Jamais Cascio is a

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

–based author and

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abo ...

Early life and education

Cascio graduated from

Mira Costa High School Mira Costa High School (MCHS, "Costa") is a four-year public high school located in Manhattan Beach, California that first began operating in 1950. It is the only high school in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District. The school's athletic ...

, Manhattan Beach, California in 1983. In 1988 he graduated from the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...

, majoring in

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

and history. He subsequently studied Political Science at Berkeley, graduating in 1993.

Career

Cascio was Technology Manager at Global Business Network and Director of Impacts Analysis for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. In 2009, Cascio was listed as one of

Foreign Policy Magazine A state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterally or through m ...

's top 100 Global Thinkers.

Michio Kaku Michio Kaku (, ; born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science ( science communicator). He is a professor of theoretical physics in the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Kak ...

has called him "a leading futurist with a long career of thoughtfully contemplating the outlines of tomorrow.". He has written articles for various publications on a variety of subjects, including the future of human evolution, education in the information age, and emergent technologies. As of 2016 he was a Senior Fellow at the

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) is a technoprogressive think tank that seeks to "promote ideas about how technological progress can increase freedom, happiness, and human flourishing in democratic societies."Joseph R. ...

,Jamais Cascio Bio Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Ieet.org. Retrieved November 29, 2011. a research Fellow at the

Institute for the Future The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a Palo Alto, California, US–based not-for-profit think tank. It was established, in 1968, as a spin-off from the RAND Corporation to help organizations plan for the long-term future, a subject known as ...

,Jamais Cascio: ITFT Distinguished Fellow
Retrieved September 12, 2015 and a member of the Ensia Advisory Council. Cascio was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his life's work by the

University of Advancing Technology University of Advancing Technology (UAT) is a private for-profit university in Tempe, Arizona. Founded in 1983, UAT integrates technology into its general education requirements. The institution offers core classes (e.g., Legal Issues in Technol ...

in May 2017.

Projects

Transhuman Space

In the period 2003-4, Cascio published two volumes of background material for use in Steve Jackson Games' role playing game ''

Transhuman Space ''Transhuman Space'' (THS) is a role-playing game by David Pulver, published by Steve Jackson Games as part of the "Powered by ''GURPS''" (''Generic Universal Role-Playing System'') line. Set in the year 2100, humanity has begun to colonize the S ...

'', which is set in 2100. Cascio's first volume, ''Broken Dreams'', provides a political backdrop that concentrates on the less fortunate, and how they might respond to their circumstances. The second volume, ''Toxic Memes'', concentrates on the battle for public opinion, and the issues that might arise from a hypothetical new science of memetics: the analysis, engineering, and manipulation of ideas.

Worldchanging

In 2003, Cascio co-founded the online website

Worldchanging Worldchanging was a nonprofit online publisher that operated from 2003 to 2010. Its strapline was ''A bright green future''. It published newsletters and books about sustainability, bright green environmentalism, futurism and social innovation. ...

with

Alex Steffen Alex Steffen (born 1968) is an American futurist who writes and speaks about sustainability and the future of the planet. He emphasizes the importance of imagining persuasive, positive possible futures: "It's literally true that we can't build ...

. He contributed articles from 2003 until his departure in 2006. His range of topics covered energy, climate change, global development, open source, biotechnology, and nanotechnologies.

Cheeseburger carbon footprint

In 2006, when the concept of a carbon footprint was only just becoming an environmental talking point, Cascio decided to provide an illustrative example using a popular everyday item: the cheeseburger. Taking into account ''all'' factors that went into the manufacture and delivery of one cheeseburger, Cascio calculated that the equivalent of of CO₂ was generated. Interpreting the result another way, Cascio estimated the annual emissions from cheeseburger production and distribution in the United States was comparable to that of all

SUVs A sport utility vehicle (SUV) is a car classification that combines elements of road-going passenger cars with features from off-road vehicles, such as raised ground clearance and four-wheel drive. There is no commonly agreed-upon definitio ...

being driven on American roads at the time. The report raised a lot of interest, and featured in a segment of the National Geographic documentary ''Six Degrees Could Change the World''.

Superstruct

In 2008 Cascio collaborated with

Jane McGonigal Jane McGonigal (born October 21, 1977) is an American author, game designer, and researcher. McGonigal advocates using mobile and digital technology to channel positive attitudes and collaboration in a real-world context. Biography Early years ...

as scenario designer and administrator for ''Superstruct''; a large scale forecasting game that invited players to use social media to describe how they would respond to five hypothetical but plausible threats to Humanity in the year 2019. The presentation followed the structure of the ten-year forecasting reports used by the Institute of The Future. 5000 players participated over a six-week period, starting in October 2008.

Geoengineering

Cascio has been a contributor to discussions about the ethics and practicality of geoengineering since 2005. In 2009, he self-published a collection of his essays under the title ''Hacking the Earth''. These essays stress that geoengineering strategies do not address the underlying causes of global warming, and that the consequences need to be weighed carefully. Nevertheless, Cascio advocates that geoengineering be considered seriously as a way of keeping increases in global temperature to a minimum. In 2008–09, Cascio collaborated with the

Australian Broadcasting Commission The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-owned ...

as a writer and consultant to produce ''Bluebird AR'', an interactive multimedia drama that encouraged viewers to participate, and think about issues in geoengineering. The show was broadcast from April–June 2010.

Is Google making us stupid?

Is Google Making Us Stupid? ''Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains!'' (alternatively ''Is Google Making Us Stoopid?'') is a magazine article by technology writer Nicholas G. Carr, and is highly critical of the Internet's effect on cognition ...

'' was a 2008 article by Nicholas Carr, which was later expanded on in '' The Shallows''. Carr suggested that the ready access to knowledge provided by internet search engines was affecting people's cognition skills; encouraging them to 'skim' information at the expense of critical thinking and focused research. Based on his personal experiences, Carr even wondered if the brain was being permanently affected. Responding in the same publication a year later, Cascio argued that human cognition has always evolved to meet environmental challenges, and that those posed by the internet are no different: the 'skimming' referred to by Carr was a form of attention deficit caused by the immaturity of filter algorithms. Cascio further argued that the problem will diminish as human needs exert evolutionary pressure of their own to cause the algorithms to improve. The two articles have been used to promote topical debate in several places. Pew Research used them to form a tension-pair question survey that was distributed to noted academics. Most responded in detail; 76% agreeing with the proposition "Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid". When discussing the topic in ''The Googlisation of Everything'',

Siva Vaidhyanathan Siva Vaidhyanathan (born 1966) is a cultural historian and media scholar, and the Robertson professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan is a permanent columnist at The Guardian and Slate; he is also a frequent contrib ...

tended to side with Carr. However, he thought both arguments relied too much on determinism: Carr in thinking that an over-reliance on internet tools will inevitably cause the brain to atrophy, and Cascio in thinking that getting smarter is the necessary outcome of the evolutionary pressures he describes.

John Naughton John Naughton (born 18 July 1946) is an Irish academic, journalist and author. He is a senior research fellow in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge University, Director of the Press Fellowship Prog ...

noted, in ''From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg'', that many agreed Carr had hit on an important subject, but that his conclusions were not widely supported. Cascio has since modified his stance, conceding that, while the internet remains good at illuminating knowledge, it is even better at manipulating emotion. ''"If Carr wrote his Atlantic essay now

020 020 is the national dialling code for London in the United Kingdom. All subscriber numbers within the area code consist of eight digits and it has capacity for approaching 100 million telephone numbers. The code is used at 170 telephone exch ...

with the title ‘Is Facebook Making Us Stupid?’ it would be difficult to argue in favor of ‘No.’"''.

Books

* ''Broken Dreams (Transhuman Space)'' (Steve Jackson Games, 2003). * ''Toxic Memes (Transhuman Space)'' (Steve Jackson Games, 2004). * ''Worldchanging: a User's Guide to the 21st Century'' (2006) (contributing author). * ''Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering'' (self-published, 2009)."20 Essential Books About the Next Step in Human Evolution"
Annalee Newitz 11/12/2012

Awards

* 2009 –

No. 72 among their "Top 100 Global Thinkers" for 2009. * 2017 – Honorary Doctorate from the