THE ALTIUS SOCIETY
Committed to improving the future of humanity through interdisciplinary thinking.
The Altius Society was founded in 2012 with the ambition of creating a global forum for rigorous debate on the most consequential strategic trends shaping the 21st century and their implications for the future of our societies.
Altius brings senior practitioners, academics, political and public leaders, entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists and emerging thinkers into the same room — not to exchange parallel viewpoints, but to test what follows when advances in one field become consequences for another.
As scientific discovery and engineering advance at extraordinary speed, society must think more deliberately across disciplines, institutions and borders.
The faster science and engineering advance, the more deliberate our thinking must become.
THE CONSEQUENCE CASCADE
FEEDBACK · ADAPTATION · EMERGENCE · SECOND-ORDER EFFECTS
WHY ALTIUS
The technological breakthrough is only the beginning.
What science and engineering make possible matters. But the hardest questions often begin one step later: what happens when a breakthrough enters markets and institutions, and begins changing how people live and decide?
Scientific and engineering advances can reshape productivity and work, redistribute economic value, alter the balance between companies and states, transform how citizens encounter information, create new dependencies and security risks, and force societies to reconsider assumptions about agency, responsibility and human purpose.
Those consequences are often examined separately — technical questions in one room, economic consequences in another, political implications somewhere else. Altius exists to bring them into the same inquiry.
In an age of abundant information and compressed decision-making, the scarce resource is often the time and intellectual space for second- and third-order thinking: to ask not only what a new capability does, but what it changes next — and what those changed systems then do in return.
This is where complexity matters. As systems become more interconnected, causes and consequences interact through feedback, adaptation and emergent behaviour. Technology reshapes institutions; institutions alter incentives; incentives redirect engineering; societies adapt. Interactions can generate outcomes that no single actor designed or intended. The system does not stand still while it is being analysed.
Altius does not seek to predict a single future. Its purpose is to understand change early enough and holistically — from enough perspectives to exercise better judgment about the futures that remain open.
The hardest questions begin with what happens next.
FROM POSSIBILITY TO CONSEQUENCE
01
What can science and engineering now make possible?
02
What changes when it moves into society?
03
Who gains power — and who loses it?
04
What feedback loops, dependencies and institutional pressures emerge?
05
What future is worth building?
DEBATE AS METHOD
Altius is not designed around parallel expert monologues. Its purpose is to bring different forms of expertise into the same argument.
A scientist or engineer may explain what is becoming possible. An economist may ask how incentives, ownership and value will change. A political leader may test the institutional consequences. A philosopher may question the assumptions beneath the argument. Practitioners may confront theory with the constraints of the real world.
The value lies in the intellectual friction. Assumptions become visible. Disagreement becomes informative. Questions become sharper.
The objective is not artificial consensus. It is to expose assumptions, sharpen questions and test judgment under disagreement.
THE HISTORICAL ALTIUS METHOD
SCIENTIFIC · SOCIAL · CULTURAL · ECONOMIC · POLITICAL
Antonio Garrigues debating with Sir Michael Atiyah and Sheldon Glashow during The Future of Communication.
FOUNDED IN 2012
Built for a world of interdependence.
The founding idea emerged among graduate students at Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Oxford who saw a widening gap between the complexity of global change and the institutional silos through which it was usually examined.
Founded by Carlos Blanco and Alexandre Perez Casares, The Altius Society set out to convene senior practitioners, academics and political leaders alongside emerging thinkers from academia, business, public service, philanthropy and culture.
Its members have come from more than 20 countries across five continents. The aim was never scale for its own sake, but breadth and quality of perspective: a carefully assembled community capable of bringing different forms of knowledge, experience and responsibility to the same question.
Oxford became a recurring setting for that inquiry, with Altius conferences convened at the Oxford Union and across Oxford colleges — environments chosen for scholarship, argument and exchange rather than ceremony.
Members and guests of The Altius Society gathered in Oxford.
Co-founder Carlos Blanco in discussion with Finn Kydland and Antoine Levy, Oxford.
Co-founder Alexandre Perez Casares with Javier Solana during an Altius discussion, Oxford.
Dinner and dialogue at Balliol College, Oxford.
UNDERSTAND REALITY AND ITS NEAR FUTURE
Follow change before its consequences become obvious. Bring multiple disciplines to the same problem. Think through first-, second- and third-order effects. Ask what is happening, what follows, what feeds back, and which assumptions deserve to be challenged.
TRANSLATE UNDERSTANDING INTO BETTER JUDGMENT AND ACTION
Carry clearer thinking into decisions, institutions, public contribution and leadership. Build relationships capable of moving ideas across sectors, disciplines and borders.
From the outset, Altius understood inquiry and action as connected. The point is not action for its own sake, but action informed by wider context, systems thinking and better judgment. Over time, trusted relationships among thought, business and public leaders can themselves enlarge the capacity for cooperation across institutions and countries.
THE PRINCIPLES
Five commitments shape the Society.
They guide the questions Altius chooses, the people it brings into conversation, and the kind of institution it aims to be.
Altius is international by design — in the people it brings together, the scope of its inquiry and the perspectives it takes seriously. The forces shaping the future cross borders; serious inquiry must do the same.
Altius looks beyond the immediate news cycle to the long-term forces reshaping societies, economies and institutions. The purpose is not prediction for its own sake, but clearer judgment about choices that can still be influenced.
Many of the most consequential challenges are problems of complex systems: technologies, institutions, incentives and human behaviour interact through feedback loops; interventions alter the systems they seek to govern; and outcomes can emerge that no single actor intended.
No single discipline can see the whole. Altius brings science, engineering, technology, economics, politics, philosophy, business, public service and culture into direct conversation, looking for insights that emerge only when disciplines confront one another.
Understanding the future requires deep awareness of the past. Altius values the exchange between accumulated experience and emerging perspectives, because durable innovation builds on what came before without being confined by it.
Understanding is not an end in itself. Altius and its members seek to have a positive impact through public contribution and responsible action — translating serious inquiry into better choices for the institutions and communities they shape.
THE PURPOSE
The premise that animated Altius in 2012 remains the same: change can create extraordinary opportunities if it is understood early, examined honestly and guided with judgment.
As scientific and engineering progress accelerates, that task becomes more urgent. The central challenge is not simply to understand what can be built, but to think holistically about what those advances may do to economies, institutions, political systems, communities and human purpose — including the second- and third-order consequences that emerge only after systems begin adapting to change.
Altius does not claim to predict the future. It exists to improve the quality of thought, debate and judgment with which consequential futures are approached — and to bring together people willing to carry that responsibility beyond the room.
Dinner at Pembroke College during The Future of Communication.