The Analog Futurist Time Travel Kit

A portable curiosity lab built from old tote bags, imagination, and the belief that humans still think with their hands.

This summer I’m heading out on a lot of adventures. Road trips. Research trips. Workshops and Protoyping Parties. The kind where you stop because a hand-painted sign catches your eye. The kind where you pull over because there’s an abandoned building, a roadside museum, a community gathering, or a strange object that sparks a question.

As a futurist, I’ve spent years helping people imagine possible futures. I’ve worked with AI, emerging technologies, complex systems, and organizations trying to make sense of change. And yet, the more time I spend exploring the future, the more I find myself reaching for analog tools. A notebook, a sketchbook, sticky notes, pens, paper maps, and a pocket full of questions.

So this summer I’m building an Analog Futurist Travel Kit. Not buying one. Building one.

Next week I’ll be working at the Open Community Sewing Room at the Talpa Community Center & Library in Taos, New Mexico, a completely free community space where you can show up and folks are there to support your sewing efforts. I’ll transform a collection of free giveaway canvas tote bags into something completely different: a portable curiosity lab that opens flat on a table and folds into a travel bag. 

Part organizer. Part field kit. Part creative studio. Part thinking machine.

The design started with a simple question: If I could carry everything I need to observe, collect, create, reflect, and imagine in one place, what would it contain?

The answer turned out to be a series of zones.

Zone 1: The Capture Zone

This is where ideas go before they disappear.

The Capture Zone holds journals, field notebooks, sticky notes, index cards, favorite pens, pencils, and whatever happens to be helping me think at the moment. Every futurist eventually learns the same lesson: ideas are migratory creatures. If you don’t catch them when they land, they leave.

This zone is designed to eliminate friction between noticing and recording. No searching. No digging. No wondering where the notebook is. Just open, write, capture.

The Capture Zone is the front porch of the kit. It’s where observations arrive first. A strange sign along a back road. A sentence overheard in a coffee shop. A question that appears without warning. A future signal that doesn’t make sense yet but feels important enough to save.

Most ideas don’t announce themselves. They show up quietly and disappear just as quickly. This zone exists to make sure they have somewhere to land.

When curiosity knocks, the door is already open.

Zone 2: The Art Supply Zone

People often separate thinking from making. I don’t.

Drawing is thinking. Sketching is thinking. Building rough prototypes is thinking.

The Art Supply Zone contains watercolor supplies, colored pencils, markers, scissors, tape, brushes, and small tools. Some observations are easier to draw than describe. Some ideas don’t fully exist until your hands interact with them. This zone reminds me that imagination isn’t just intellectual. It’s physical.

Sometimes a sketch reveals a pattern that words miss. Sometimes a splash of color unlocks an idea that has been sitting just beyond reach. Sometimes the simple act of moving a pencil across paper helps untangle a problem that seemed impossible a few minutes earlier.

This is the zone for experimentation. For doodles in the margins. For diagrams, maps, collages, and visual notes. For making ideas visible enough to examine, challenge, and improve.

Not every insight arrives as a sentence.

Some arrive as a shape.

A color.

A sketch.

A mark on a page.

This zone creates space for those ideas too.

Zone 3: The Reading Zone

Books are time machines.

The Reading Zone contains a Kindle, whatever book I’m currently carrying, reading glasses, bookmarks, and tabs. Travel creates unusual moments of waiting. Coffee shops. Libraries. Park benches. Trailheads.

A good reading zone turns waiting into exploration.

I’ve come to appreciate those in-between moments. The hour before a meeting. The extra time before a museum opens. A quiet morning in an unfamiliar town. A shaded bench after a long walk. What might feel like downtime becomes an opportunity to wander through someone else’s ideas, experiences, and questions.

Reading while traveling creates unexpected connections. A sentence from a book suddenly echoes something you saw earlier that day. An idea from a chapter reframes a conversation with a stranger. A passage that seemed abstract at home becomes vivid when viewed through the lens of a new place.

This zone is more than a place to store books. It’s a place to store perspective.

When you’re moving through the world, it’s easy to focus on what’s next. Reading invites you to pause, reflect, and linger a little longer with an idea. Sometimes the most valuable discoveries of a trip aren’t found on a map. They’re found in the pages of a book you happened to open at exactly the right moment.

A good reading zone doesn’t just help pass the time.

It helps deepen it.

Zone 4: The Power Zone

Yes, this is an analog kit. No, I am not pretending technology doesn’t exist.

The Power Zone contains chargers, cables, battery packs, headphones, and the necessary support systems that keep modern tools functioning. The goal isn’t to reject technology. The goal is to put it in its place. Technology becomes one tool among many instead of the center of the experience.

For years we’ve been told that more technology is the answer to almost everything. More apps. More notifications. More connectivity. More devices. But I’ve found that the real challenge isn’t access to technology. It’s deciding when technology is useful and when it becomes a distraction.

The Power Zone is intentionally practical. It exists so I don’t have to think about chargers, tangled cables, dead batteries, or missing headphones when I need them. Everything has a home. Everything is easy to find. Everything is ready when needed.

Ironically, a well-organized technology zone creates more space for analog experiences. When my devices are charged and contained, they fade into the background. My attention can return to the road, the landscape, the conversation, the sketchbook, the book, or the question I’m trying to answer.

Technology is a remarkable tool. But it’s still a tool.

A camera captures the moment, a notebook helps me understand it, and headphones create focus. Curiosity creates meaning. This zone supports the journey without becoming the destination.

Zone 5: The Curiosity Collection

This may be my favorite section.

Postcards. Maps. Tickets. Found objects. Business cards. Leaves. Sketches. Photographs. Mysterious things with unknown stories.

I’ve spent years studying signals of change. The future rarely announces itself with a press release. It often arrives disguised as a small thing someone else overlooked. This zone exists to collect those clues.

A handwritten note on a community bulletin board. A grocery receipt left in a cart. An unusual product on a store shelf. A local newspaper headline. A flyer. A menu. A conversation scribbled into a notebook. A postcard purchased because it captured the spirit of a place better than any photograph could.

Most people travel through places. I like to collect evidence from them.

Not evidence in the formal sense. Evidence of how people are living, adapting, creating, struggling, celebrating, and imagining. Evidence of emerging behaviors, changing values, unexpected solutions, and small signals that hint at larger shifts.

Some of the items in this pocket may never become anything more than interesting souvenirs. Others may become the first clue in a larger pattern that only reveals itself months or years later.

That’s the thing about curiosity. You don’t always know what matters when you find it. You simply know it’s worth saving. This zone gives those discoveries a place to live until their stories become clearer.

It’s part archive. Part field collection. Part treasure chest.

A reminder that some of the most valuable insights begin as small, ordinary things tucked into a pocket and carried home.

Zone 6: Comfort and Care

The older I get, the more I appreciate designing for reality.

Reading glasses. Lip balm. Bandanas. Tissues. Sunscreen. Tiny comforts.

Future thinking is easier when you’re not distracted by preventable discomfort. This is less glamorous than the other zones, but arguably more important.

The Wonder Kit

Every good futurist needs a little wonder.

So I’m adding a collection of playful tools: a magnifying glass, a small compass, future signal cards, prompt cards, blank postcards, perhaps a tiny measuring tape, and possibly a few completely unnecessary objects that simply make me smile.

Because curiosity deserves infrastructure too.

Why This Matters

The deeper I work with AI, the more valuable analog tools become. Not because technology is bad. Not because nostalgia is superior. But because attention is becoming increasingly precious.

The notebook asks less from me than a screen. Paper doesn’t send notifications. A sketchbook doesn’t interrupt itself. An index card doesn’t compete for my attention.

Analog tools create space. And space is often where new ideas appear.

If This Idea Resonates With You

Don’t start with tote bags. Don’t start with pockets. Don’t start with sewing.

Start with a list.

Ask yourself what you actually reach for when you’re curious. What tools help you notice more? What helps you think? What helps you create? What helps you remember? What helps you collect stories? What helps you stay present?

Your kit might look completely different from mine. A birder’s bag. A writer’s bag. A scientist’s bag. A gardener’s bag. A teacher’s bag. A grandparent’s bag. A road-tripper’s bag. A dreamer’s bag.

The point isn’t the bag. The point is intentionally designing a portable environment that supports the kind of person you’re becoming.

Mine happens to be an Analog Futurist Travel Kit. A collection of pockets dedicated to curiosity. Built from old tote bags. Powered by imagination. Ready for whatever adventures this summer decides to offer.

Cyndi Coon is a time traveler and rule-bender, nerding out for good using data, science and curious questions as an Applied Futurist, author, creative, ecosystem builder, facilitator, producer, researcher, storyteller and publisher for: governments, the military, higher education, private partnerships, enterprise, and industry. Cyndi is the Founder and Principal Futurist at Applied Futures Lab, Founder of Laboratory5, and Co-founder of Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab and is the co-founder at Threatcasting.ai. Cyndi is the author of Future AI Mindset, co-author of Threatcasting (2021), Futurecasting (2026) and the author of numerous reports, articles and book chapters. Founder and Publisher at Turkey Hill Press.

She is an Affiliate at the Center for Emergency Management & Homeland Security. Chief Media Officer for Content Evolution. She leads the i4j (global innovation for jobs workforce) and Coolabilities communities, promoting inclusive and forward-thinking solutions. She is a Web 3 advisor. Connect with Cyndi Linktree 

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The Human Experience of Artemis II

There’s something electric about this moment.

I’ve always been a space nerd. I love everything about it. These ten days feel like an invitation to lean all the way in, to follow closely, to let myself get pulled into the details. As Artemis II rounds the moon, it somehow feels like we’re all up there with them. Not just watching, but experiencing it in real time.

Image by Cyndi Coon

One of the first details that stopped me was learning that the astronauts were trained in photography. You can feel it in the images coming back. They’re paying attention to light, to shadow, to the curve of Earth rising in a frame. These aren’t quick snapshots. They carry intention. You can sense a human behind the lens, aware that what they’re seeing is rare and worth shaping.

Back on Earth, Mission Control adds another layer. The livestream voices move with a kind of poetic flow alongside what we’re seeing, and it shifts how the moment lands. When something is that expansive, language stretches. People reach for rhythm, for metaphor, for something that can hold awe without flattening it. It doesn’t feel forced. It feels like a natural response to what’s unfolding.

Music has quietly become part of the experience too. Every morning, the astronauts are woken up with a song. There’s something intimate about that, this daily ritual carried into space. And back here on Earth, people have started tracking those songs, sharing the NASA-provided playlist built by the astronauts before launch. It creates a thread between worlds. You can press play and, for a moment, sync your day with theirs. Same music, different gravity.

There’s also something deeply personal woven into the mission. A crater on the moon named after an astronaut’s wife who passed away. What a beautiful thing to bring memory into orbit. It reminds you that even at this scale, everything is still anchored in human lives, human relationships, human loss and love. Moments like that have a way of reframing everything else around them. It settles in, and suddenly the whole mission feels different.

Sitting with all of this, it’s hard not to notice what it says about where we’re headed. For a long time, there’s been this quiet assumption that the future belongs to code, to systems, to efficiency. That as technology advances, the expressive, human parts of us somehow matter less. But here we are, sending humans around the moon, and what we choose to carry alongside the science are cameras, playlists, stories, names that hold memory, and people on the ground who know how to hold attention.

The arts have always been how we make sense of things that are too big to hold all at once. That could be grief after losing someone, or the feeling of looking back at Earth from space. In both cases, the scale is overwhelming in its own way. We write, we create, we compose, we frame. These are the ways we take something vast and turn it into something we can live with. Science makes it possible to reach those moments. The humanities give us a way to understand them, to sit with them, to shape them into meaning, and to share that meaning with others.

What’s unfolding with Artemis II makes it clear that those human layers aren’t fading as our tools get more advanced. If anything, they’re becoming more intentional. The photography isn’t incidental. The music isn’t filler. The storytelling isn’t an add-on. Each of these elements is part of how the mission is being experienced and remembered. A photograph taken in orbit becomes a cultural artifact. A song played at wake-up becomes a shared ritual across millions of people. A poetic line becomes part of how we hold this moment over time.

There’s a quiet recognition in that. Getting somewhere isn’t enough. We want to feel it. We want to share it. We want to remember it. We want to make meaning from it together. The more complex the technology becomes, the more care we seem to be putting into shaping the experience for humans. This is the work of the humanities, not as decoration, but as something foundational.

And there’s something else in this that matters. We are not just building missions anymore. We are building experiences that people can enter from wherever they are. The livestreams, shaped by voices that understand performance, create a sense of presence. The images, composed with care, invite us to linger a little longer. The music lets us align our daily rhythms with people moving through space. It becomes participatory in a way that feels deeply human.

That shift matters more than we might realize. When the future is something that only happens at a distance, it’s easy to ignore. But when it becomes something you can feel, something you can step into even briefly, it becomes part of your lived experience. And that changes your relationship to it.

Right now, as Artemis II moves through space, there’s a kind of rehearsal happening. Not just for future missions, but for how we show up to the moments that define us. We are practicing attention. We are practicing shared awe. We are practicing how to carry our stories, our art, our music, and our memories with us as we go further than we’ve ever gone before.

And in that, there’s a quiet clarity. Our future is being shaped not only by what we build, but by how deeply we stay connected to what makes us human.

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STAR-TIDES Capabilities Demonstration: Reimagining Resilience

The theme for 2026 will be “Reimagining Resilience: Empowering Local Communities in a Time of Uncertain Federal Support.”  How can state and local actors prepare, withstand, recover, and adapt better in the face of increasingly severe natural disasters as Federal funds are being cut or redirected? Some initial focus areas are Helene-impacted regions and Puerto Rico, with possible extensions elsewhere, such as Maui and Los Angeles.

Laboratory5’s Applied Futures Lab will be represented at this event with our partners at Content Evolution. If you are in DC April 12- 14, swing by and say hi to Kevin Clark, President of Content Evolution.

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