Wednesday, February 11, 2026 | 7:00pm PT
How Do You Think About the Future?
Nick Foster, RDI
Registration Now Open
Attendance is Complimentary. Registration is Required.
We are surrounded by bold claims about the future—what’s coming next, what’s inevitable, what we should prepare for. But what if the most important work isn’t predicting what’s ahead but understanding how we relate to it in the first place?
In this Spark Salon, futures designer and author Nick Foster invites us to turn our attention inward. Drawing from his new book, Could Should Might Don’t, Nick helps us notice the stories we carry about the future—and the quiet assumptions, habits, and mental shortcuts that shape our sense of fear, urgency, agency, and possibility. Rather than offering forecasts or frameworks, he offers something more radical: a way to see the future as an extension of the present, shaped by human choices, values, and imagination.
Nick equips audiences to become more discerning thinkers about the future—less reactive, less dazzled by hype, and more grounded in choice and care. Through sharp provocation and real-world examples, the talk brings structure to imagination and expands perspective, helping people navigate uncertainty with greater confidence.
6:00 p.m.: Doors open, reception
7:00 p.m.: Program begins promptly
8:00 p.m.: Book signing and reception
In-person attendees will receive a complimentary book.
Bio
Nick Foster, RDI, is a futures designer based in Oakland, California. He has spent his career exploring the future for globally renowned technology companies including Google, Nokia, Sony, and Dyson. As Head of Design at Google X, Nick led a team of designers, researchers, and prototypers developing nascent technologies such as brain-controlled computer interfaces, intelligent robotics, stratospheric Internet balloons, and neighborhood-scale nuclear fusion.
Despite the ambitious nature of much of his work, Nick is well known for his down-to-earth and occasionally irreverent approach to the future. In 2013, he coined the term ”future mundane.” Fortune magazine described him as “one of the world’s foremost leaders in speculative design” in 2018. And in 2021, he received the title Royal Designer for Industry—the highest accolade for a British designer—in recognition of his significant contributions to the discipline. An accomplished writer and public speaker, Nick has produced multiple books and shares his thinking about the future with audiences across the globe.
While his presentations often focus on the future, they reject the allure of predictions and forecasts, the formulaic comforts of methods and frameworks, and the hollow pomposity of buzzy, corporate jargon. Instead, Nick’s talks are intentionally provocative. He designs his talks to challenge assumptions and inspire people to truly reconsider how they think about the future.
He proposes ways of thinking about the future as an extension of the present—a world shaped by human hands and inhabited by people much like us. Nick encourages audiences to approach the future with greater rigor, tenacity, imagination, and care. He empowers them to become more discerning consumers and critics of the endless stream of future propositions being presented to us all.
Nick Foster was born in Derby—the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and a city once synonymous with innovation, manufacturing, and technology. In 2001, he earned his master’s degree from the Royal College of Art. In 2018, he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has lived in California since 2012 with his wife, Jayne.
Could Should Might Don't: How We Think About the Future
Now available at: