Suzette Brooks Masters

I guess I'm not quite there yet.

But what I've been thinking about is how we change the way candidates frame the way they appeal to the public and how those of us that

give them the platform to do that can force them to focus on different questions.

So what I mean is I'm so obsessed with articulating a vision for the future that the public would want to buy into.

And right now, the way candidates run campaigns, they never actually have to answer that question.

What does the world look like that you are bringing about?

And how are the policies that you're advocating bringing those things about, right?

And it's such a simple thing when you think about it, but what if campaigns,

We're focused, and we now have the tech to do this, that you basically had your candidates engage in speculative fiction exercises based on the policies that they believe in and that they espouse.

And then you imagine those immersive worlds 20 years out, and then the public gets to decide, is that what you want?

Right?

Like, if we could just orient people towards...

a vision of the future and then backcasting and saying what has to happen for those things to actually get realized.

And the beauty of that is that most politicians inherently are probably at some level, well, they're all narcissists, but at some level, they do believe that they're trying to make something better.

when they get into office, then they're corrupted beyond recognition.

But initially, as campaigners, I think that they espouse that spirit.

And I think if they were forced to engage in futures thinking, to actually think about the future that they have in mind, and then think about how you enable that, right, through backcasting, it might change them.

It might change the culture because...

Everything that I know from hanging out with futurists and hearing about what happens when you engage in futures exercises is it's a transformative experience, right?

And when you actually do it and you've seen the power of imagining something better and then thinking about, okay, working backwards, what has to happen?