9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So in the winter of 2012,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I went to visit my grandmother's house

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in South India,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a place, by the way,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where the mosquitos have a special taste[br]for the blood of the American-born.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
No joke.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When I was there,[br]I got an unexpected gift.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was this antique instrument

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
made more than a century ago,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
hand-carved from a rare wood,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
inlaid with pearls

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and with dozens of metal strings.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a family heirloom,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a link between my past,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the country where my parents were born,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the future,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the unknown places I'll take it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I didn't actually realize it[br]at the time I got it,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but it would later become[br]a powerful metaphor for my work.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We all know the saying,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"There's no time like the present."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But nowadays, it can feel like[br]there's no time but the present.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What's immediate and ephemeral[br]seems to dominate our lives,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
our economy, and our politics.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If you think about it, our species[br]evolved to think ahead,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to chart the stars,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
dream of the afterlife,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
sow seeds for later harvest.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Some scientists call this superpower[br]that we have "mental time travel,"

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it's responsible for pretty much[br]everything we call human civilization,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from farming to the Magna Carta

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to the internet,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
all first conjured in the minds of humans.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But let's get real:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if we look around us today,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we don't exactly seem to be[br]using this superpower quite enough,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and that begs the question, why not?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What's wrong is how our communities,[br]businesses and institutions are designed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They're designed in a way[br]that's impairing our foresight.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I want to talk to you about[br]the three key mistakes

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that I think we're making.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The first mistake is what we measure.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When we look at the quarterly[br]profits of a company

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or its near term stock price,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that's often not a great measure[br]of whether that company's

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
going to grow its market share[br]or be inventive in the long run.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When we glue ourselves to the test scores[br]that kids bring back from school,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that's not necessarily what's great[br]for those kids' learning

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and curiosity in the long run.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We're not measuring[br]what really matters in the future.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The second mistake we're making[br]that impairs our foresight

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is what we reward.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When we celebrate a political leader[br]or a business leader

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for the disaster she just cleaned up

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or the announcement she just made,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we're not motivating that leader

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to invest in preventing[br]those disasters in the first place,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or to put down payments on the future[br]by protecting communities from floods

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or fighting inequality

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or investing in research and education.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The third mistake[br]that impairs our foresight

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is what we fail to imagine.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, when we do think about the future,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we tend to focus on predicting[br]exactly what's next,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
whether we're using horoscopes[br]or algorithms to do that.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but we spend a lot less time imagining[br]all the possibilities the future holds.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When the Ebola outbreak[br]emerged in 2014 in West Africa,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
public health officials around the world[br]had early warning signs

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and predictive tools

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that showed how[br]that outbreak might spread,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but they failed to fathom that it would,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they failed to act[br]in time to intervene,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the epidemic grew to kill[br]more than 11,000 people.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When people with lots of resources[br]and good forecasts

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
don't prepare for deadly hurricanes,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they're often failing to imagine[br]how dangerous they can be.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, none of these mistakes[br]that I've described,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as dismal as they might sound,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are inevitable.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, they're all avoidable.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What we need to make[br]better decisions about the future

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are tools that can aid our foresight,[br]tools that can help us think ahead.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Think of these as something like[br]the telescopes that ship captains of yore

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
used when they scanned the horizon,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
only instead of for looking[br]across distance and the ocean,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
these tools are for looking[br]across time to the future.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I want to share with you a few of[br]the tools that I've found in my research

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that I think can help us with foresight.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The first tool I want to share with you

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I think of as making[br]the long game pay now.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This is Wes Jackson, a farmer[br]I spent some time with in Kansas.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And Jackson knows that the way

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that most crops are grown[br]around the world today

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is stripping the Earth[br]of the fertile topsoil

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we need to feed future generations.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He got together[br]with a group of scientists,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they bread perennial grain crops[br]which have deep roots

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that anchor the fertile topsoil of a farm,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
preventing erosion[br]and protecting future harvests.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But they also knew

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that in order to get farmers[br]to grow these crops in the short run,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they needed to boost[br]the annual yields of the crops

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and find companies willing[br]to make cereal and beer using the grains

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so that farmers could reap profits today[br]by doing what's good for tomorrow.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And this is a tried-and-true strategy.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, it was used[br]by George Washington Carver

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the South of the United States[br]after the Civil War

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the early 20th century.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
A lot of people have probably heard[br]of Carver's 300 uses for the peanut,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the products in recipe[br]that he came up with

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that made the peanut so popular.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But not everyone knows[br]why Carver did that.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He was trying to help[br]poor Alabama sharecroppers

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
whose cotton yields were declining,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and he knew that planting[br]peanuts in their fields

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
would replenish those soils

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so that their cotton yields[br]would be better a few years later.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But he also knew it needed[br]to be lucrative for them in the short run.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
All right, so let's talk about[br]another tool for foresight.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This one I like to think of as keeping[br]the memory of the past alive

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to help us imagine the future.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So I went to Fukushima, Japan

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
on the sixth anniversary[br]of the nuclear reactor disaster there

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that followed the Tohoku earthquake[br]and tsunami of 2011.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When I was there, I learned about[br]the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which was even closer[br]to the epicenter of that earthquake

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
than the infamous Fukushima Daiichi[br]that we all know about.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In Onagawa, people in the city[br]actually fled to the nuclear power plant

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as a place of refuge.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was that safe.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was spared by the tsunamis.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was the foresight of just one engineer,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yanosuke Hirai,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that made that happen.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In the 1960s, he fought[br]to build that power plant

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
farther back from the coast

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
at higher elevation,[br]and with a higher sea wall.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He knew the story of his hometown shrine,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which had flooded[br]in the year 869 after a tsunami.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was his knowledge of history[br]that allowed him to imagine

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
what others could not.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
OK, one more tool of foresight.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This one I think of as[br]creating shared heirlooms.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
These are lobster fishermen[br]on the Pacific coast of Mexico,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they're the ones who taught me this.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They have protected[br]their lobster harvest there

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for nearly a century,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they've done that by treating it[br]as a shared resource

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that they're passing on to their collected[br]children and grandchildren.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They carefully measure what they catch

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so that they're not taking[br]the breeding lobster out of the ocean.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Across North America,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there are more than 30 fisheries

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that are doing something[br]vaguely similar to this.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They're creating long-term stakes[br]in the fisheries known as catch shares

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which get fishermen to be motivated[br]not just in taking whatever they can

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from the ocean today

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but in its long term survival.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, there are many,[br]many more tools of foresight

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I would love to share with you,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they come from all kinds of places:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
investment firms that look[br]beyond near term stock prices,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
states that have freed their elections[br]from the immediate interests

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of campaign financiers.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we're going to need to marshal[br]as many of these tools as we can

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if we want to rethink what we measure,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
change what we reward,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and be brave enough[br]to imagine what lies ahead.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Not all this is going to be easy,[br]as you can imagine.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Some of these tools[br]we can pick up in our own lives,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
some we're going to need to do[br]in businesses or in communities,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and some we need to do as a society.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The future is worth this effort.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
My own inspiration to keep up this effort[br]is the instrument I share with you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's called a dilruba,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it was custom-made[br]for my great-grandfather.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He was a well-known[br]music and art critic in India

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the early 20th century.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
My great-grandfather had the foresight[br]to protect this instrument

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
at a time when my great-grandmother[br]was pawning off all their belongings,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but that's another story.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He protected it by giving it[br]to the next generation,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
by giving it to my grandmother,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and she gave it to me.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When I first heard[br]the sound of this instrument,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it haunted me.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It felt like hearing a wanderer[br]in the Himalayan fog.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It felt like hearing[br]a voice from the past.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Music)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's my friend Simran Singh[br]playing the dilruba.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When I play it, it sounds[br]like a cat's dying somewhere,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so you're welcome.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This instrument is in my home today,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but it doesn't actually belong to me.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's my role to shepherd it in time,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and that feels more meaningful to me[br]than just owning it for today.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This instrument positions me[br]as both a descendant and an ancestor.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It makes me feel part of a story[br]bigger than my own.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And this, I believe,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is the single most powerful way[br]we can reclaim foresight:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
by seeing ourselves as[br]the good ancestors we long to be,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
ancestors not just to our own children

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but to all humanity.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Whatever your heirloom is,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
however big or small,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
protect it

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and know that its music[br]can resonate for generations.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Thank you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Applause)