Financial Futurist Melanie Swan: Tips, Trends, and Transhumanism
March 05 2008 / by Marisa Vitols / In association with Future Blogger.net
Category: Technology Year: 2008 Rating: 12
Hedge fund manager and self-described ‘natural optimist’,
Melanie
Swan is basically a super-human. 
When she isn’t frequenting future salons, lecturing about
financial trends and emerging technologies or advising one tech
start-up or another, Swan somehow squeezes in enough time to manage
her
hedge-fund and blog on topics ranging from
tranhumanism, to
market trends to virtual worlds.
Melanie’s rock-solid financial foundation, which includes degrees from Georgetown and the prestigious Wharton School, has translated into success at the start-up level (she was founder of GroupPurchase) and a subsequent rise through the ranks of iPass in Silicon Valley, JP Morgan in New York, Fidelity in Boston and Arthur Andersen in LA. Presently, she is the principal of MS Futures Group in Silicon Valley, holding the titles of hedge fund manager and futurist.
An active member of the Silicon Valley futurist community, Melanie is also a Lifeboat Foundation board member, sits on the Acceleration Studies Foundation Advisory Board and is a co-moderator of the Philadelphia and Boulder Future Salons.
Melanie was kind enough to share many of her tried and tested
insights with us yesterday in this MemeBox
interview. What follows is a condensed version of Melanie’s
thoughts about the intersection between futurism and the corporate
world, as well as her investment and life philosophy.
MV: What do you do and how is that related to the future?
MS: My goal is to stimulate the widest possible development and deployment of innovative technology. Historically, technology has been the one phenomenon that has demonstrated continuous positive impact on humanity, ever since the first flint. The benefits of technology are continuing to accelerate as the world becomes more democratized, expressed at higher levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy and networked globally for peak collaboration.
I also participate in creating and sponsoring innovative technology development and tools and mechanisms to facilitate its generation and adoption. Some of my current projects are Virtual Worlds Data Visualization, Open Access Futures Journals, and the Future of Technology: What might be the next internet?.
MV: How does your background as a futurist come into play when managing a hedge fund and running your own consultancy?
MS: Being a futurist means…
A hedge fund manager with expertise in financial markets,
trends, and a variety of futurist topics, it’s safe to say that
Melanie Swan has a good sense of what’s coming next. In a recent
in-depth MemeBox interview, Swan laid out a list of specific
predictions for the next year, next five years, and next decade. If
you’re looking to strengthen your future simulation, this timeline
covers some of the key product releases, technologies, and theories
that every futurist should consider.