Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of their Top 100 Global Thinkers, Jamais Cascio has explored the intersection of environment, technology, and culture for 25 years, specializing in the creation and exploration of plausible future scenarios. In 2018, he created the “BANI” framework for understanding a chaotic world; this model is now in use by businesses, academics, and governments around the world.
Cascio’s work has appeared across media, from academic journals and books to film documentaries and television science shows. He speaks globally about future possibilities, for audiences ranging from TED, to PepsiCo, to the World Bank.
In early 2009, he released his first book, Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering. He was invited the following year to present on the subject at the National Academies of Science. In 2017, the University of Advancing Technology awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his ongoing work to build a better future.
“Jamais is a brilliant and engaging speaker, and his involvement in my Future of Work series was one of the high points of a great project. He has a mordant sense of humor, a broad understanding of the challenges of foresight, and the ability to tie societal disruption to the human condition.”
Stowe Boyd, Web Anthropologist, Research Lead Gigaom.com
Jamais Cascio speaks on a wide variety of topics, but they all come back to this core concept: our world is becoming more chaotic, and the choices we make now will decide what kind of world future generations will have. A clear-eyed understanding of the possible consequences of our present-day actions will help us navigate our selves, our organizations, and our civilization towards a future we want.
The BANI Model
Cascio’s creation of the BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible) model in 2018, and its subsequent rise in visibility in 2020, represents a culmination of his work from over the past 25 years.
Evolving from the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) model, which gained currency in the 1990s, BANI explores the varieties and consequences of chaos present around the world. Business leaders, academics, and government officials in places including Brazil, Colombia, India, Sri Lanka, China, Ukraine, Poland, and Russia have embraced the BANI perspective as a way of thinking about the economic, political, and social chaos running rampant in their nations. Articles about BANI have appeared in journals in a variety of countries, including Forbes, the Bangkok Post, the Times of India, and the Vatican News. There are presently hundreds of academic and training videos about BANI on YouTube, nearly all from outside of the United States.