What the world needs now is a positive vision of the future of work. We’ve got plenty of dystopian visions of the rise of the robots, the race to the bottom of globalization, and the loss of myriad jobs on the horizon. Enough already. Marco Zappacosta, the young co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack, one of the most successful startups in the sharing economy, thinks we now need more positive thinking about how the next economy could work better for everyone.

Chris Hughes considers himself lucky—too lucky. Chris was born into a modest family in North Carolina before getting a scholarship to Harvard University, where he was the freshman roommate to a guy named Mark Zuckerberg. That led to him becoming one of the co-founders of Facebook, core to the startup in the early days, including being the spokesperson for the company. That alone made him a very lucky man, and a very, very wealthy one—too wealthy.

Here we go again. We’ve got another dotcom disruption taking place in—of all places—outer space. There was a time, not long ago, when space was the exclusive domain of nation states. Driven by national imperatives (and funded accordingly), the early space age truly was “rocket science”.

We’re in an extraordinary moment in the healthcare industry—similar to where the web was in the mid-1990s. Just like the Netscape IPO marked the beginning of a boom in 1995, Fitbit recently going public marked a new era in digital health. People in the know can see how the whole industry could be transformed over the next five years.

June Cohen put TED Talks online and scaled their views to 100 million a year. Deron Triff then took TED Talks to 100 million views and listens a month—or 1 billion a year. The two of them are now co-founders of WaitWhat — the first-of-its-kind content incubator that develops and nurtures original media properties aimed at evoking positive emotions thought to be contagious. WaitWhat then turns its successes into diverse media experiences that reach an ever-expanding audience.

Each month at What’s Now: San Francisco we explore cutting edge innovation that’s happening in a different field in the region. In January, we looked at innovation happening not in a field but a scene that most people don’t know about. San Francisco has many examples of physical buildings, often old homes, that provide both work and living spaces for groups of people who are collaborating together and want to fuse these two sides of their lives.

We’re in the early stages of the Third Digital Revolution and few people understand what’s about to hit them. The first two digital revolutions – in computers and communications – transformed the world, but the next revolution in fabrication is poised to make an even bigger impact.

We were thrilled that our November edition of What’s Now: San Francisco served Tim O’Reilly’s official book launch party, hosted in conjunction with Bloomberg Beta. At What’s Now, the founder of O’Reilly Media laid out his thoughts on the future of work, and in particular, the role that platforms will play in this future.

Few people understand innovation, and the peculiar kinds of innovation practiced in both New York and San Francisco, better than Steven Johnson. The best-selling author has written 10 books that essentially all deal with innovation, and he maintains a home in both places, shuttling his family between each.

America today desperately needs a 21st-century model that enables companies and increasingly independent workers to thrive together in our new high-tech, global economy. A polarized, paralyzed government in Washington D.C. won’t lead the way anytime soon. Is it time for a “Treaty of San Francisco” which replicates the 1950 “Treaty of Detroit?”

In the first hour of our Treaty of San Francisco event, we focused on the historical Treaty of Detroit, and what the future of work might look like for the labor side of the equation.

When it comes to modeling the future of work, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom believes his state has a long way to go.

The third and final hour of our Treaty of San Francisco event focused on the world of tech, and tech companies can help proactively build a better future of work.

When Vivienne Ming began her neuroscience PhD program in the early 2000s, she wanted to learn how to build cyborgs. Her classmates thought the idea was crazy. Fast forward fifteen years, and the idea doesn’t sound so crazy anymore.

At July’s What’s Now: San Francisco, Ken Goldberg took on those who are churning up fears of a near future where half of all current jobs are taken over by robots and powerful AI—let alone a slightly more distant future where robots rule over us.

Sunil Paul co-founded Sidecar, where he also served as CEO, in 2011. Sidecar was one of the earliest pioneers of the modern ride-sharing model and collected numerous ride-sharing and ride-hailing patents during the course of its five-year run. Now an unencumbered thought leader in the transportation space, Paul has devoted his time to thinking about the future of AVs and transportation in general.