Help and FAQ
What is Futurebase?
Futurebase is a platform to discover, learn and discuss the future, backed by data and trends.
As a futurist, it's hard to keep track of information and trends by reading most current affairs outlets. By covering the recent past, they are of limited use in forecasting and scenario mapping.
We believe that the most compelling ideas about the future don't have to come from authorities as they can be locked into specialized, highly focused thinking and therefore more restricted in their views.
The rate of human progress is speeding up rapidly, there are new advances in AI, health and transport technology almost weekly. We created Futurebase as somewhere futurists can collaborate, discuss and track this progress.
What makes someone a futurist?
Simply put, anyone who takes an interest in thinking about their own future or the future of an organization can be considered a futurist.
Futurism is not about predicting the future. Futurists study the future, using factual information and current trends they make projections and decisions today about the future that can help shape their future plans.
Futurism is a fairly new concept in the last 20 years or so, fuelled by the world entering a new period of rapid change across many sectors. Both individuals and business leaders will now need to be better informed about the direction of key trends impacting them in the near future.
How does the timeline work?
The future timeline is comprised of concepts, predictions (backed by data and trends) as well as known future events that we call visions. Futurebase users are able to edit and contribute their own ideas and research to the timeline, as long as it has a source.
The visions on the timeline are not fixed predictions, they are constantly in flux where the position and information may change when new information comes to light.
The timeline is split into these overall categories:
- The actionable future - within next 10 years
- The near future - within 10-20 years
- The distant future - within 20-50 years
- The far future - within 50-100 years out
The actionable and near future are close enough to be able to represent a relatively accurate extrapolation into the future, based on trends and data that we have now. The distant and far future categories should be considered as speculative because many of the visions are not grounded in solid existing data and trends.
The timeline archive lists the completed visions and their status, either successful or unsuccessful and states why, and who achieved it if any.
Timeline visions can be related to:
- Locations - Countries, Cities and exact geographic coordinates.
- Companies - Major public, private companies as well as organizations.
- People - Entrepreneurs, business leaders and futurists.
- Data - Existing trends and datasets.
- Science fiction - Books, TV shows, movies and games.
We have plenty more features planned for the timeline, check out the feature requests community section and vote for your favorites.
Why associate science fiction to the items on the timeline?
It can be surprising to see how much science fiction actually influences what we try to achieve in the future and how we design it - we're actively wanting the concepts to become real.
And even more surprising is that the time to go from a science fiction concept to becoming reality is also getting shorter.
What's an example of using the information here?
Successful strategies are often based around strong future foresight, if you've considered a range of possible future scenarios that could impact you or your business, you can be significantly better prepared should any of them come to fruition.
Conversely, Jeff Bezos uses futurism to think about things that wont change. The physical trade of goods has been conducted for thousands of years and is unlikely to be changing anytime soon, and neither are consumers desires to have products shipped to them faster and cheaper. Knowing this remains constant allows Amazon to focus on and invest heavily into improving this area for its customers.
What are people using Futurebase for?
Since launching the public beta of Futurebase, we've been surprised by the many different ways people are using the information, some of the ways include:
- Improving personal future foresight
- Finding areas of interest to work in, or companies to work for
- Discovering things that may impact a business in the future
- Finding startup ideas and market research
- Uncovering areas to research for investment
- Ideas for science fiction scripts and games
Where does the data come from?
Futurebase combines public data sets from organizations like the United Nations, World Health Organization, IMF, and World Bank along with local government data, company press information and crowd sourced data combined with our own custom projections for a unique take on how the future may look.
Sounds good, how do I sign up?
Head over to the signup page to create a free account, all you need is an email address to get started. You don't even have to remember or manage a password.
Is Futurebase free?
The core website and features of Futurebase will always be free, we may introduce paid features in the future if it costs us money to obtain the data or engineering skills to provide it.
I have an idea for a feature, can you add it?
Maybe! You should check our feature requests forum for similar ideas as it may already be posted where you can vote to bump it up in priority, if not make a post in our meta forum to get the discussion started.
How do I download/export my data?
Navigate to the my activity page and hit the "Download all" button, this will give you an archive of your user and post data.
How do I delete my account?
Please send us an email to [email protected] with your request from the email address currently linked to your account.
I can't login
If you are not receiving the secret login token, please check your spam folder or filter settings.
Since there are no passwords to reset, if you don't have access to the email account you signed up with then we can't recover your account. You'll need to make a new account with your current email address or social profile.
Do you have an API?
Futurebase has extensive datasets and projections for many sectors across 200 countries and territories, 1000+ world cities and 1000+ companies available as a JSON REST API, GraphQL API or one time CSV exports for use in your own projects and services.
The Futurebase API is currently still in private beta, send us an email to [email protected] to register your interest and let us know what you plan to use the API for.
What tech is Futurebase built with?
The user interface is built with React, the back end is powered by Node.js cloud functions hosted on Amazon Web Services and distributed globally via Cloudflare. The data layer is GraphQL with PostgreSQL.
How do I contact you?
For help or guidance we recommend you make a post in the meta community section, for all other enquiries you can email us at [email protected]
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