Foresight Institute is a research organization and non-profit that supports the beneficial development of high-impact technologies. Since our founding in 1987 on a vision of guiding powerful technologies, we have continued to evolve into a many-armed organization that focuses on several fields of science and technology that are too ambitious for legacy institutions to support. From molecular nanotechnology, to brain-computer interfaces, space exploration, cryptocommerce, and AI, Foresight gathers leading minds to advance research and accelerate progress toward flourishing futures.
A core part of Foresight’s work is to host technical groups in the fields of:
In these groups, we connect scientists, entrepreneurs, and institutional allies who cooperate to advance the respective technologies. Currently, meetings take place virtually every month. Most of the meetings are made publicly available via our Youtube or podcast, and are written into seminar summaries including slides, videos and any additional material to the talks that you can find on the respective page. To join any of these groups, apply here.
Foresight regularly hosts monthly in-person meetups across the globe, to offer like-minded people all over the world an opportunity to find each other and join our community. If you work in science and tech and want the future to go well, you should apply to join our meetups! Currently we are hosting in cities such as San Francisco, NYC, LA, Berlin, London, Stockholm, Zurich, Toronto, Paris, Miami, Austin, Singapore, Boston, Phuket/Rawai, Seattle, Dubai, Philadelphia and Lisbon.
Foresight’s biggest event every year is our annual member gathering Vision Weekend. This conference festival is hosted at the end of the year in the United State of America and in France. We invite top talent across biotechnology, nanotechnology, neurotechnology, computing, and space to burst their tech silos, and plan for flourishing long-term futures. Previously we have hosted this event in locations such as The Internet Archive, a space company, an old military ship and at a beautiful old castle in France.
We also host several technical conferences every year, inviting top researchers, entrepreneurs, and funders to highlight undervalued areas for progress. In addition to learning about undervalued opportunities for progress relevant to your field, and forming lasting collaborations with other leading scientists, entrepreneurs, and funders around shared goals, we hope that these workshops will generate direction and drive toward shared long-term goals.
There are many areas in longevity, nanotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, private computing, and space tech that could benefit from support. For outside funding and talent it can be hard to find out how to help. To aid coordination, we are building technology trees to provide an overview of the field, existing work and open challenges.
Led by domain expert interviews, our tech tree architects are building trees to map the main areas, projects, and open challenges in longevity, atomically precise manufacturing, brain-computer interfaces, private ML, and asteroid mining. Long-term, the trees will integrate across domains.
Find out more here.
The Foresight Fellowship is a one-year program committed to giving change-makers the support to accelerate their bold ideas into the future. Our mission is to catalyze collaboration among leading young scientists, engineers, and innovators who are working on emerging new technologies that have the power to transform society.
We think that by providing a strong network, knowledge exchange, and professional exposure early, fellows can significantly advance their capability to make important strides in a variety of fields. During the 1 year program, Fellows are invited to engage in events, connect with fellows and mentors, and help each other succeed with their endeavors.
Since 1993, Foresight Institute has been rewarding those who are making strides in the field of Nanotechnology with the Feynman Prize.
The prizes in Theory and Experiment are named in honor of pioneer physicist Richard Feynman for the construction of atomically-precise products through the use of productive nanosystems. The Foresight Institute also announces its Distinguished Student Award, recognizing a student whose work is considered notable in advancing the development and understanding of nanotechnology.
In 2016, one of our former Feynman Prize winners, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with molecular machines.
Existentialhope.com is a project created to imagine, curate, and coordinate progress in transformative science and technologies for the long-term flourishing of life.
We list resources, projects and organizations in the ecosystem to help onboard and coordinate a global community across future-positive organizations and projects. We provide a database of information on the technologies that can help us create a more abundant future.
We create monthly “Hope Drops” including a podcast episode on existential hope, NFT artworks, X-Hope bounties and a newsletter with a digest of what is currently happening in the XHope space.
A book by Foresight president Allison Duettmann, Mark S. Miller, and Christine Peterson. This book explores how technologies of intelligent voluntary cooperation can help us navigate the traps of creating a better future. Cryptocommerce enables decentralized, secure cooperation across human and computing entities. This unlocks a Paretotropian future of high technology and high freedom.
