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The Future and Its Friends - by Dean W. Ball

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Thank you to the organizers of The Curve for hosting me and giving me the opportunity to speak, and to the Rockefeller Foundation for facilitating the reflections below. Thanks also to Virginia Postrel for inspiring the title of this essay. — I spent the last few days wandering the ancient streets of Bellagio in northern Italy. Today this city exists mostly for tourism, but through history this has been a hard-nosed place of military strategy and commerce. Positioned at the tip of a peninsula on Lake Como, no water-bound trade could pass through this region without catching the watchful eye of they who occupied Bellagio. There were the Celts, then the Romans. After the Roman Empire collapsed came the Lombardi and the Franks. Protective walls had to be erected at the city borders, since this newly fractured world had no great empire to ensure its safety. More advanced industry gradually formed during the late medieval and early modern periods. In particular, the city became a center of

The Future and Its Friends On the march through the institutions Dean W. Ball Oct 10, 2025 58 9 8 Share Subscribe Thank you to the organizers of The Curve for hosting me and giving me the opportunity to speak, and to the Rockefeller Foundation for facilitating the reflections below. Thanks also to Virginia Postrel for inspiring the title of this essay . — I spent the last few days wandering the ancient streets of Bellagio in northern Italy. Today this city exists mostly for tourism, but through history this has been a hard-nosed place of military strategy and commerce. Positioned at the tip of

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