An Open Letter to My Fellow Futurists

Needed: Spiritual Sextants

In the fall of 1987, I almost washed out of the Navy’s Officer Candidate School. This is a polite way of saying I nearly flunked out. The crux of the matter was that I had a difficult time comprehending what I considered to be the dark art of celestial navigation. Passing the course required a [...]

By |2025-02-20T16:02:29-06:00February 20, 2025|Future, Wisdom|Comments Off on Needed: Spiritual Sextants

Futurist Jack Uldrich’s Top Farming and Agricultural Trends of 2025

  The greatest change today is the rate of change itself. The world is accelerating and the implications of technological change will be profound. Nowhere is this more clear than in the field of farming. Below are twelve trends I expect to continue to transform the agricultural industry in the year ahead. Satellite Technology: On [...]

By |2024-12-09T16:02:37-06:00December 9, 2024|Agriculture, Farming, Future|Comments Off on Futurist Jack Uldrich’s Top Farming and Agricultural Trends of 2025

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5”: August 9, 2024

Editor's Note: As both a practical and a "thought" experiment, I used ClaudeAI to generate this week's newsletter. I did this not because I am lazy (although I can be lazy) but because I was genuinely curious about how well AI could curate a newsletter. The short answer is that it did a good although [...]

By |2024-08-08T21:39:14-05:00August 8, 2024|Agriculture, Future|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5”: August 9, 2024

Meditating on the Future

If we are to think about the future and do it well, I have one piece of unconventional advice as a long-time professional futurist–Don’t. That is, don't try to think about the future. First, become grounded in the present and learn to meditate.  The practice of meditation takes a lifetime to master and I certainly [...]

By |2024-07-05T12:45:09-05:00July 5, 2024|Future, Unlearning, Wisdom|Comments Off on Meditating on the Future

Futurist Jack Uldrich’s Annual Predictions for 2024

(Every year, I offer this caveat: As a futurist, I don’t actually claim to make predictions about the future. Still, I know people enjoy predictions so I offer up these 10 “predictions” not because I believe they will happen exactly as I describe but rather to encourage you to think about how you, your business [...]

By |2023-12-14T13:20:18-06:00December 14, 2023|Future, Trends|Comments Off on Futurist Jack Uldrich’s Annual Predictions for 2024

Futurist Jack Uldrich Shares a Personal Story

After some reflection, I have decided to share this short, personal story. For too long, as a professional futurist, I have not acknowledged the essential role the human heart will play in transforming the future. I don't know what this means for my own future as a "futurist," but I am no longer going to [...]

By |2022-05-24T12:48:37-05:00May 24, 2022|Future|Comments Off on Futurist Jack Uldrich Shares a Personal Story

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” April 4, 2025

Thought Leadership: To the right is a partial list of the books I’ve used to put together my course on “Foresight: Why Thinking About the World of Tomorrow is Today’s Most Important Skill”--which I am teaching this Spring semester at the College of St. Benedict’s and St. John’s University. I do not show it to [...]

By |2025-04-10T11:48:48-05:00April 3, 2025|Future|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” April 4, 2025

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” March 28, 2025

Thought Leadership: In the coming age of AI, what might be one of humanity’s last remaining superpowers? In light of the news I shared last week suggesting that AI is about to become 1000-fold more powerful within 6 years, now is a good time to begin thinking about this question. One of my answers to [...]

By |2025-04-10T11:48:22-05:00March 27, 2025|Future|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” March 28, 2025

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” March 21, 2025

Thought Leadership: Sometimes, we choose not to think things because they are simply too painful to think about. For example, I mentioned last week that scientists have recently found microplastics in rainwater. If these super tiny particles are in the rain, it means they are falling onto the land and being absorbed by plants and [...]

By |2025-03-27T10:58:25-05:00March 20, 2025|Future|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” March 21, 2025

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” March 14, 2025

Thought Leadership: I encourage you to watch or listen to this 1-hour podcast conversation between Ezra Kelin and Benjamin Buchanan, the former top White House advisor on artificial intelligence. My main takeaway was this: Artificial general intelligence may be only 2 or 3 years away from “landing” on humanity. Folks, this is a BIG, BIG [...]

By |2025-03-20T17:10:08-05:00March 13, 2025|Future|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” March 14, 2025

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” March 7, 2025

Thought Leadership: In his article, “AI Could Usher In a New Renaissance,” Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, writes that AI may soon reach a point at which it could train itself “on self-generated data through a process known as recursive self-learning.” This is true, but if AI can generate its own data and [...]

By |2025-03-13T12:34:26-05:00March 6, 2025|Future|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” March 7, 2025

Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” February 28, 2025

Editor’s Note: As many of you know, I have been doing a good deal of “soul” searching and reflecting this past year. As a result, my thinking is changing, morphing and, I feel, growing. To this end, I intend to add two new components to my regular “Friday Future 15” newsletter. The first is called [...]

By |2025-03-06T14:49:01-06:00February 27, 2025|Agriculture, Future, Imagination, Spiritual|Comments Off on Jack Uldrich’s “Friday Future 5:” February 28, 2025
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