Future Society Engine

Future Society Engine is an interdisciplinary research hub of InE which focuses on social innovation with a dynamic, systematical, and futurist perspective. We investigate fundamental social issues and explore innovative opportunities for social changes via technology, design, and entrepreneurship. As a start, the lab will comprise four core areas of research that can be summarized as C.I.T.E.

These researches will be carried out by students in conjunction with their major course of study within the framework of FSE’s guidance. The final research outcomes may be produced through college student innovation and entrepreneurship training program (Dachuang) incubation, academic conferences, journal publications, patent applications, and artworks or product prototypes.

Creativity leads to a change in the way individuals, organizations and societies think and act, and is one of the core forces driving social transformation. It is not only about creating art and design for the public good, but is also a major means of gaining insight into future social trends and constructing a positive social culture.

This track focuses on the possibilities of using art and design for social sustainability and cultural heritage regeneration. We hope to find a bottom-up approach to promote economic and social development in regions at different levels of development by exploring cultural connotations, rather than top-down through a highly bureaucratic system.

Different societies and their diverse members have different understandings and pursuits of goodness and well-being, and the differences between them can easily lead to conflicts and develop into various forms of social problems. Therefore, we must break away from the limitations of our own values and even universal values and think in a context where members of society have diverse values.

The fundamental aim of this topic is to provide methods and guidelines for improving the inclusiveness of digital social governance for diverse social members and social scenarios in the context of benefiting from artificial intelligence technologies.

Technological innovation is considered the key to win the future, which can improve productivity, potential growth rate, resource allocation efficiency, and promote economic development and social progress. Intelligent computing technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, and spatial data integration for GIS are reshaping the future of urban life.

But technology has not only changed the way we survive and live, it has also influenced human culture and values. The increasingly powerful technological capabilities need to be combined with appropriate technological ethics in order to avoid technology becoming evil and to make it beneficial to society. We will try to build a series of resident-city interaction patterns and systems from a human-centered perspective, empowering individuals and communities with greater agency, so that technology for good can be translated into the pursuit of good for the whole society.

In the future, the focus of enterprises will no longer be limited to direct stakeholders such as counterparties, users, and competitors, but will include the entire living environment in strategic considerations. Promoting the synergistic development of business and society is not only a matter of personal responsibility and mission for entrepreneurs, but also a strong guarantee for the longevity of the enterprise.

We will investigate rapidly evolving and emerging technologies as well as other global trends that may impact the future of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. We will also explore the core drivers of change in social enterprises and how social innovators can use these drivers to create sustainable strategies to solve the wicked social problems facing our world and transform society.