Global Futurist | Founder of Futuremade and Me:chine Institute |
Global Gurus Top 30 Futurist | Forbes Top 50 Female Futurist
Tracey Follows is a globally recognised futurist whose work has evolved from just analysing trends to building an entirely new world framework for the synthetic age.
Tracey’s original concepts, which include the Me:chine Self (the synthesis of the machinable and unmachinable self that inhabits a machinic world) have positioned her as one of the most distinctive futures thinkers redefining human agency, sovereignty, and personhood for the decades ahead. And her award-winning podcast is now broadcasting the Me:chine Dialogues.
Her work has significant global impact. In 2025, as Chair of the UN/ITU Cross-Technology Working Group, she helped deliver the world’s first Global Digital Citiverse Framework, shaping international policy, ethics, and standards for virtual worlds and digital innovation.
She was the futurologist for the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Future of Engineering 2050 campaign. A compelling communicator, Tracey is one of two Resident Futurists covering products of the future on BBC Radio 4’s Dough, with media appearances in 2025 including CNN, BBC News, BBC Front Row, BBC 5Live, and exclusive interviews in The Sun and The Mirror. A popular keynote speaker she has spoken at the United Nations, U.S. State Department, FT Global Boardroom, Nobel Visions, FT Tech Live, FT Wealth Management, Finovate and Fortune Brainstorm AI, and delivers strategic foresight in executive programmes at London Business School and leading corporate academies.
Tracey is the author of The Future of You and host of the award-winning podcast of the same name (winning Best Tech Show, Independent Podcast Awards 2023). Her new major work, Me:chine, extends her philosophical system into a practical and educational framework – forming the foundation of a new curriculum for identity and agency in the synthetic century.
Across her career, Tracey Follows has moved beyond trend commentary to create a generative worldview that helps leaders and institutions understand not only where the world is heading, but who we must become to inhabit it.
2026 TOPICS:
The Me:chine Age
Unmachinability in a Machinic World
“Not war between humans and machinesbut a meeting of selves” – Tracey Follows
As AI, automation, and optimisation scale, human beings are increasingly required to become machine-readable – measurable, predictable, and compliant. Identity becomes infrastructure. Decision-making becomes distributed. Agency becomes quietly diluted.
This keynote introduces a clear distinction between our machinable and the unmachinable selves. Rather than framing the future as humans versus machines, Tracey Follows explores the synthesis between the machinable and the unmachinable self – what she calls Me:chine – and why this synthesis is now essential for
leadership, judgment, and responsibility. Drawing on foresight, systems thinking, psychology, media, and lived organisational experience, The Me:chine Age shows why clarity, efficiency, and optimisation are no longer sufficient – and why human perception, temporal awareness, imagination, adaptability, and judgment are becoming the
most valuable capabilities of the future.In a world designed by machines for machines, remaining human is no longer automatic.
The New World Re-Order
The System, Self & Operating Space Between
“Every future is written between the system and the self” – Tracey Follows
This has long been the organising belief behind Tracey Follows’ work – and why, years ahead of the mainstream, she wrote a book on digital identity, exploring how future technology would reshape who we are, not just what we do. Today, that future has arrived. And it is intensifying.
Across energy, finance, artificial intelligence, digital governance, and planetary infrastructure, systems are securitising around us. They are becoming more automated, more optimised, and harder to influence once they are in motion. Power has shifted upstream into the infrastructure itself. As this happens, a new question emerges:what happens to our human agency in autonomous systems?
In this keynote, this Top 30 Futurist worldwide, shows how modern systems shape identity, agency, and productivity from the inside – and why futures that pay little attention to an interior world leave us constrained rather than empowered.
Rather than framing the future as humans versus machines, she focuses on what is unmachinable: adaptability, awareness, perception, imagination, and the ability to choose well in uncertainty. In a machine-readable world, these human capabilities become more valuable, not less.
New World Re-Order gives senior and executive leaders a clearer way to see what in the world is changing, where agency still sits, and how to operate intelligently inside powerful systems without losing authorship, ambition, or authority.
TESTIMONIALS:
Tracey was a truly outstanding speaker at FinovateEurope in 2025. Her Keynote exploring how AI will impact business, consumers and society was one of the most interesting and forward-looking AI presentations I have ever seen. Her commentary about blood, not data, being the new oil was truly mind blowing.
Katie Gwyn-Williams – Finovate
“Tracey is a high-impact speaker who truly does see trends in society & technology years before anyone else. She has spoken twice for FT events I’ve produced, most recently at the 2021 FT-TNW tech conference, where she delivered the closing keynote”. – Financial Times Events
