In this episode of Ventures, Joel Fariss (https://joelfariss.com; a design research and strategic futures associate at Gensler) and I continue our conversation from Episode 21 and explore the implications of self-defined virtual identities and data stores as it relates to innovation, human progress, Dream Thinking, and Web 3.0.  

You can watch this episode below or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts (search for “Ventures”).

In this episode we cover the following:  

1:56 - Recap of Episode 21, the epistemology of design, the future of work, and opportunities for humanity to make lemonade out of this lemon of a year.

2:30 - Discussing the tee-up of virtual identities, Kanye’s recent hologram gift to Kim, and identity in the Web 3 era.

9:31 - Problems with confirming identities, including virtual identities that are tied to the same human. What types of problems/crises will be associated with this?

14:35 - Pent up anger / frustration in society right now across politics and sociology. In the early days of the Internet, where our inner thoughts began being published online, that became problematic. What dangers (and promising signs) do we need to watch out for in the 2020s?

29:58 - If we were to design a utopian future where virtual identities are playing a key role, what would that look like? In fact, how do we define flourishing as humans? United Nations: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

28:03 - The importance of improving childhood experiences to bring about a better world; a lot of work is needed here. The human brain is constantly thinking about terrible things and beautiful wonderful things. How do we design a future to tease out the beautiful things?

35:14 - The Web 3 era will allow people to own their own identities and data. Is there a future where new markets are created for subsets of people’s virtual identities? How is Joel thinking about this in the Web 3 world? (A discussion on virtual influencers)

43:15 - Reinventing roads / basic public infrastructure.

43:26 - New economies are going emerge, which will require new value creation, and technology innovation will be the driver of this.

45:30 - In Joel’s work at Gensler as a design researcher, what does he see the coming year looking like in terms of the corporate world and work design?

51:44 - Final thoughts around the concept of virtual identities and human flourishing in the web 3 era. Dream Thinking. How are we going to encourage people to be “good” ? We have a grand call to action for entrepreneurs.