full transcript

From the Ted Talk by The TED Interview: How to be a futurist


Unscramble the Blue Letters


İlayda ggkööz , toatslarnr

yğiit Sarp edlmeri, rveeeiwr

Steven: Hi there, I’m Steven Johnson. Don’t wrroy, you’re in the right place. This is the TED interview, and I am the new host. If you’re curious about who I am and where Chris Anderson went, I really encourage you to listen to last week’s episode. crihs interviewed me, and then I flipped the script, then asked him a few questions. It was a great conversation. But now, on to this week’s show. If I were to ask you, what you were thinking about right before you pressed play on this pdasoct, there’s a good chance you were thinking about the future. A few years ago, a psychologist in Chicago performed a fascinating experiment to capture where people’s mind wondered when they are left to their own devises. The scientist bilut a system to ping people at random times during the day to asked them, “At this eacxt moment, what are you tniikhng about?” And it turned out that people were, almost obsessively, imagining future etnevs. Everything from tonight’s dinner plans to the summer’s vacation, to their worries about having enough retirement savings in the bank. The stduy found that people were three times more likely to be thinking about the future than about the past. Now, there’s a growing body of evidence that suggests our ability to think about the future, to imagine multiple scenarios, both short term and long term, maybe a cornerstone of our iltilnecnege as a species. But it also rseias an interesting possibility, that maybe we could train ourselves to get better at thinking about the future. Both at the arc of our own lives and carriers but also, for scoteiy itself. And that’s what we’re going to explore during this episode of The TED Interview. Consider this a crash course on how to become a futurist. Jane: We have this banner in our offices in Palo Alto and it exerepsss our view of how we should try to relate to the future. We do not want to try to predict the future. What we want to do is to make the future. We want to imagine the best-case scenario outcome and then we want to impower people to make that outcome a reality. Steven: That’s today’s guest, Jane McGonigal, on the TED stage in 2010. I think it’s probably fair to say that, if you’re interested in learning how to fcaseort future events, or better yet, change the course of those future events, it’s hard to imagine a better gduie than Jane. She’s both a professional future forecaster and a game designer. As director of game research and development at the Institute of the Future, she creates immersive social simulations to help us imagine and predict how we’ll respond to otherwise hard to imagine futures. She also has a new book, called “Imaginable”, which offers a set of practical tools based on recent neuroscience and pyhocgsoly, that we can bring into our everyday life. They help us get our brains out of their default settings, and how we can use games to tcaeh ourselves to start nioticng little signs of cnhgae and see possibilities for the future all around us. So, throw away your crystal balls, we’re going to dive into the ftuure using siencce. And also, video games. [music] Steven: Jane McGonigal, welcome to the TED Interview. Jane: Thank you Steven, I’m glad to be here. Steven: So, this is a cosavntreoin largely about the future, and how to think more intelligently and creatively about it. But I wanted to srtat in the past actually, which is where your book “The Imaginable” starts. Because more than a decade ago, you ran not one, but two prjcteos with thousands of people involved. That smlautied, a galobl future pandemic, involving a rparersotiy virus. With snaimoiluts that ended up anticipating many things that we have lived through over the last two years with COVID. So, I thought we start there, and maybe you can just set the stage for us and explain how these projects came about. You know, what were their ultimate mission was? Jane: Great, so, this type of future forecasting game is called the social smitluiaon. And it’s social because it’s not the kind of simulation where you put a bunch of algorithms into a machine, and you crank them and see what the mcnhiae predicts happened. You know, this many people will get sick, this many people will lose their jobs, this many people will die. That’s not our kind of simulation. At the Insitute for the Future, we say we’re low on algorithms, but high on social and emotional intelligence. We akesd thousands of ppeloe, what would they do and feel, if they woke up in a particular future scenario. And when I first started making these gaems, the first big game was in 2008 called super struck, and we had just under 8,000 people spend six weeks iainmging, what they would do, how would they adapt, and how would they try to help others, if they were living through this respiratory pamndiec. We called it respiratory dsesirts syndrome. And they played on a private social ntework. So, it’s like you’re on Facebook but ten years into the future, you’re on Twitter but ten years into the future. That game was set in the year 2019, we followed up in 2010, where we had 20,000 people this time. Again, on a partvie social network sharing stories about how they would try to help others. With not only a respiratory pandemic that started in chnia, but complicating scenarios, we imagined. Like, a misinformation, global conspiracy theory campaign on social media led by a group in our game called Citizen X. And we igainemd historic wleidrifs on the West Coast of the United States, and there were supply chain disruptions. We had a mom saying, I’m imagining not going to work because schools are closed, and I’m gonna have to stay at home and I don’t know how I am going to get my work done. So, we were able to anticipate just by asking ordinary people, this kind of surprising rplpie effect or scaiol consequences, that many experts in pbulic health or epidemiology, weren’t really thinking about, this sort of iaaorrtinl behaviors. We were able by talking to ordinary people, allowing them to be experts in their own futures, what would they want, feel, and need, to get a lot of really actionable intelligence. And it was just, you know, I had to say as a fisrtuut, we’re always looking at about ten years out, it’s out of the favorite timeline. So, in some ways, it’s just, I think, it’s weird dumb luck that the game was set in the year 2019 and 2020, and just sort of uncannily turn out to be exactly when we levid through what we imagined. Steven: I think it sdnous suspiciously accurate, it’s the way I think about it. No, it’s fascinating. And I wonder, if you just elxaipn a bit more about for someone participating in this game, and we’re gnnoa go back to this idea of in your wour work and in futurism in genreal. But for the time being, just explain to us how you actually engage, or is it kind of role playing, are you describing the events as if they are hinnppeag and you just sharing imagined stories from an imagined future. Is that what it looks like? Jane: Exactly.I mean, really, if if people could just imagine their ecrpxneiee on social media and news.

Open Cloze


İlayda ______ , __________

_____ Sarp _______, ________

Steven: Hi there, I’m Steven Johnson. Don’t _____, you’re in the right place. This is the TED interview, and I am the new host. If you’re curious about who I am and where Chris Anderson went, I really encourage you to listen to last week’s episode. _____ interviewed me, and then I flipped the script, then asked him a few questions. It was a great conversation. But now, on to this week’s show. If I were to ask you, what you were thinking about right before you pressed play on this _______, there’s a good chance you were thinking about the future. A few years ago, a psychologist in Chicago performed a fascinating experiment to capture where people’s mind wondered when they are left to their own devises. The scientist _____ a system to ping people at random times during the day to asked them, “At this _____ moment, what are you ________ about?” And it turned out that people were, almost obsessively, imagining future ______. Everything from tonight’s dinner plans to the summer’s vacation, to their worries about having enough retirement savings in the bank. The _____ found that people were three times more likely to be thinking about the future than about the past. Now, there’s a growing body of evidence that suggests our ability to think about the future, to imagine multiple scenarios, both short term and long term, maybe a cornerstone of our ____________ as a species. But it also ______ an interesting possibility, that maybe we could train ourselves to get better at thinking about the future. Both at the arc of our own lives and carriers but also, for _______ itself. And that’s what we’re going to explore during this episode of The TED Interview. Consider this a crash course on how to become a futurist. Jane: We have this banner in our offices in Palo Alto and it _________ our view of how we should try to relate to the future. We do not want to try to predict the future. What we want to do is to make the future. We want to imagine the best-case scenario outcome and then we want to impower people to make that outcome a reality. Steven: That’s today’s guest, Jane McGonigal, on the TED stage in 2010. I think it’s probably fair to say that, if you’re interested in learning how to ________ future events, or better yet, change the course of those future events, it’s hard to imagine a better _____ than Jane. She’s both a professional future forecaster and a game designer. As director of game research and development at the Institute of the Future, she creates immersive social simulations to help us imagine and predict how we’ll respond to otherwise hard to imagine futures. She also has a new book, called “Imaginable”, which offers a set of practical tools based on recent neuroscience and __________, that we can bring into our everyday life. They help us get our brains out of their default settings, and how we can use games to _____ ourselves to start ________ little signs of ______ and see possibilities for the future all around us. So, throw away your crystal balls, we’re going to dive into the ______ using _______. And also, video games. [music] Steven: Jane McGonigal, welcome to the TED Interview. Jane: Thank you Steven, I’m glad to be here. Steven: So, this is a ____________ largely about the future, and how to think more intelligently and creatively about it. But I wanted to _____ in the past actually, which is where your book “The Imaginable” starts. Because more than a decade ago, you ran not one, but two ________ with thousands of people involved. That _________, a ______ future pandemic, involving a ___________ virus. With ___________ that ended up anticipating many things that we have lived through over the last two years with COVID. So, I thought we start there, and maybe you can just set the stage for us and explain how these projects came about. You know, what were their ultimate mission was? Jane: Great, so, this type of future forecasting game is called the social __________. And it’s social because it’s not the kind of simulation where you put a bunch of algorithms into a machine, and you crank them and see what the _______ predicts happened. You know, this many people will get sick, this many people will lose their jobs, this many people will die. That’s not our kind of simulation. At the Insitute for the Future, we say we’re low on algorithms, but high on social and emotional intelligence. We _____ thousands of ______, what would they do and feel, if they woke up in a particular future scenario. And when I first started making these _____, the first big game was in 2008 called super struck, and we had just under 8,000 people spend six weeks _________, what they would do, how would they adapt, and how would they try to help others, if they were living through this respiratory ________. We called it respiratory ________ syndrome. And they played on a private social _______. So, it’s like you’re on Facebook but ten years into the future, you’re on Twitter but ten years into the future. That game was set in the year 2019, we followed up in 2010, where we had 20,000 people this time. Again, on a _______ social network sharing stories about how they would try to help others. With not only a respiratory pandemic that started in _____, but complicating scenarios, we imagined. Like, a misinformation, global conspiracy theory campaign on social media led by a group in our game called Citizen X. And we ________ historic _________ on the West Coast of the United States, and there were supply chain disruptions. We had a mom saying, I’m imagining not going to work because schools are closed, and I’m gonna have to stay at home and I don’t know how I am going to get my work done. So, we were able to anticipate just by asking ordinary people, this kind of surprising ______ effect or ______ consequences, that many experts in ______ health or epidemiology, weren’t really thinking about, this sort of __________ behaviors. We were able by talking to ordinary people, allowing them to be experts in their own futures, what would they want, feel, and need, to get a lot of really actionable intelligence. And it was just, you know, I had to say as a ________, we’re always looking at about ten years out, it’s out of the favorite timeline. So, in some ways, it’s just, I think, it’s weird dumb luck that the game was set in the year 2019 and 2020, and just sort of uncannily turn out to be exactly when we _____ through what we imagined. Steven: I think it ______ suspiciously accurate, it’s the way I think about it. No, it’s fascinating. And I wonder, if you just _______ a bit more about for someone participating in this game, and we’re _____ go back to this idea of in your wour work and in futurism in _______. But for the time being, just explain to us how you actually engage, or is it kind of role playing, are you describing the events as if they are _________ and you just sharing imagined stories from an imagined future. Is that what it looks like? Jane: Exactly.I mean, really, if if people could just imagine their __________ on social media and news.

Solution


  1. sounds
  2. distress
  3. ripple
  4. people
  5. simulation
  6. china
  7. reviewer
  8. expresses
  9. respiratory
  10. imagined
  11. noticing
  12. experience
  13. futurist
  14. imagining
  15. happening
  16. social
  17. thinking
  18. science
  19. conversation
  20. future
  21. chris
  22. study
  23. irrational
  24. gonna
  25. pandemic
  26. public
  27. worry
  28. psychology
  29. network
  30. asked
  31. simulations
  32. projects
  33. forecast
  34. private
  35. yiğit
  36. guide
  37. events
  38. simulated
  39. erdemli
  40. raises
  41. intelligence
  42. start
  43. gökgöz
  44. change
  45. translator
  46. global
  47. teach
  48. wildfires
  49. games
  50. exact
  51. society
  52. podcast
  53. lived
  54. general
  55. explain
  56. built
  57. machine

Original Text


İlayda Gökgöz , Translator

Yiğit Sarp Erdemli, Reviewer

Steven: Hi there, I’m Steven Johnson. Don’t worry, you’re in the right place. This is the TED interview, and I am the new host. If you’re curious about who I am and where Chris Anderson went, I really encourage you to listen to last week’s episode. Chris interviewed me, and then I flipped the script, then asked him a few questions. It was a great conversation. But now, on to this week’s show. If I were to ask you, what you were thinking about right before you pressed play on this podcast, there’s a good chance you were thinking about the future. A few years ago, a psychologist in Chicago performed a fascinating experiment to capture where people’s mind wondered when they are left to their own devises. The scientist built a system to ping people at random times during the day to asked them, “At this exact moment, what are you thinking about?” And it turned out that people were, almost obsessively, imagining future events. Everything from tonight’s dinner plans to the summer’s vacation, to their worries about having enough retirement savings in the bank. The study found that people were three times more likely to be thinking about the future than about the past. Now, there’s a growing body of evidence that suggests our ability to think about the future, to imagine multiple scenarios, both short term and long term, maybe a cornerstone of our intelligence as a species. But it also raises an interesting possibility, that maybe we could train ourselves to get better at thinking about the future. Both at the arc of our own lives and carriers but also, for society itself. And that’s what we’re going to explore during this episode of The TED Interview. Consider this a crash course on how to become a futurist. Jane: We have this banner in our offices in Palo Alto and it expresses our view of how we should try to relate to the future. We do not want to try to predict the future. What we want to do is to make the future. We want to imagine the best-case scenario outcome and then we want to impower people to make that outcome a reality. Steven: That’s today’s guest, Jane McGonigal, on the TED stage in 2010. I think it’s probably fair to say that, if you’re interested in learning how to forecast future events, or better yet, change the course of those future events, it’s hard to imagine a better guide than Jane. She’s both a professional future forecaster and a game designer. As director of game research and development at the Institute of the Future, she creates immersive social simulations to help us imagine and predict how we’ll respond to otherwise hard to imagine futures. She also has a new book, called “Imaginable”, which offers a set of practical tools based on recent neuroscience and psychology, that we can bring into our everyday life. They help us get our brains out of their default settings, and how we can use games to teach ourselves to start noticing little signs of change and see possibilities for the future all around us. So, throw away your crystal balls, we’re going to dive into the future using science. And also, video games. [music] Steven: Jane McGonigal, welcome to the TED Interview. Jane: Thank you Steven, I’m glad to be here. Steven: So, this is a conversation largely about the future, and how to think more intelligently and creatively about it. But I wanted to start in the past actually, which is where your book “The Imaginable” starts. Because more than a decade ago, you ran not one, but two projects with thousands of people involved. That simulated, a global future pandemic, involving a respiratory virus. With simulations that ended up anticipating many things that we have lived through over the last two years with COVID. So, I thought we start there, and maybe you can just set the stage for us and explain how these projects came about. You know, what were their ultimate mission was? Jane: Great, so, this type of future forecasting game is called the social simulation. And it’s social because it’s not the kind of simulation where you put a bunch of algorithms into a machine, and you crank them and see what the machine predicts happened. You know, this many people will get sick, this many people will lose their jobs, this many people will die. That’s not our kind of simulation. At the Insitute for the Future, we say we’re low on algorithms, but high on social and emotional intelligence. We asked thousands of people, what would they do and feel, if they woke up in a particular future scenario. And when I first started making these games, the first big game was in 2008 called super struck, and we had just under 8,000 people spend six weeks imagining, what they would do, how would they adapt, and how would they try to help others, if they were living through this respiratory pandemic. We called it respiratory distress syndrome. And they played on a private social network. So, it’s like you’re on Facebook but ten years into the future, you’re on Twitter but ten years into the future. That game was set in the year 2019, we followed up in 2010, where we had 20,000 people this time. Again, on a private social network sharing stories about how they would try to help others. With not only a respiratory pandemic that started in China, but complicating scenarios, we imagined. Like, a misinformation, global conspiracy theory campaign on social media led by a group in our game called Citizen X. And we imagined historic wildfires on the West Coast of the United States, and there were supply chain disruptions. We had a mom saying, I’m imagining not going to work because schools are closed, and I’m gonna have to stay at home and I don’t know how I am going to get my work done. So, we were able to anticipate just by asking ordinary people, this kind of surprising ripple effect or social consequences, that many experts in public health or epidemiology, weren’t really thinking about, this sort of irrational behaviors. We were able by talking to ordinary people, allowing them to be experts in their own futures, what would they want, feel, and need, to get a lot of really actionable intelligence. And it was just, you know, I had to say as a futurist, we’re always looking at about ten years out, it’s out of the favorite timeline. So, in some ways, it’s just, I think, it’s weird dumb luck that the game was set in the year 2019 and 2020, and just sort of uncannily turn out to be exactly when we lived through what we imagined. Steven: I think it sounds suspiciously accurate, it’s the way I think about it. No, it’s fascinating. And I wonder, if you just explain a bit more about for someone participating in this game, and we’re gonna go back to this idea of in your wour work and in futurism in general. But for the time being, just explain to us how you actually engage, or is it kind of role playing, are you describing the events as if they are happening and you just sharing imagined stories from an imagined future. Is that what it looks like? Jane: Exactly.I mean, really, if if people could just imagine their experience on social media and news.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
ten years 3
ted interview 2
respiratory pandemic 2
private social 2
social network 2
social media 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
private social network 2


Important Words


  1. ability
  2. accurate
  3. actionable
  4. adapt
  5. algorithms
  6. allowing
  7. alto
  8. anderson
  9. anticipate
  10. anticipating
  11. arc
  12. asked
  13. balls
  14. bank
  15. banner
  16. based
  17. behaviors
  18. big
  19. bit
  20. body
  21. book
  22. brains
  23. bring
  24. built
  25. bunch
  26. called
  27. campaign
  28. capture
  29. carriers
  30. chain
  31. chance
  32. change
  33. chicago
  34. china
  35. chris
  36. citizen
  37. closed
  38. coast
  39. complicating
  40. consequences
  41. conspiracy
  42. conversation
  43. cornerstone
  44. covid
  45. crank
  46. crash
  47. creates
  48. creatively
  49. crystal
  50. curious
  51. day
  52. decade
  53. default
  54. describing
  55. designer
  56. development
  57. devises
  58. die
  59. dinner
  60. director
  61. disruptions
  62. distress
  63. dive
  64. dumb
  65. effect
  66. emotional
  67. encourage
  68. ended
  69. engage
  70. epidemiology
  71. episode
  72. erdemli
  73. events
  74. everyday
  75. evidence
  76. exact
  77. experience
  78. experiment
  79. experts
  80. explain
  81. explore
  82. expresses
  83. facebook
  84. fair
  85. fascinating
  86. favorite
  87. feel
  88. flipped
  89. forecast
  90. forecaster
  91. forecasting
  92. future
  93. futures
  94. futurism
  95. futurist
  96. game
  97. games
  98. general
  99. glad
  100. global
  101. gonna
  102. good
  103. great
  104. group
  105. growing
  106. guest
  107. guide
  108. gökgöz
  109. happened
  110. happening
  111. hard
  112. health
  113. high
  114. historic
  115. home
  116. host
  117. idea
  118. imagine
  119. imagined
  120. imagining
  121. immersive
  122. impower
  123. insitute
  124. institute
  125. intelligence
  126. intelligently
  127. interested
  128. interesting
  129. interview
  130. interviewed
  131. involved
  132. involving
  133. irrational
  134. jane
  135. jobs
  136. johnson
  137. kind
  138. largely
  139. learning
  140. led
  141. left
  142. life
  143. listen
  144. lived
  145. lives
  146. living
  147. long
  148. lose
  149. lot
  150. luck
  151. machine
  152. making
  153. mcgonigal
  154. media
  155. mind
  156. misinformation
  157. mission
  158. mom
  159. moment
  160. multiple
  161. music
  162. network
  163. neuroscience
  164. news
  165. noticing
  166. obsessively
  167. offers
  168. offices
  169. ordinary
  170. outcome
  171. palo
  172. pandemic
  173. participating
  174. people
  175. performed
  176. ping
  177. place
  178. plans
  179. play
  180. played
  181. playing
  182. podcast
  183. possibilities
  184. possibility
  185. practical
  186. predict
  187. predicts
  188. pressed
  189. private
  190. professional
  191. projects
  192. psychologist
  193. psychology
  194. public
  195. put
  196. questions
  197. raises
  198. ran
  199. random
  200. reality
  201. relate
  202. research
  203. respiratory
  204. respond
  205. retirement
  206. reviewer
  207. ripple
  208. role
  209. sarp
  210. savings
  211. scenario
  212. scenarios
  213. schools
  214. science
  215. scientist
  216. script
  217. set
  218. settings
  219. sharing
  220. short
  221. show
  222. sick
  223. signs
  224. simulated
  225. simulation
  226. simulations
  227. social
  228. society
  229. sort
  230. sounds
  231. species
  232. spend
  233. stage
  234. start
  235. started
  236. starts
  237. states
  238. stay
  239. steven
  240. stories
  241. struck
  242. study
  243. suggests
  244. super
  245. supply
  246. surprising
  247. suspiciously
  248. syndrome
  249. system
  250. talking
  251. teach
  252. ted
  253. ten
  254. term
  255. theory
  256. thinking
  257. thought
  258. thousands
  259. throw
  260. time
  261. timeline
  262. times
  263. tools
  264. train
  265. translator
  266. turn
  267. turned
  268. twitter
  269. type
  270. ultimate
  271. uncannily
  272. united
  273. vacation
  274. video
  275. view
  276. virus
  277. wanted
  278. ways
  279. weeks
  280. weird
  281. west
  282. wildfires
  283. woke
  284. wondered
  285. work
  286. worries
  287. worry
  288. wour
  289. year
  290. years
  291. yiğit