Trends Briefing: Slow Futures
Some things don’t change
Thursday 26th June 2025
0900-1000
The future contains two things.
The first is the thing that consumes most of our thinking when we consider the future: the stuff that’s different. This is the stuff that’s exciting and sometimes a little scary: technological breakthroughs, significant cultural change, political disruption, the end of the world as we know it.
The second is the thing that we tend to focus less on when we consider the future: the stuff that is essentially the same. These are the values that don’t change, the behaviours that endure, the institutions that don’t crumble.
Often, when the US president is enacting tariffs on unoccupied Antarctic islands, when Silicon Valley is unleashing AI models that can write you a sitcom script or when Russia launches a territorial assault on a sovereign European neighbour, it can feel like everything is changing overnight. But most things aren’t changing. And a lot of the things that are changing are changing more slowly than we think.
Register here
Since 2023 Trajectory has been writing Slow Futures, a newsletter designed to shine a light on the things that are changing slowly or not at all. In our next trends briefing, we’ll be using the Slow Futures archive of incredibly dull charts to counter some popular myths about the present and the future.
As is the case with all our trends briefings, our analysis will come informed by hot-off-the-press data from our Optimism Index tracker and other sources too. It will also come with implications for strategists, policymakers, campaigners and communicators to help you translate the insights into tangible action.
Register here to attend
Every month we host webinar looking in detail at a core trend, topic or issue. Although the briefing is free to attend, only our Now & Next members will have access to the presentation and data afterwards, alongside our library of macro trends, detailed reports and Optimism Index data. Click here to find out more about subscribing and request a demo.