How We Get To Next is a magazine of the future, because we believe the future matters now.
At How We Get To Next, we think the future needs a new framework. We call it structural futurism: a way of imagining the future that focuses on how people interact with systems, be it corporate agriculture or institutional racism. Inspired by Steven Johnson’s 2014 book, How We Got To Now, as well as the 2016 BBC and PBS adaptation, we tell stories about the “long zoom” view of human life. (For us, the future is as much about the past and the present as it is about what follows.) How We Get To Next asks the questions: How should power be administered? How should resources be distributed? How should systems be structured? What we think about the future changes how we think about — and what we do — now.
Futurism has long been a tool — and toy — of the powerful. From century-old stories like John Carter of Mars to 21st-century projects like Elon Musk’s high-price-tag space tourism, futurism (a present-day vision of, and investment in, the future) often imagines existing hierarchies in different places and in different times — thus perpetuating them. People have long critiqued these visions of the future; movements like Afrofuturism, among others, have done crucial work in deconstructing their false promises. How We Get To Next builds on that same work. What, we ask, is the future of the future?
Since our founding in 2015 we’ve explored many different ways of thinking about the future (sometimes literally). Our multi-part series take a big-picture view of things like the future of reproductive health in India and the world’s next big pandemic. Our features dig into systemic bias in Silicon Valley technology, the colonial roots of tuberculosis in southern Africa, and the cultural impact of the “Instagram eyebrow.” Our columnists explore space, disability, food, and health — as well as the systems that shape our understanding of those topics. And our weekly newsletter offers a more informal space for writers to talk about everything from grime music to light pollution to fertility app data privacy. Our purview is global, and the voices we publish are as well. The future won’t solely be white, male, straight, or from the West. We can’t — and won’t be — either.
A nonprofit digital publication, How We Get To Next is funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Because we want to reach as many people as possible, all our content is published under Creative Commons licenses. We welcome syndication as well as more formal partnerships with publications and organizations interested in creating, publishing, or sharing content in this way.
If you want to get in touch, please write us at hello@howwegettonext.com. We believe the future is collaborative. Let’s work on it together.
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