Richard Thieme

Author and Futurist

Richard Thieme is an author and professional speaker focused on the challenges posed by new technologies and the future, how to redesign ourselves to meet these challenges, and creativity in response to radical change, including “identify shift.” His column, “Islands in the Clickstream,” was distributed to subscribers in sixty countries before collection as a book in 2004. When a friend at the National Security Agency said after they worked together on ethics and intelligence issues, “The only way you can tell the truth is through fiction,” he returned to writing short stories, 19 of which are collected in “Mind Games.” A novel FOAM was published by Exurban Press in September 2015. He is also co-author of the critically extolled “UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry,” a 5-year research project using material exclusively from government documents and other primary sources, now in 65 university libraries

His work has been taught at universities in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States, and he has guest lectured at numerous universities, including Purdue University (CERIAS), the Technology, Literacy and Culture Distinguished Speakers Series of the University of Texas, the “Design Matters” lecture series at the University of Calgary, and as a Distinguished Lecturer in Telecommunications Systems at Murray State University. He addressed the reinvention of “Europe” as a “cognitive artifact” for curators and artists at Museum Sztuki in Lodz, Poland, keynoted CONFidence in Krakow 2015, and keynoted “The Real Truth: A World’s Fair” at Raven Row Gallery, London, He recently keynoted Code Blue in Tokyo. He has spoken for the National Security Agency, the FBI, the Secret Service, the US Department of the Treasury, and Los Alamos National Labs and has keynoted “hacker,”security, and technology conferences around the world. He spoke in 2015 at Def Con for the 20th year.