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We tend to frame today’s epidemic of loneliness and isolation either as a mental health crisis — rising rates of anxiety and depression— or as a political one, feeding polarization and the erosion of trust between groups. Both are true. But there is a third crisis running alongside those two:

“At least one fragile state is poised to bring the world to the brink of global and economic political collapse—and perhaps war,” reads the Institute for the Future’s 2015 forecast.  Underneath the core story, several sub-stories are spelled out: mainstreaming of radicalism, major infrastructure failures, and rising

My Soviet past gave me an unexpected advantage as a futurist: I learned firsthand that no one can predict the future. I first shared this essay as a guest writer for Boing Boing in 2015, and have slightly updated it. At the end of workshops at the Institute for the