Hi Callum; I like the idea of spurring students' imagination with prompts from the physical environment. We definitely need some creativity to deal with some of humanity's problems. We want our students to imagine a future that is different from the present in important ways. Yet I wonder if creativity is triggered differently for different people. The creativity literature seems to suggest that some people find (different kinds of) music helpful, some find certain aromas conducive, and so on. We may need to encourage our students to seek the environment that works best for each of them. It does seem that lucid dreaming can support creative problem solving. But it also seems that not everyone can do it. Once novel ideas are generated there is still a challenge of deciding which novel ideas are worth pursuing. This is not an easy decision, for any truly novel idea will always face challenges that need to be overcome. One thing we want to do is encourage supportive conversations in which novel ideas are not rejected at the first sign of trouble. Thanks for sharing, Rick

Hi Callum! I have a friend who likes to say when asked about the future that he doesn't buy green bananas any more. He has been saying this for years. I think others in this forum may have better answers to your big question. But the word that leaps to mind is "interactive." I think students need to be active participants in learning about (and then hopefully shaping) the future. I will be curious to hear more about your apparatus. My big frustration with public policy is that we sometimes pretend that complex problems have simple solutions but in other cases ignore fairly simple solutions to big problems. So I agree with you that we need to identify consultative and decision-making processes that will allow us to tackle (some) big challenges far better than we do. And I agree totally with you on the importance of understanding history. I wrote an article for the online journal World History Connected last October that urged historians to teach about the future: https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/18.3/pdfs/12_WHC_18_3_Szostak.pdf Thanks, Rick

Thanks Peter! Happy to talk. I am immensely grateful to Eve Setch at Routledge for making Open Access possible. And the University of Alberta provided some funding. Thanks again, Rick

Thank you Erica! This is much appreciated. I am very glad that Peter is still pursuing his mission. I would be very grateful if you added my book to your library.