Friday, March 09, 2007

Experiential scenarios on video

These four short video clips are from the experiential scenarios designed and staged by HRCFS staff for the Hawaii 2050 kickoff on 26 August 02006. Each one is about two minutes long.


"Orange" Hawaii in 2050 is a result of continued economic growth.


The "Silver" alternative suggests possible conditions in 2050 some years after a socio-economic collapse.


The "Maroon" future exemplifies a disciplined or self-restrained society.


"Blue" depicts a society that has undergone a high-tech transformation.

Each of these clips is pared down from experiences lasting about 20 minutes, that ran concurrently in four rooms at the Dole Ballrooms in Honolulu. The 530-or-so attendees were split up and given no clues as to what kind of future they would be entering, but facilitated discussions were held afterwards to draw out people's views about the possible, probable and preferable elements of each scenario.

Some technical challenges delayed their release until now, but at HRCFS it's our hope that these clips can serve as conversation fodder in the futures community, encouraging further improvement in the emerging practice of experiential scenarios (and "immersive futures" more broadly). Feedback from participants at the August kickoff was overwhelmingly positive and has encouraged us to continue developing other ways to communicate and provoke the consideration of alternative futures... I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has undertaken, or knows about, comparable efforts.

(A longer version of this article has been posted at the Hawaii Futures blog.)

Update 4may2011: The link to the Hawaii Futures blog may be dead, but the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine comes to the rescue.
Update 12march2012: Video re-embedded with original aspect ratio.

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