Ever been to a place where you can send email via live snails, feel virtual cockroaches crawling on your arm, or enter a giant-sized 3D ants colony? Welcome to SIGGRAPH 2008!

Having permission to tell stories about possible futures - especially stories created around shared prompts - enables the sharing of ideals, aims and aspirations that can lead to better understanding of nearer term actions. But there is particular value in longer term futures work (such as the Beyond Current Horizons programme) in helping to create richer short term strategies for change.

When looking at the future it’s easy to forget that we aren’t the first people to live in the present. What’s happening to us now is naturally much more real than what happened before we existed, or what has yet to exist, and it’s only human to privilege it without realising. But it’s essential to try and avoid this way of thinking if we want to avoid going over ground that’s already been well-trodden.

It was an ominous start for Innovation and 21st Century learning when the Guardian Newsroom offices on Farringdon St, the venue for the launch of the Innovation Unit publication by Charlie Leadbeater, remained chained and even the Director of Chariots of Fire, David Puttnam, was unable to gain entry!