Samantha Radocchia
At a glance:
Samantha Radocchia, or “Sam Rad,” is a futurist, best-selling author, multimedia storyteller, and frontier tech pioneer who combines the mindsets of an anthropologist and technologist. Sam is the founder of Radical Next, a meta-media studio and strategic consultancy creating transformative stories, experiences, and media productions that shape the future. Her upcoming book by the same name, Radical Next: Thriving in Times of Radical Change explores how “radical next ideas” and technologies will transform societies in the decades to come.Samantha Radocchia, or “Sam Rad,” is a futurist, best-selling author, multimedia storyteller, and frontier tech pioneer who combines the mindsets of an anthropologist and technologist.
Sam is the founder of Radical Next, a meta-media studio and strategic consultancy creating transformative stories, experiences, and media productions that shape the future. Her upcoming book by the same name, Radical Next: Thriving in Times of Radical Change explores how “radical next ideas” and technologies will transform societies in the decades to come.
A charismatic speaker and compelling storyteller, Sam delivers keynotes and creates experiences globally at industry events, Fortune 500 corporations, trade associations, national governments, international organizations, and NGOs — empowering individuals, leaders, and organizations not only to survive, but to thrive through radical and accelerating change.
Sam was trained in anthropology and symbolic systems, studying simulated and virtual realities, multiple dimensions, and metaverses — pushing the bounds of human consciousness and social organizations through her research. Her early work focused on virtual world economies, and she was amongst the first anthropologists to live in the virtual world “Second Life” in 2009.
As a futurist, this work has led Sam on a journey working with a range of frontier technologies, indigenous and emerging social structures, people, places, and practices. She refers to herself as an archaeologist of the future, as Fredric Jameson coined — applying a traditional anthropological ethnographic approach to envisioning and illustrating future possibilities.
A four-time entrepreneur, Sam holds several patents linking the physical and digital worlds, and has served across multiple founding executive roles across the C-Suite. An early blockchain and web 3 pioneer, she previously was co-founder of LOVE, a London-based Web 3 communication platform, and Chronicled, a San Francisco-based blockchain company bringing trust to global commerce and supply chains. Prior to Chronicled, Sam founded two companies leveraging AI to map personal taste.
Sam is the author of the #1 Best Seller, Bitcoin Pizza: The No Bullshit Guide to Blockchain, writes as a contributor to Forbes, and was named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She’s deeply passionate about decentralization and believes technology is a tool to empower not entrench.
Sam is no stranger to risk and has accumulated over 700 jumps as a competitive skydiver.
Follow Sam across social @SamRadOfficial
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RADICAL NEXT™: THRIVING IN TIMES OF RADICAL CHANGE
What’s coming next is radically different.
The talk takes the audience on a journey of radical and accelerating change across all areas of society. Through a process combining immersive stories, business, historical, and scientific anecdotes, guided visualizations, and immersive experiences, Sam Rad guides you into the great unknown of the future. By illustrating future possibilities, she equips you and your organization not only to survive, but rather to thrive through radical change.
Explore how you, your organization, and your industry can think outside of existing innovation frameworks, embrace new paradigms, and thrive in the face of exponential change by embodying a mindset that I call “Radical Evolution.”
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Thinking beyond the incremental innovation frameworks such as digital transformation
•How to “edit” your organization’s “DNA” to trigger radical organizational evolution
•Thriving in the face of exponential change
•Learn a proprietary framework for implementing Radical Evolution -
10 LESSONS IN RISK FROM AN EX-PROFESSIONAL SKYDIVER
Leaders today are plagued by fear-based decision-making, which leads to incremental innovation, not the radical evolution required to embrace the abundance of exponential growth. This talk investigates the psychology of risk taking, emotional intelligence, and intuition to empower leaders and organizations to innovate from a place of trust and abundance, versus fear and scarcity.
Journey through 10 lessons in risk, innovation, and radical transformation through stories, sensory experiences, historical anecdotes, scientific and business case studies, and more. Leave with 10 actionable insights to thrive in the future and embrace what’s radically next. -
RADICAL NEXT: THE OPERATING SYSTEM FOR THE FUTURE
This talk examines the backbone -- or “operating system”-- for the future from the perspective of socio-cultural-geopolitical paradigm shifts and technological convergence. Emergent technologies such as AI, Blockchains/Web 3, VR/AR, Metaverses, and Quantum Computing are ushering in the next radical shift in human, machine, and social evolution. This next revolution -- the quantum era, Industry 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and beyond -- will impact every industry, both new and old. The talk takes the audience on a journey from our past, present, and future operating systems, highlighting how in addition to a shift in technologies, we are experiencing a broader shift in mindset towards decentralization, which will change how we interact with each other, our businesses, our governments, our finances, our products, and our environment.
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Finance · Banking
•Organizational Structures · Future Organizations · DAOs
•Governance · Leadership
•Communication · Internet
•Gaming · Social · Collaboration
•Education · Knowledge
•Energy · Natural Resource Management
•Urban Planning · Smart Cities · Novel Communities
•Supply Chain · Manufacturing
•Retail · Commerce
•Food Production · Agriculture
•Healthcare · Medicine
•Consciousness · Simulations · Metaverses
•Identity · Privacy
•Digital Rights · Licensing
•Art · Creativity
•Mental Health · Psychedelics
•Machine Economy: Autonomous Vehicles · Robotics · Drones · Internet of Things
•Environment: Sustainability · Circularity · Waste Management · Production / Consumption
•Space Economies: Exploration · Extraction · Commerce -
TRAVELS IN HYPERREALITY · EXPLORING SIMULATIONS & IMMERSIVE REALITIES
What is the nature of reality? Are we living in a simulation? As technological fidelity and AI competency is reaching an inflection point called the Singularity, this talk contemplates a radical new future of metaverses, multiverses, and simulations.
Beginning with the theoretical underpinning of philosophy, metaphysics, and quantum mechanics, this talk takes the audience on a journey of sensory and extra sensory perception from past, present, and ultimately future. What is Real? And more importantly, What is Next?
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Foundational Philosophies of Consciousness and Perspective
•Simulating Environment: Urban Design, Intentional and Planned Communities
•Simulating Space: Physical Space Design (Casinos, Retail), Environmental Psychology
•Simulating Desire: Dopamine and User Experience Design in the Technological Age
•Simulating Choice: Advertising, Algorithms, Machine Learning, and AI Bias
•Simulating Connection: Bots, Deepfakes, and Voice / Video Cloning
•Simulating Experience: Immersive Realities, VR/AR, Metaverses
•How to identify, integrate, and leverage simulations or simulated experiences -
FUTURE WORLDS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM LIVING IN THE METAVERSE
This session explores the increasingly blurred lines of virtual worlds, gaming, and reality. Virtual and augmented reality technologies, Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI, and immersive experiences such as games and metaverses are shifting the way we live, work, and socialize. What does this mean for you and your organization? What about your life? Relationships? From the perspective of a technical futurist who was one of the first anthropologists to spend close to a year living and working in the early virtual world, Second Life, this talk takes you on a journey to the not so distant future.
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•What is the metaverse? Enter the era of ubiquitous computing, simulated and immersive realities
•NFTs and the economic backbone of the metaverse
•DAOs and the governance mechanism of the metaverse
•Advances in spatial computing, AR, VR
•The role of gaming and game engines
•Who should govern the metaverse? -
FROM WEB 2 TO WEB 3 AND BEYOND · A NEW INTERNET FOR A NEW SOCIETY
Listen as the witty author of Bitcoin Pizza: The No-Bullshit Guide to Blockchain takes you on a journey to understanding the crazy, fast-paced, and notoriously confusing world of Web 2, Web 3, and beyond. This talk seeks to dig into the seismic shifts taking place in respect to the architecture, business models, tools, and behaviors of the internet itself and envisions a future for this new era of decentralized social structures and ubiquitous computing.
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•The Era of Ubiquitous Computing · What’s next for the “internet?”
•The what and the why of the shift from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and Beyond
•What are blockchains? Why are they important? What can you do with them?
•Radical New Business Models and Governance Structures
•NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens)
•DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations)
•AR, VR, Metaverses
•Who owns the future? Who should architect and govern this new phase of human existence? -
FUTURE COMMUNICATION: THE INTERNET OF MINDS, MATTER, AND MACHINES
This talk takes the audience on a journey of communication -- from the earliest forms of writing and accounting in the agrarian age, to the industrial and information ages brought forth by Web 2 technologies, and beyond the furthest reaches of Web 3, 4, 5 and post-internet communication. So what’s radically next for the future of communication?
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Machine-to-Machine, Machine-to-Human, Human-to-Human Communications
•Speaking “machine language” with “translation interfaces” such as ChatGPT
•Ubiquitous Computing, Neural Networks, Deep Learning: Mapping the Collective Consciousness
•Human-Machine Interfaces, Brain-Machine Interfaces
•Integrating the “Organic Internet” · Biomimicry and Lessons from the Plant World
•Beyond internet or device-based communication · Telepathy, Quantum Communications -
FUTURE FINANCES: MONEY IN THE MACHINE AGE · WELCOME TO THE BANK OF YOU
This talk dives into the radical future of finances, covering open banking, cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance, and financial inclusion. It highlights the changing landscape in the banking sector, discusses how finances are becoming digitized, decentralized, and democratized leading to greater transparency and opportunities. Imagine beyond traditional financial systems into the machine world -- envisioning the future of automation, AI, machine-to-machine economies, and interstellar economic systems.
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Day Trading, Gambling, Gaming
•The significance of an open information society on traditional financial markets
•Radical Next Asset Classes: Game Worlds, Play-to-Earn Gaming, Fractionalized Ownership -
FUTURE ORGANIZATIONS: SHAPING THE WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE
This talk takes the audience on a journey of the UnOrganization, exploring the radical transformation of organizational structures, models, and the nature of work as we know it.
emerging decentralized and civic organizational models -- models beyond multinational corporations and nation-states, models which will carry us into the future of urban niche organizations, space colonies, and virtual worlds.
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Collaborating with our Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Colleagues
•Organizational Structures: : The shift from Hierarchy to Ecosystem and Beyond
•Employment Status: Employee/Contract to Gig Economy to Multi-Earner and Beyond
•Technology, Systems, and Careers of the Future
•Beyond “Reskilling” · Designing the organization of the future
•The UnOrganization: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, Machine Economies
•Mental Health -
FUTURE OF THINGS: FROM SUPPLY CHAINS TO DEMAND CHAINS
Over the past few decades, the globalization of supply chains has gone from being a radical outlier to a commonplace. The simplified version of the story states that, as communications technologies connected us globally, and transport technologies enabled the shipping of parts, local supply chains morphed into global ones. Now, we think nothing of purchasing electronics from Japan, avocados from Mexico, and toys from China in a single visit to the supermarket. Supply chains as we know them, however, are changing due to geopolitical tensions and tariffs, pandemics like COVID, fragmentation of people and communities, and emerging technologies. We are seeing something new. The demand chain.
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•The death of supply chains
•The rise of something new: the demand chain
•What does the future of localized, just in time, on demand production look like?
•What technologies, tools, and mindset shifts can you use to radically evolve your supply chains? -
FUTURE OF IDENTITY: HUMAN IDENTITY IN THE MACHINE AGE
This talk covers identity beyond the current systems of human identification. Explore radical next ideas on digital identity, machine vision, biometrics and the ethical implications for privacy, cyber security and human rights.
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Avatars, AI Cloning, Deep Fakes
•Privacy, Security, Cyber Security
•Geopolitical implications, mobility, and movement of people, digital likenesses, information
•Ethics of identity, privacy, surveillance -
FUTURE OF RELATIONSHIPS: HUMAN CONNECTION IN THE MACHINE AGE
Human connection and relationships are a cornerstone of civilization. Kinship systems and organizations exist at all levels of society. As we transition to more and more virtually-mediated experiences, what does this mean for the future of human relationships? The future of business partnership, friendship, romance, love?
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Virtual Workforces, working with people (or machines) you have never met “IRL”
•Artificial Intelligence, virtual companionship, and impacts on mental health
•Novel legal structures for business cooperation, collaborative ownership, new kinship systems
•Decentralizing love and marriage -- the Marriage DAO -
FUTURE CULTURE: WHY RADICAL CREATIVITY WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE
The arts are perhaps the most heavily impacted by radical shifts in social structures, ideas, and technologies. Yet, throughout human history, artists, creatives, and visionaries are almost always not only the early adopters of new ideologies and technologies, but also the very catalysts to critique existing structures and shift paradigms. In this talk, we look to the arts to explore what the future has in store for both culture and society as a whole.
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Transitioning from a Culture of Consumption to a Culture of Curation and ultimately a Culture of Creation
•Empowering the “inner artist” as a safeguard against AI and Automation
•Why Creativity is the key to the future of your organization -
FUTURE MINDS: RADICAL REWILDING & MENTAL HEALTH IN THE MACHINE AGE
Communication and social technologies were meant to bring greater connections with ourselves, each other, our planet, and the products we consume. And yet, we find ourselves in a time of ever increasing polarities -- Cancel Culture, Ghosting, Deplatforming. As advances in technologies such as Artificial Intelligence / Generative AI, VR/AR and Metaverses, Simulations, Remote Workforces, Automation, Robotics bring us closer to the singularity, often these shifts are met with an existential fear. The disconnection experienced in our societies, workforces, and daily lives is leading to an unprecedented mental health crisis. So how do we restore connections with ourselves and each other to shape a radically connected future?
We explore Radical Next ideas about:
•Disconnection and Dissociation: What is Real?
•Pathology and Disorder: What new “pathologies” might we experience?
•Hikikomori, Isolation: The Impacts of Virtual-first economies, remote work, and immersive realities on human community, society, existence, and productivity
•What’s being done to counter-balance this meteoric rise in psychological malaise?
Digital Health
Psychedelics, Plant Medicines
•Tools to empower your workforce
** This talk partners well with C·A·M·P: CREATE AN ALTERNATIVE MIND SPACE™ as a supplementary workshop, process, event-within-the event or alternatively, as a separate standalone “radical rewilding” experience for your team.
Sam joined us to deliver a keynote address for Cisco Supply Chain’s 2018 Development Day, where she took the audience on a mesmerizing journey through the paradigms that have shaped distributed and decentralized computing. Her unique and engaging take on blockchain as a backbone technology for the future was a great addition to our programming and we look forward to welcoming her back again!— Maelen Haugen, Supply Chain, Cisco
