WTFuture?!

We are living through a moment of profound transition. Economic systems are being reshaped, technologies are accelerating at unprecedented speed, ecological limits are making themselves felt, and familiar social assumptions no longer hold. For many teenagers, this produces a quiet sense of anxiety, confusion, or disorientation. WTFuture?! is designed to meet that feeling directly—and to transform it into clarity, context, and agency.

This course offers students a big-picture orientation to the world they are inheriting. We begin by mapping the present: key trends in the global economy, rapid advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence, environmental pressures, and shifting cultural narratives. From there, we step back to understand how we arrived here. Students explore the historical forces that shaped the modern world, including the rise of capitalism, the scientific and technological revolutions beginning around 1500, industrialization, and the dynamics of globalization. These developments are examined not as abstract history, but as living forces that continue to shape everyday life.

In the final phase of the course, students turn toward the future. Together, we examine a range of plausible trajectories—from techno-utopian visions to dystopian outcomes and scenarios of partial or systemic collapse. Students learn to evaluate these possibilities critically, drawing on evidence, systems thinking, and an understanding of feedback loops and unintended consequences.

Throughout the course, the emphasis is not on prediction, but on orientation. Students develop the capacity to think historically, reason systemically, and situate their own lives within a larger planetary story. WTFuture?! equips young people with the intellectual tools and emotional grounding they need to face an uncertain future with curiosity, discernment, and a sense of meaningful participation.