tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-272909202024-03-14T07:29:45.908-04:00the sceptical futurysta blog about how we might feel tomorrowStuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.comBlogger331125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-37732901434446848152023-01-31T23:20:00.004-05:002023-02-01T00:59:24.115-05:00The Power of Utopia<p>One of my favourite engagements of the past year was a panel about <a href="https://c4aa.org/2022/04/revolutionizing-activism-the-power-of-utopia" target="_blank">The Power of Utopia</a> with accomplished artistic activists <a href="https://www.annenberglab.com/employees/terry-marshall/" target="_blank">Terry Marshall</a> (co-instigator of <a href="https://www.intelligentmischief.com/" target="_blank">Intelligent Mischief</a>, a creative studio dedicated to “unleashing Black imagination to shape the future”), and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow" target="_blank">Cory Doctorow</a> (bestselling science fiction author and journalist whose work includes <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59" target="_blank"><i>How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism</i></a> and <i><a href="https://craphound.com/category/walkaway/" target="_blank">Walkaway</a></i>, among many other titles). </p><p>The <a href="https://c4aa.org/about" target="_blank">Center for Artistic Activism</a> (C4AA) hosted the event as part of its <a href="https://c4aa.org/revolutionizing-activism" target="_blank">Revolutionizing Activism</a> series, a brilliant resource for agents of change to practise infusing radical imagination into present action. Afterwards, the organisation shared some key takeaways from the event under the title <a href="https://c4aa.org/2022/05/video-takeaways-how-to-strengthen-the-vision-of-your-advocacy" target="_blank">How to strengthen the vision of your advocacy</a>.</p><p>Video of the full conversation is embedded below.</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8TBlSc3PNUA" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p><p>Related:<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/03/experiential-futures-undp.html" target="_blank">Imagination Is a Commons: An experiential futures project for UNDP</a> (02021)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/06/ethnographic-experiential-futures.html" target="_blank">Ethnographic Experiential Futures / EXF</a> (02017)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/green-dragon.html" target="_blank">FoundFutures: Chinatown: Green Dragon</a> (02007)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/critical-activism.html" target="_blank">Critical activism: An interview with Anab Jain</a> (02019)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/11/guerrilla-futurists-combat-war-on.html" target="_blank">The New York Times Special Edition</a> (02008)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/11/future-documentary.html" target="_blank">Future documentary</a> (02016)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/03/strategic-foresight-meets-tactical-media.html" target="_blank">Guerrilla Futures: Strategic foresight meets tactical media</a> (02014)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/10/dreampolitik.html" target="_blank">Dreampolitik: On the political importance of impossible dreams</a> (2008)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2011/05/tao-of-steve.html" target="_blank">The Tao of Steve</a> (02011)<br />> <a href="https://c4aa.org/2017/11/webinar-guerrilla-futures" target="_blank">Guerrilla Futures C4AA webinar</a> (02017)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-school-of-worldbuilding.html" target="_blank">The School of Worldbuilding</a> (02019)<br /></p>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-5033307426073081872022-12-31T07:36:00.007-05:002022-12-31T22:34:29.205-05:00Participatory futures for democracy<p>The White House just took a big step towards making futures thinking a more common practice.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc4r68cQQvlxDM4HKiQIyPNlyY6RBBr7nhFQVITQ_pr7YOLSesquhGWik-Ptdv7sJeRCH8pznPcVxJm-XwTqD3RcaC8plEwPLZGjNtIKmVxEtW4AbYco1vGU5CwdDChRBzySj5_IN4zBrW1wWgxwSC8mfvacestO2YjykxuMaHIYfxqR2JsmE/s1650/NAP5-fifth-open-government-national-action-plan-COVER.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1650" data-original-width="1275" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc4r68cQQvlxDM4HKiQIyPNlyY6RBBr7nhFQVITQ_pr7YOLSesquhGWik-Ptdv7sJeRCH8pznPcVxJm-XwTqD3RcaC8plEwPLZGjNtIKmVxEtW4AbYco1vGU5CwdDChRBzySj5_IN4zBrW1wWgxwSC8mfvacestO2YjykxuMaHIYfxqR2JsmE/w494-h640/NAP5-fifth-open-government-national-action-plan-COVER.jpg" width="494" /></a></div><p>As the year comes to a close, some great news for foresight and public imagination from the Biden-Harris Administration: the <b>Fifth U.S. Open Government National Action Plan</b> (NAP) <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/12/28/white-house-releases-fifth-open-government-national-action-plan-to-advance-a-more-inclusive-responsive-and-accountable-government/" target="_blank">was released this week</a>, and it includes a move for participatory and inclusive futures engagement over the next two years.</p><p>The new plan, developed in a collaboration between the U.S. federal government and partners in civil society, has a cross-cutting theme of “advancing equity and inclusion for underserved communities”.</p><p>It sets out around 30 federal-level commitments that seek, among other things, to ensure public access to government data, information and research, to involve citizens in the work of government, and to transform service delivery. As the <a href="https://open.usa.gov/national-action-plan/5/#introduction" target="_blank">introduction</a> notes, “While U.S. support for open government has always been crucial, it is especially vital today. . . . at a time when the principles of equality and democracy are threatened across the United States and around the world.”</p><p>There’s a lot more to the document, but of particular relevance to the foresight/futures community is a specific <a href="https://open.usa.gov/national-action-plan/5/#pilot-new-forms-of-public-engagement-to-inform-policy-and-program-implementation" target="_blank">commitment</a> to “pilot new forms of public engagement to inform policy and program implementation”, with a strategy for pursuing this in the form of a framework that “will engage diverse and inclusive public participation to better define and imagine emerging challenges, opportunities, and possibilities for our shared future”.</p><p>The effort is to be spearheaded by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Services_Administration" target="_blank">General Services Administration</a> (GSA), an independent agency of the U.S. government set up in 01949 “to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies”.</p><p>In other words, the White House has just officially promised to engage the public in imagining alternative futures –– with a view to this feeding into national policy and implementation.</p><p>This is a very exciting development.</p><p>I have already <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/11/what-is-value-of-futures-and-foresight.html" target="_blank">noted</a> at this blog the “tremendous expansion in awareness of and interest in futures/foresight work”, and <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">remarked</a> on mounting evidence that “the conditions for social foresight are ripening, with experiential and participatory futures approaches migrating and spreading across contexts –– from academia and activism, to arts and culture, to business, politics and governance.”</p><p>Futures/foresight as a field, or family of practices, continues to progress on institutional and cultural fronts alike. Some of the most promising steps, I think, come when the strategies of <i>institutionalisation</i> and <i>acculturation</i> coincide. (A hat tip here to my friend <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_Harger" target="_blank">Honor Harger</a>, a futures-oriented artist/curator, for helping me appreciate these as a complementary pair.) And as I've been saying for quite some time, the bigger story or context for foresight practitioners, whatever their practice and whoever their clients, collaborators or students happen to be, lies in finding ways to advance futures not solely through formal processes of organisations and governance, but through ordinary thinking and action –– <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2010/06/futures-of-everyday-life.html" target="_blank">the futures of everyday life</a>.</p><p>In this U.S. government plan we find, at the very least, another encouraging signal of progress towards augmented participation, distribution, inclusivity and visibility for alternative futures.</p><p>But as the plan starts to be concretised and carried out in months to come, in the ideal, it might just prove to contain the seeds of greater things.</p><p>I’m pleased to have played, at the request of a colleague leading the charge at GSA, a modest part here by providing light advisement and enthusiastic encouragement to help get this commitment approved in black and white.</p><p>I also find it heartening to note the rationale for this aspect of the plan:</p><p>“Stories of possibility can provide opportunities to express emerging challenges and opportunities through creative and engaging narrative. At their best, stories can inform our collective imagination and create inclusive space for meaningful conversations — and then drive action to choose new possibilities.”</p><p>Hear, hear. Something long understood to be self-evident in futures circles, namely the central importance of <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/12/where-do-you-stand.html" target="_blank">images of the future</a> to shaping the world we end up in, is coming to be more widely grasped.</p><p>In related news, a report called <i><a href="https://www.democracyfundersnetwork.org/resources/betterfuturesreport" target="_blank">Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy</a>, </i>by Suzette Brooks Masters and Ruby Hernandez, was released just a few weeks ago by Democracy Funders Network. I found myself in excellent company as one of the interviewees for the project. And as it turns out, some of the steps now being prepared by the federal government appear very much in line with the key recommendations coming out of that research: to strengthen the positive visioning ecosystem by investing in infrastructure and relationships; model what’s possible and fund experimentation; and strengthen narrative systems and amplify positive, futures-oriented content.</p><p>Finally, and in a similar vein, my coauthor Filippo Cuttica and I were thrilled to learn this month that our work to help introduce foresight <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">at the BBC</a>, which culminated in the recent publication of a toolkit called <i><a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2022/10/welcome-to-futures-bazaar.html" target="_blank">The Futures Bazaar</a></i>, seeking to bring these ways of thinking to wider publics around the world, has been recognised by the professional futurist community as a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7009585513951092736/" target="_blank">Most Significant Futures Work</a> of the year – taking home the award for advancing Inclusive Foresight.</p><p>So as 02022 comes to an end, here's to a 02023 filled with inclusive co-creativity, narrative invention, public engagement, meaningful conversation, and concrete action towards the preferred possibilities that result!</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>The full text of the Fifth U.S. Open Government National Action Plan is available in <a href="https://open.usa.gov/national-action-plan/5/" target="_blank">html</a> and <a href="https://open.usa.gov/assets/files/NAP5-fifth-open-government-national-action-plan.pdf" target="_blank">pdf</a>. Thanks and godspeed to the public servants responsible for making it happen. </p><p>Related:<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/04/foresight-is-right.html" target="_blank">Foresight is a Right</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2010/06/futures-of-everyday-life.html" target="_blank">The Futures of Everyday Life</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/11/what-is-value-of-futures-and-foresight.html" target="_blank">What Is the Value of Futures and Foresight?</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/12/where-do-you-stand.html" target="_blank">Where Do You Stand? Or, The Polak Game</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2022/10/welcome-to-futures-bazaar.html" target="_blank">Welcome to The Futures Bazaar</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">Introducing Participatory and Experiential Futures at the BBC</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/04/world-economic-forum.html" target="_blank">Exploring Technology Governance Futures with the World Economic Forum</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/11/using-future-at-nasa.html" target="_blank">Using the Future at NASA</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/09/experiment-in-public-imagination.html" target="_blank">UNTITLED: A Bold New Experiment in Public Imagination</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/01/how-to-move-to-canada.html" target="_blank">American Futures at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/07/knowledge-base-of-futures-studies.html" target="_blank">Knowledge Base of Futures Studies</a><br /></p>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-4857305341891010432022-11-22T14:24:00.031-05:002022-11-22T15:16:33.078-05:00A new collection on Speculation in Design<p>The University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman School of Design has published the latest edition of its periodical <a href="https://laplusjournal.com/" target="_blank">LA+</a>, an interdisciplinary journal dealing with landscape architecture –– and more, as the name hints.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggvHp_YStQ23RYfWMgTDAdHHUBXE74qqJYXwjJLrNQ41KcxOzh4eUJT30660hXIRAKltQ1G1OENPyuM4RHrDHJKXj73zBpq8sJoTyesXQdD1biTwa7w_IBAolYgW6J7MwBZ6cs0SqyQw-mmDhwk4K9J7fmLfV_kW6s7ongP9yi1K4M2Yh5EuU/s3926/IMG-3326.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3926" data-original-width="2944" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggvHp_YStQ23RYfWMgTDAdHHUBXE74qqJYXwjJLrNQ41KcxOzh4eUJT30660hXIRAKltQ1G1OENPyuM4RHrDHJKXj73zBpq8sJoTyesXQdD1biTwa7w_IBAolYgW6J7MwBZ6cs0SqyQw-mmDhwk4K9J7fmLfV_kW6s7ongP9yi1K4M2Yh5EuU/w480-h640/IMG-3326.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><p>The topic and title this time out is <a href="https://laplusjournal.com/16-SPECULATION" target="_blank">SPECULATION</a>, a multifarious and richly intersectional theme on which contributions appear from Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Javier Arpa Fernandéz, Min Kyung Lee, and Ytasha Womack, together with many others, all marshalled by the issue editor Christopher Marcinkoski and editor-in-chief Tatum Hands.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='600' height='499' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxpbIylbMxmpP2LTtvsdc_kA9zO_dS_QdXBUvUs472lQoK9edqK9-Ma6caRRAA1TD7tD3E_1jXeUQ8' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><p>I had the pleasure of taking part in the project via a conversation with a wonderful transdisciplinary practitioner of landscape architecture and media arts, professor <a href="https://arch.usc.edu/people/aroussiak-gabrielian" target="_blank">Aroussiak Gabrielian</a> of University of Southern California's Architecture school. As a taste, below is one of my favourite questions posed by Aroussiak, and the thoughts it prompted.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p><b>AG:</b> I’m wondering how you feel about the pitfalls in speculative design, given the criticism it has received for being speculation for speculation’s sake or that its focus has been very techno-scientific, or product driven – pushing forth the same capitalist system by inventing objects that we might consume in the future.</p><p><b>SC:</b> Yeah, I think that those are definitely ways the work can fail to live up to its potential. Sometimes, especially early on, practitioners might find themselves using an excess of whimsy on one hand, or an excess of capitalist realism on the other. To me, both are ways of missing the mark, but I think it would be unfortunate if that were to lead some observers to think that the
whole enterprise of using design and the arts to explore futures is without value. That would be a grand-scale throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. It’s possible to write bad poetry, too, but that doesn’t mean all poetry is bad.</p><p>I would say that some of the criticism drawn during the recent wave of speculation in design, while fair enough, is really responding
to a sort of belated unleashing of creative energy that was previously stifled by a so-called human centered, but, let’s be honest, capital-centered, paradigm where the use of imagination is highly constrained, and aspirational only within tightly defined limits. You take those constraints off, and people
go wild. That is actually kind of cool to watch, but is it the end state for the practice? I don’t think so. Once people have gotten some of that initial rambunctious energy out
of their system, there is a sort of getting of wisdom in play. You can see this with [card game] <i>The Thing from The Future</i>. To start with, many players revel in the license to run free, be silly, and have fun. Then, after a while, they start to get a little bit more critical and search for ideas with more substance. The novelty of the very idea of something ostensibly coming “from the future,” perhaps exciting enough in itself to begin with, wears off, and players start to want to know more about what future it’s from, and how it might work, and how it’s different from what they’ve heard before,
and whose interests it represents. This is part of why, having created the game, Jeff [Watson, cofounder of Situation Lab and professor at USC School of Cinematic Arts] and I kept adapting and modifying it, and using it with different groups to help push the general vogue for speculation past
this initial flare-up of excitement and crappy ideas that we all tend to have when first invited to roam freely in the space of alternative futures.</p><p>To try to make the year 02050 matter right now is an important but difficult task. There’s no objective referent for a 02050 scenario – in contrast to trying to bridge into the shoes of someone historically or
in the present, where you can at least partially ground-truth things. The inbuilt speculative challenge of futures is that they are not just epistemically but ontologically indeterminate. They are up for grabs. So we need to realize that when we’re making a hypothetical world specific enough to wrap our body-minds around, we’re making it artificially specific, just in order to be able to think and feel into
it. We have to take the ability to inhabit this “what if” with a big
grain of salt, because it’s not a question of getting it right or not, in a predictive sense; it’s a question of how rigorously and usefully we are deploying imagination to enable new perceptions and possibilities in
the present.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>If you're interested in the theme of speculation, as so many designers have been recently, check out the full piece (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364088419_Futuring_A_Conversation" target="_blank">Futuring: A Conversation</a>) and the collection as a whole (<a href="https://issuu.com/laplusjournal/docs/la_speculation_digital" target="_blank">digital</a> or <a href="https://www.oroeditions.com/la-journal/" target="_blank">print</a>).</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAzELKOMBqVU_zFDIxFC9VGkMZObPYZIA36NuCaWPoTIrkuYm7towfrxdOQ2O6rMI1QnP4k8LVIyWMxkfqqPzzq54X2mEVmlS1GdoT47UI2GGIM7nwvj5DlqS277FpNGiMLMndpsOOeBcjA4T0mopOm0WSO4tj8vif7Lnw0CLp_ugcaPle62w/s4032/IMG-3324.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAzELKOMBqVU_zFDIxFC9VGkMZObPYZIA36NuCaWPoTIrkuYm7towfrxdOQ2O6rMI1QnP4k8LVIyWMxkfqqPzzq54X2mEVmlS1GdoT47UI2GGIM7nwvj5DlqS277FpNGiMLMndpsOOeBcjA4T0mopOm0WSO4tj8vif7Lnw0CLp_ugcaPle62w/w640-h480/IMG-3324.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>Related:<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/12/design-and-futures-ebook-and-paperback.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338129083_Design_and_Futures" target="_blank">ebook</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Design-Futures-Stuart-Candy/dp/1709990082" target="_blank">paperback</a>)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/critical-activism.html" target="_blank">Critical activism: Anab Jain of Superflux</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/i-design-worlds.html" target="_blank">I design worlds: Liam Young of SCI-Arc</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/11/using-future-at-nasa.html" target="_blank">Using the future at NASA: David Delgado of NASA JPL</a><br />> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855_Gaming_Futures_Literacy_The_Thing_From_The_Future" target="_blank">Gaming futures literacy: <i>The Thing From The Future</i></a> (pdf)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-experiential-futures-interview.html" target="_blank">An experiential futures interview</a> <br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2013/04/designing-futures.html" target="_blank">Designing futures: An interview</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2012/09/design-is-team-sport.html" target="_blank">Design is a team sport</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/killer-imps.html" target="_blank">Killer imps: Bringing futures to designers at the Royal College of Art</a></p>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-37818935831135180692022-10-18T14:54:00.009-04:002022-12-23T17:35:09.970-05:00Welcome to The Futures Bazaar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTTLcQDBo2Uaf_nYRO9EEl4hQoziFTfqcAtR22L8PSyd_GLIi3xS9Q3DKrE21XQIdcsQRnJCcAUI9O8sr2IE5DytOXQvuzs5xft-I_mg7LPJAKvCmecfLTxv8FhQXJOROwTE_ycImVQz2UwolxNP0suRcHDRg9j6T5di6qR9zEQniU1UFg3dU/s1761/GEL-article-visual-assets_1.HERO.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="991" data-original-width="1761" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTTLcQDBo2Uaf_nYRO9EEl4hQoziFTfqcAtR22L8PSyd_GLIi3xS9Q3DKrE21XQIdcsQRnJCcAUI9O8sr2IE5DytOXQvuzs5xft-I_mg7LPJAKvCmecfLTxv8FhQXJOROwTE_ycImVQz2UwolxNP0suRcHDRg9j6T5di6qR9zEQniU1UFg3dU/w640-h360/GEL-article-visual-assets_1.HERO.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.48px;"><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/gel/features/futures-bazaar-toolkit" target="_blank">The Futures Bazaar: A Public Imagination Toolkit</a> is published by Situation Lab & the British Broadcasting Corporation</span></div><div><br /></div><div>(Update 20dec22: The Futures Bazaar has been named a Most Significant Futures Work of the year by the Association of Professional Futurists! Winners of the 02022 #IFAwards were announced <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7009585513951092736/" target="_blank">here</a>. Many thanks to APF for this recognition in the Inclusive Foresight category, and gratitude again to our BBC collaborators and all who contributed to the project, listed in <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6990355231586885632/" target="_blank">this post</a> and also in the kit itself.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Picture a wild and wonderful place where all alternative future possibilities co-exist at once, and can be physically encountered in real life; a kind of multi-dimensional exchange, where tangible objects are put on offer from countless possible worlds.</div><div><br /></div><div>This crazy setting is not just an idea, but somewhere I’ve visited — twice, actually. And you can, too.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>The Futures Bazaar: A Public Imagination Toolkit</b>, created and written together with my fantastic design futurist colleague <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/filippo-cuttica/" target="_blank">Filippo Cuttica</a>, has just been released by the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/gel/features/futures-bazaar-toolkit" target="_blank">British Broadcasting Corporation</a> and <a href="https://situationlab.org/the-futures-bazaar/" target="_blank">Situation Lab</a>. It’s available to download for free from the BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/gel/features/futures-bazaar-toolkit" target="_blank">here</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thinking concretely about times to come is harder and rarer than it should be. That’s why this is an open access public imagination toolkit. It’s designed to help make such thinking a bit easier and more common.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Futures Bazaar toolkit is basically a turnkey framework for setting up a co-creative gathering or design jam where participants transform everyday objects brought from home into unique things “from” alternative futures, to provoke, amuse, and inspire each other. Every participant helps imagine and produce these future artifacts, and every artifact tells a story.</div><div><br /></div><div>You know, the toolkit is itself a sort of artifact, with a story of its own.</div><div><br /></div><div>A few years ago, before the pandemic, we staged the first <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/gel/features/futures-bazaar" target="_blank">Futures Bazaar</a> for the away day of the whole design side of the BBC.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was great. There was zaniness. There was creativity in spades. At the end, there was even beer on tap. More about this wild experiment we did with BBC designers can be found <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</div><div align="center"><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Months in the planning, we had 200 people producing future artifacts then putting them out for ‘sale’ in a massive <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FuturesBazaar?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FuturesBazaar</a> for the hands-on culmination to <a href="https://twitter.com/bbcuxd?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bbcuxd</a> Away Day. Bravo Filippo, delivery team & all! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ExperientialFutures?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ExperientialFutures</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CoDesign?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CoDesign</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FutureThing?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FutureThing</a> <a href="https://t.co/nurstxUc0T">pic.twitter.com/nurstxUc0T</a></p>— Stuart Candy (@futuryst) <a href="https://twitter.com/futuryst/status/1131936020591718400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisnlOLNxNO06r1gDtYt8nZByaJle10JK-Jd24tbwwqkU3U4JCabdR26I969SGl4MihzAVAentDUeqvusgDwel2W5Dfa3_aXFWo1DZtpg2bH9mKu974W0reZNMKdoxoQJTNrSvGHAxZGDx5kXSWbsL5Y-9ClnJnfx8ApjLXVKwrdP7nRVEjzRI/s480/BT1_large.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisnlOLNxNO06r1gDtYt8nZByaJle10JK-Jd24tbwwqkU3U4JCabdR26I969SGl4MihzAVAentDUeqvusgDwel2W5Dfa3_aXFWo1DZtpg2bH9mKu974W0reZNMKdoxoQJTNrSvGHAxZGDx5kXSWbsL5Y-9ClnJnfx8ApjLXVKwrdP7nRVEjzRI/s16000/BT1_large.gif" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Other things equal, perhaps that would have been the end of it. But soon afterwards, I ran a second iteration in my required design futures course at Carnegie Mellon. (This time, no beer.) It seemed like an appropriate way to introduce a roomful of undergrad designers to the idea that any item can mobilise an array of associations and tell a range of stories. Playing with the signs and sensemaking of material artifacts in this way proved a neat on-ramp to broader vistas of experiential futures practice.</div><div><br /></div><div>Both bazaars went so well that the process seemed to be crying out to be shared with a wider audience. Then Covid-19 struck, and everything went on hold.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, as time passed, and the pandemic wore on, the widespread need that prompted this project in the first place — the need to support shared spaces of imaginative engagement — has become only more obvious, and more urgent.</div><div><br /></div><div>In order to adapt and distill the Bazaar design into a toolkit, Filippo and I spent months working on how to make organising one of these events as intuitive as possible, without us being in the room. Our aim was to enable any motivated gathering, equipped with a basic projector setup, some printouts, and ordinary household objects, to imagine countless possible worlds and bring them to life on the spot. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Futures Bazaar can now be run by anyone, anywhere. It is for players of all ages, in all fields. It is intended for use in public and private organisations, government bodies, schools, and nonprofits alike.</div><div><br /></div><div>It offers a chance to expand horizons, explore new ideas, and develop capacities for foresight, creativity, and storytelling, all in just a few hours. It can be set up as a stand-alone event such as a company away day, or within a larger workshop, course, or event series.</div><div><br /></div><div>Conceived in the traditions of experiential futures and participatory design, it might be part of a journey — as at the BBC itself — towards building foresight capability, engaging alternative futures in more open and creative ways, or it can be used more for fun — teambuilding through worldbuilding.</div><div><br /></div><div>The toolkit is made up of three elements: <b>Manual</b>, <b>Slides</b>, and <b>Printouts</b>. The Manual (a complete guide for use in hard copy or on a tablet) helps you plan your own event, the Slides (to display on any large screen or projector) help you run it, and the Printouts (ready to go in either colour or B&W) are for distributing to participants on the day. All this has been packaged into a single zipped folder containing the full set of PDF documents <a href="https://static.files.bbci.co.uk/gel/downloads/Futures-Bazaar-Toolkit.zip" target="_blank">for download here</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1GIBam1d3aVICWFcPBavsdKhGSoW6_PoM7TckqDAzjGOOs6ycb_24wSHXBh-qBVJ07hzRSbJTa3tbIC_XBHw95UBQGswZCYQxse3UJeTqh9yPTJXnkodMAiT_sDNJjnlWQAVNIXvV5g-CtktaM1FtuWR0s0LX8xGrYz1MTvPE86VzlA09voQ/s1761/GEL-article-visual-assets_3.DIAGRAM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="831" data-original-width="1761" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1GIBam1d3aVICWFcPBavsdKhGSoW6_PoM7TckqDAzjGOOs6ycb_24wSHXBh-qBVJ07hzRSbJTa3tbIC_XBHw95UBQGswZCYQxse3UJeTqh9yPTJXnkodMAiT_sDNJjnlWQAVNIXvV5g-CtktaM1FtuWR0s0LX8xGrYz1MTvPE86VzlA09voQ/w640-h302/GEL-article-visual-assets_3.DIAGRAM.png" width="640" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>This project has been able to take advantage of some of the experiments and learning at <a href="https://situationlab.org/" target="_blank">Situation Lab</a>, the creative research unit that I’ve run for the last nine years. The toolkit incorporates elements from our award-winning game <a href="https://thethingfromthefuture.com/" target="_blank">The Thing From The Future</a>, and it also builds on the participatory design events that we at Sitlab carried out with <a href="https://extrapolationfactory.com/" target="_blank">Extrapolation Factory</a>; the <a href="https://situationlab.org/project/1-888-futures/" target="_blank">Futurematic design jam</a> series, held in the mid-2010s in Toronto, New York and Los Angeles.</div><div><br /></div><div>The kit’s acknowledgements section tips the hat to the many folks who made this publication possible, but above all, The Futures Bazaar toolkit is dedicated to the memory of my dearly missed friend and longtime collaborator <a href="https://remotedevice.net/" target="_blank">Jeff Watson</a> of the University of California’s School of Cinematic Arts, co-creator of The Thing From The Future and co-founder of Situation Lab. The invention of openly available, playfully framed, creatively enabling frameworks and designs was among his great gifts, and an inspiration throughout the project.</div><div><br /></div><div>Filippo and I, with our talented collaborators at the BBC, are delighted to be sending this toolkit forth into the world, hoping it will travel, and be taken up far and wide. We can’t wait to find out what people get up to with it.</div><div><br /></div><div>If The Futures Bazaar sounds like something you might like to run, you can go ahead and <a href="https://static.files.bbci.co.uk/gel/downloads/Futures-Bazaar-Toolkit.zip" target="_blank">download</a> version 1.0 of the kit right now. If there happen to be folks in your world who might enjoy it, please share this article or the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/gel/features/futures-bazaar-toolkit" target="_blank">project link</a> with them. We plan to make additional guidance available for those interested, so following <a href="https://twitter.com/sitlab" target="_blank">Sitlab</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/filippocuttica" target="_blank">Filippo</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/futuryst" target="_blank">me</a> on Twitter would be a good way to keep up with the latest news and announcements.</div><div><br /></div><div>The world can be a frightening and unpredictable place. This project is not going to solve all its problems. But we are in earnest when we say that we think the capacity to imagine is key to shaping the futures, and this kind of collective play is key to imagination.</div><div><br /></div><div>So get playing… we look forward to seeing you at the #FuturesBazaar! ✨ </div><div><br /></div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfZI9BdjUoxDqfwurmrqdr3jTn1KzjxnQ2MqkYaK9w1Kf787bpk4l5af9dp42mtXzXImNO2kcNA0pXQNFmPpRDeSyx_9CERH_Im8bgR9ujUM40GN8vMZpa8Zp2PNZ4pXemeovnLkI-mifICs3eSDIR5EBZkebSK9nALNp5KRRsDW4zOymadn8/s1761/GEL-article-visual-assets_2.TADA.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1436" data-original-width="1761" height="522" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfZI9BdjUoxDqfwurmrqdr3jTn1KzjxnQ2MqkYaK9w1Kf787bpk4l5af9dp42mtXzXImNO2kcNA0pXQNFmPpRDeSyx_9CERH_Im8bgR9ujUM40GN8vMZpa8Zp2PNZ4pXemeovnLkI-mifICs3eSDIR5EBZkebSK9nALNp5KRRsDW4zOymadn8/w640-h522/GEL-article-visual-assets_2.TADA.png" width="640" /></a></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.48px;"><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/gel/features/futures-bazaar-toolkit" target="_blank">The Futures Bazaar</a> invites you to expand horizons, explore new ideas, and transform everyday objects into things from the future</span></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div><br /></div><div><i>This article previously posted on <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/welcome-to-the-futures-bazaar-b24863a89f3e" target="_blank">Medium</a>. A variant appeared at <a href="https://situationlab.org/the-futures-bazaar/" target="_blank">Situation Lab</a>.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Related:</div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">Introducing Experiential and Participatory Futures at the BBC</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/bringing-futures-to-stanford-d-school.html" target="_blank">Bringing futures to Stanford d.School</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/10/augmenting-cities.html" target="_blank">Augmenting Cities collaboration with Niantic and Knight Foundation</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/11/on-foresight-in-organisations.html" target="_blank">On Foresight in Organisations – The Omidyar Sessions, Part 1</a> </div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-getting-started-in-experiential.html" target="_blank">On Getting Started in Experiential Futures – The Omidyar Sessions, Part 2</a></div><div>> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855_Gaming_futures_literacy_The_Thing_From_The_Future" target="_blank">Gaming Futures Literacy</a> (article on The Thing From The Future)</div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/09/1-888-futures.html" target="_blank">1-888-FUTURES</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is Storytelling</a></div>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0Pittsburgh, PA, USA40.440624799999988 -79.995886412.130390963821142 -115.1521364 68.750858636178833 -44.8396364tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-92060123199721194592022-08-18T12:22:00.002-04:002022-08-18T12:26:39.506-04:00The Crystal Ball Game<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd3BU2GtKd_K4GtoGeacLmAMSk7vPCLl2evGd0KdiagDbXhVD9TuWjDkE-DJxIXFs14i58D-g7dz0sgrm3g-MGF6tlwo9ca47RDtiXUAdySLYZq60zK4adRBjIdsuynjc2-6SLjzBq-vokq0mIt6cDwkZcosOQ8DP94E571nGsR8KEr-bSU_8/s2560/Crystal-ball-game.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="2560" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd3BU2GtKd_K4GtoGeacLmAMSk7vPCLl2evGd0KdiagDbXhVD9TuWjDkE-DJxIXFs14i58D-g7dz0sgrm3g-MGF6tlwo9ca47RDtiXUAdySLYZq60zK4adRBjIdsuynjc2-6SLjzBq-vokq0mIt6cDwkZcosOQ8DP94E571nGsR8KEr-bSU_8/w640-h360/Crystal-ball-game.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>Futurists, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.</p><p>A journalist contacts you. They’re reporting on topic X (sure!) and how it could change over the coming years or decades (great!) and would like to speak to a futurist (sounds good!)</p><p>Then comes the big question: “What do you predict for the future of X?”</p><p>To offer a more pluralistic response, describing alternative futures based on different sets of assumptions, often spells the beginning of the end of that conversation. This is too complicated for the story they want to tell. No sooner have you suggested it than the inquirer is already moving on, questing for someone else, a more innocent (or more jaded) colleague of yours perhaps; one willing to play the crystal ball game.</p><p>In futures practice this vignette is wearyingly familiar, and the tendency in popular media towards linear, predictive, and binary treatment of “the future”, singular, is pervasive; enough so that to call it merely a journalistic preference or a pattern is too mild. Pathology would be closer to the mark.</p><p>But when journalists insist on simplistic coverage of “the future”, this is not just a problem for futurists trying to practise more thoughtfully. It’s a problem for journalism, too, and for the audience it is meant to be serving.</p><p>Whether, in any given case, the reason is cynicism or ignorance, does not much matter. Suppose on one hand, they know deep down that they could do better than the crystal ball game, but blame the constraints of story length, or readers’ attention spans. Or suppose on the other hand, they are themselves trapped in limiting philosophical assumptions that they don’t realise they are making. The result is the same either way. Systematic public exploration of alternative futures is woefully under-served by journalism.</p><p>Thankfully, the seductiveness of reductiveness doesn’t afflict all journalism equally, and pockets of real plurality, criticality, and quality are vital bright spots to seek out and build on.</p><p>For the past year I’ve been working with <a href="https://www.nytco.com/press/matt-thompson-joins-the-times-as-editor-of-headway/" target="_blank">Matt Thompson</a>, editor at The New York Times, on the new initiative he leads there, Headway, to investigate global and national challenges through the lens of progress. Matt and his team at the Times have an implicitly forward-looking remit, and in the course of our collaboration, we’ve also been exploring questions around how to support journalism and journalists to become more skilful and responsible in dealing with futures in the plural.</p><p>A few months ago we had a public conversation on this topic hosted by the <a href="https://www.annenberglab.com/" target="_blank">USC Annenberg Innovation Lab</a>. And for the next edition of <a href="https://www.sxsw.com/" target="_blank">South by Southwest</a>, we’re looking to take it a step further. You can find the description for our proposed session How to Cover Futures, and a short video we made about it, <a href="https://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/126550" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>The challenges are more multifaceted than what I’ve sketched above, and the opportunities to work on them are manifold. This post doesn’t get into all that, but we hope the session will.</p><p>We’re aware of colleagues with much to offer on this topic — journalists with futures in their work, and futurists with journalism in their background — and we are keen to widen the exchange in both directions.</p><p>This proposed session is just a next step in progressing a bigger dialogue over the long term. For the stakes seem clear enough, and they are high: any society where thinking ahead is properly embraced, distributed and embedded would necessarily have normalised foresightful practices in media and journalism. Put another way, it’s hard to imagine a more sustainable, wise, or foresightful culture coming about, in any form, without society’s purveyors of news and commentary getting a lot more sophisticated in this area than they are today.</p><p>In the near term, then, we’d appreciate you sharing this with anyone you think might find it interesting, and voting at the link below by this Sunday [21aug22], to help improve the chances of it happening next March in Austin. 👇🎸✨🌱🤞</p><p>And we hope to see you there!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVaWQr_ZsXbio5qiOyEcH-a6LyS9KIqmC_x-4ccZ3aQQkKC1gYj754iM7hIK3HgjNm0s7Wagg6BS4I_hOzdrofdxTsTHSSV9WWWZliOBG82dXrKKGe5ENC_jaiRoWHcPOIMuaie8CBZff5sl4UHm6SWozHhLxs1JpNQggqlajFAE2TB91lCVk/s3360/Panel%20pitch%20screenshot.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="944" data-original-width="3360" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVaWQr_ZsXbio5qiOyEcH-a6LyS9KIqmC_x-4ccZ3aQQkKC1gYj754iM7hIK3HgjNm0s7Wagg6BS4I_hOzdrofdxTsTHSSV9WWWZliOBG82dXrKKGe5ENC_jaiRoWHcPOIMuaie8CBZff5sl4UHm6SWozHhLxs1JpNQggqlajFAE2TB91lCVk/w640-h180/Panel%20pitch%20screenshot.png" width="640" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>Adding here at TSF, for the record, our session description for <a href="https://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/126550" target="_blank">How to Cover Futures</a>:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>Journalism is often described as the first draft of history. But it strives to frame the future. Journalists deal in a constant stream of predictions, promises, and forecasts, yet often address times to come in damaging ways: extrapolating linearly from current events, without much attempt to understand the full range of possibilities; outsourcing statements about the future to pundits and experts with little accountability for or follow-up on claims that turn out to be false; and giving far more weight to past events than to future possibilities in coverage. So what might a journalism look like that took the future seriously –– and playfully? How might we embrace both rigor and imagination as part of our responsibilities? In short, how do we cover the future?</p><p></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p><i>This post previously appeared on <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/the-crystal-ball-game-359301b646f5" target="_blank">Medium</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crystal-ball-game-stuart-candy/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.</i></p><p>Related:<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/07/future-of-futurism.html" target="_blank">A TSF post from 02006 that makes basically the same point as above</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/09/in-memoriam.html" target="_blank">In Memoriam</a> (on the bizarre experiential scenario we staged at SXSW in 02008)<br />> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110120070037/audio.sxsw.com/2010/podcasts/031310i_designFiction.mp3" target="_blank">Design Fiction</a> (recording of a panel with Bruce Sterling, Jake Dunagan, Jennifer Leonard, Julian Bleecker, and our late colleague Sacha Pohflepp at SXSW in 02010; the Internet Archive is awesome)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/12/journalism-from-future.html" target="_blank">Journalism from the Future</a> (on efforts to report "from" various futures)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/11/guerrilla-futurists-combat-war-on.html" target="_blank">The New York Times Special Edition</a> (The Yes Men & Steve Lambert's guerrilla futures project)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-read-news-today-oh-boy.html" target="_blank">US Presidential Election 02024</a> (from 02008)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/03/whose-future-is-this.html" target="_blank">Christchurch, New Zealand in 02031</a> (from 02014)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/04/transforming-future.html" target="_blank">Transforming the Future</a> (a book about futures literacy)<br />> For further reading offsite, check out Jamais Cascio’s classic 02006 post <a href="http://www.openthefuture.com/twelvethings.html" target="_blank">Twelve Things Journalists Need to Know to Be Good Futurist/Foresight Reporters</a></p>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0Pittsburgh, PA, USA40.440624799999988 -79.995886412.130390963821142 -115.1521364 68.750858636178833 -44.8396364tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-20522380445488642002021-11-30T23:54:00.017-05:002021-11-30T23:57:15.797-05:00What is the Value of Futures and Foresight?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLUQtCNIBIv7c6tPDsAiEy3oj4bcnkawVb-pYiJAJzz6sRQpriQxqzraqGjRMhNsaMqF3J7D7PYiAyWK6X0rJJPoylc2B6LA3i5N8NKvmnBJxsilGQDEwAtEPoqZVqGqIv_jNpJA/s2048/XFL-formal.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLUQtCNIBIv7c6tPDsAiEy3oj4bcnkawVb-pYiJAJzz6sRQpriQxqzraqGjRMhNsaMqF3J7D7PYiAyWK6X0rJJPoylc2B6LA3i5N8NKvmnBJxsilGQDEwAtEPoqZVqGqIv_jNpJA/w640-h360/XFL-formal.png" width="640" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.48px;">The Experiential Futures Ladder. Diagram by author. See articles <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311910011_The_Experiential_Turn" target="_blank">The Experiential Turn</a> (02016) and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303815839_Designing_an_Experiential_Scenario_The_People_Who_Vanished" target="_blank">Designing an Experiential Scenario</a> (2017) co-written with Jake Dunagan</span></div><br />There has been a tremendous expansion in awareness of and interest in futures/foresight work recently, especially those approaches that intersect with the arts, media and design. Projects and publications, courses and conferences on these topics are flourishing like never before.<div><br /></div><div>As Cher Potter and I wrote in our introduction to the collection <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Design-Futures-Candy-Potter/dp/1709990082" target="_blank">Design and Futures</a></i> in 2019:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon famously observed: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones”.</div><div><br /></div><div>Designers and futurists, it turns out, have a great deal in common. This mutual recognition is reaching critical mass as each comes to appreciate how their respective traditions have much to offer to making urgent change in the world, and even more so, together.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is increasingly acknowledged within the futures studies community that operating with a largely verbal and theoretical bent over the past half century has afforded too little impact on actual future-shaping behaviours. Meanwhile, those in the design community recognise a need to interrogate higher-level consequences — the futures, the worlds — that their products, systems and other outputs help produce.</div><div><br /></div><div>Part of what bringing design and futures into sustained dialogue does is to allow each field to become more fluent in a second language which is the other’s native tongue.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>This was published before the Covid-19 pandemic kicked in, but if anything, already established trends in practice have only continued to accelerate since.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the past handful of years, diverse organisations — cultural ones like <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">the BBC</a>, multilateral ones like the <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/03/experiential-futures-undp.html" target="_blank">United Nations Development Programme</a>, scientific ones like <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/11/using-future-at-nasa.html" target="_blank">NASA JPL</a>, and humanitarian ones like the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341785055_The_Future_Is_Now_Futuring_to_Transform_the_World's_Largest_Humanitarian_Network" target="_blank">International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies</a> — have embraced experiential futures as part of the very different things that they do in the world. The largest futures event ever held, a Futures Literacy Summit hosted by <a href="https://en.unesco.org/futuresliteracy/summit2020" target="_blank">UNESCO</a> with over 8000 registered participants, took place online at the end of 2020. Also late last year, a collection of us spread around the planet launched the <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/09/experiment-in-public-imagination.html" target="_blank">UNTITLED</a> futures festival, likewise staged largely online thanks to the pandemic, but planned to iterate annually through 2030. This month, a show called <a href="https://espacio.fundaciontelefonica.com/en/evento/the-great-imagination-stories-from-the-future/" target="_blank">The Great Imagination</a> opened in Madrid, surveying the history of images of the future (and featuring our experiential scenario <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/07/nurturepod.html">NurturePod</a>), and a major exhibition by the Smithsonian Institution, <a href="https://aib.si.edu/futures/" target="_blank">FUTURES</a>, for which I served on the advisory Working Group, just opened on the National Mall in Washington DC. In addition, since last year I’ve been collaborating with the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/what-is-futures-studies-and-how-can-it-improve-our-world/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a> to help explore the integration of foresight approaches, and especially experiential futures, into their research work, as well as convenings such as the annual <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/04/world-economic-forum.html" target="_blank">Global Technology Governance Summit</a>, held for the first time in April.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was also last year that the United Kingdom’s RSA (royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce) released a report about “realising the value of futures and foresight” called <i><a href="https://www.thersa.org/reports/futures-thinking-foresight" target="_blank">A Stitch in Time?</a></i> The authors had reached out to me to ask questions on this topic, and I shared some thoughts in reply. Now, since these kinds of issues are arising more and more––and evaluation of foresight work is also a live topic of conversation among professional and academic futurists––here is the full Q&A.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RSA: What is the value / distinct offer that experiential / ethnographic futures brings? Are there particular settings they work well in, and how do such approaches land with clients, particularly policy-makers––is it helpful, or seen as wacky?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>SC: There are a few threads in this first point. I’ll try to tease them out briefly.</div><div><br /></div><div>The distinctive value of <b>experiential futures</b> practices comes from how they help people connect to potential realities in waiting as more than just as ideas or thought experiments. There’s a one-pager from The Economist <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305316754" target="_blank">here</a>, a recent piece I wrote for the Cooper Hewitt (Smithsonian Design Museum) <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-future-cant-wait.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and for more background and nuance, a <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-people-who-vanished.html" target="_blank">journal article</a> from Futures, a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855">deep dive</a> into the design of a card game we created as a distillation of experiential futures ideation, and a book-length <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378" target="_blank">exploration</a> describing a kind of foundation for these practices.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Ethnographic futures</b> work is about researching how people actually perceive, think and feel about the landscape of possibilities. <b>Ethnographic Experiential Futures</b> (EXF) is a process for bringing the above two traditions together, so it’s really scaffolding for making people’s images of alternative futures (a) legible, and then (b) graspable using whatever means fit the context — immersive experiences, performance, physical futures artifacts displayed in a museum or sent through the mail, etc. There’s a journal article about EXF <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331857932" target="_blank">here</a>, or an earlier <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/06/ethnographic-experiential-futures.html">blog post</a> with I think more images.</div><div><br /></div><div>These approaches are by no means intended solely for consumption by “clients” — they can also augment public conversation, with much wider or more open-ended audiences, which has since we started doing this ~15 years ago always been a priority.</div><div><br /></div><div>The extent to which the interventions reflect or deepen, vs push back on or challenge, the thinking of the people encountering them varies enormously. I think it’s usefully regarded as one of the main design variables; that is, something you make choices about, not at all something preordained, automatic, or identical across projects.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>How do you evaluate foresight work? Is it possible / needed / appropriate?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>How you evaluate something depends entirely on what you are trying to do with it. I’ve suggested (in <i><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378" target="_blank">The Futures of Everyday Life</a></i>) that education, exploration, evangelism (persuasion) and entertainment are among the diverse purposes that might attach to different experiential futures projects or interventions. Naturally you’d bring different evaluative lenses to bear on each.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the main evaluative questions that I think is too often overlooked is “how does it affect the people doing it?” as opposed to “how does it affect someone else?”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>How does futures work (especially experiential futures) evolve in this “new normal” period when our experience of reality is so heightened and visceral?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>One move is to create online experiences. For example, we’ve been staging experiential scenarios online based on published visions in the public domain. Recently we created an immersive experience of the world decades after the Green New Deal has passed into law, based on the book A Planet to Win by Kate Aronoff et al; and another experience inspired by CEO Kickstarter Yancey Strickler’s book This Could Be Our Future; one using Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto as a starting point, and so on. This work hasn’t been written up as an article yet but you can see a bit more about it at the page for this event we ran back in April, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-time-machine-an-anthology-of-visions-tickets-103469453922" target="_blank">The Time Machine: An Anthology of Visions</a> (click “View details”).</div><div><br /></div><div>I’ve also written a piece about lessons from directing a global online game for pandemic preparedness, called <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/06/when-reality-outruns-imagination.html" target="_blank">Coral Cross</a>, funded by the CDC, a decade ago.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Is the field gaining traction as a result of Covid-19? What barriers do we need to overcome for its adoption as a valuable asset for decision-makers and planners? Do you see specific opportunities opening up?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Since Covid, people now seem to have less trouble coming to the premise that thinking about alternative futures might be useful for their organisation or context. So actually some of the main challenges I see at the moment are not necessarily “barriers to adoption” per se, because there’s a great deal of uptake and adoption — the demand side is healthy.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s the supply side that is bottlenecked, so in some ways it may be more a matter of “barriers to skilful implementation”. There are more people wanting to do this work, freshly trained or newly experimenting with it, than there are really good, experienced futurists to help guide them. This means there’s room for legitimate concern about insufficiently supported, under resourced, or hastily executed work delivered in or to organisations that have less experience — and the risk is less robust outcomes in the short term, followed by disappointment, and then some time will pass before they try again and, hopefully, do what they should have done in the first place!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Do you think there are valuable insights from aligning / working with other fields or disciplines?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Futures is by its nature a transdisciplinary field. It always involves engaging with a range of other fields and perspectives, and this is among its greatest and most distinctive strengths, I think, as well as an important part of what keeps it interesting.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Are you teaching this as a stand alone course, or a module for those taking other courses? And do you find that people with a particular mindset or personal attributes are better at this work or adopt it more easily?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>In keeping with the point above: I think it’s useful to see futures/foresight as a set of competencies that anyone can learn and use over time, and that cut across and complement other fields. I see great value, and even a civilisational imperative, in distributing futures fluency or literacy more widely throughout our communities and culture, which is part of the long-run orientation that we sometimes speak about in terms of developing “social foresight”.</div><div><br /></div><div>There’s certainly increasing demand for futures training in many quarters, yes, including students, and our evil plan to normalise or <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">integrate futures thinking as a part of design</a> has come along in leaps and bounds over the last decade. We also work with a real range of organisations in various capacities, from US Conference of Mayors, the BBC, Skoll World Forum, IDEO, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to the Smithsonian Institution, UK National Lottery, Alaska’s Cook Inlet Tribal Council, and so on. Regarding aptitude, people with a cultural fluency or orientation tend to pick it up really quickly. I especially like working with museums and other cultural organisations, because I think they’re among the best avenues to social foresight — getting wisdom into the water supply, so to speak.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>What might you wish for in the further development of this field?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Futures work is highly relational. It’s about not just when, but also who, and where you are. It’s not a compliance process you can just step through automatically, checking boxes; much less a product to buy and be done with it. It’s more like dancing. I expect to see more organisations realising they could use a few dancing lessons, and reaching out for help with that. They will have to be prepared to take risks and missteps, though, or how will they ever learn? And it might seem embarrassing at first, but the sooner they’ll do it, the faster they’ll learn and benefit, and maybe even have more fun. By the way, this seems to be happening quite a bit more quickly in the nonprofit and public sectors than in the business world. To generalise a bit, the former tend to be better equipped for, as my friend Michelle King puts it, “learning in public,” while the latter are often concerned about a commercial confidentiality that can really get in their own way. Over time, though, those two different stances, one more open and the other more closed, seem likely to yield the results they deserve.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>We’re writing this short provocation report for a lay audience, the intellectually curious, who are unlikely to be experts in this space. Is it possible to identify the two or three things that you wish everyone knew about the field (or perhaps myths you’d love to bust)?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>No one, including futurists, can tell you what the future will be. If someone tries to sell you that, don’t hire them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Folks in the field generally refer to it, almost interchangeably, as futures (oriented around the subject matter) or foresight (oriented around the competency), not futurism or futurology. By and large that’s almost a litmus test of whether you’re dealing with someone who knows the field or not.</div><div><br /></div><div>Futures is a container or meta-perspective that includes, classically, multiple modalities to address — and we can simplify a bit here, borrowing a classic typology — possible, probable and preferable futures. Each of these conversations inescapably involves engaging different kinds of knowledge, so the practice is bound to be part art (what could happen?), part science (what can the evidence tell us?), and part politics (what do we value; what should we do?) If that seems messy, just look at how messy the world is.</div><div><br /></div><div>I would be most suspicious of any perspective that pretends complexity can be simply tamed. Futures or foresight offers the necessary structures and spaces to help integrate reality’s mess with the organisational dialogue. Among other things, it’s an orientation to constant learning. As my colleague Jake Dunagan (now at Institute for the Future) and I are fond of saying, “It’s better to be surprised by simulation than blindsided by reality.”</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>For further reading, here is the full RSA report: <i><a href="https://www.thersa.org/reports/futures-thinking-foresight" target="_blank">A Stitch in Time: Realising the Value of Futures and Foresight</a></i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>And finally, just published in the past week by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies is a report looking at how arts and futures work intersect, including the rise of experiential futures practices: <a href="https://cifs.dk/news/report-futures-shaping-art-art-shaping-futures" target="_blank"><i>Futures Shaping Art / Art Shaping Futures</i></a>.<br /><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFkkj-xe3VdtA6J2EjgGr6UtzwgDQ71qpOo-ZkofFzdh66XINSSzEojrCHqnnBK1w_SmywPCkrtsIeagewTYOo0ummk8CGkLHRwgAsvqGtF6vgbY5L1MWkEVh6CthmprseyHEnfQ/s2048/XFL-conceptual.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1031" data-original-width="2048" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFkkj-xe3VdtA6J2EjgGr6UtzwgDQ71qpOo-ZkofFzdh66XINSSzEojrCHqnnBK1w_SmywPCkrtsIeagewTYOo0ummk8CGkLHRwgAsvqGtF6vgbY5L1MWkEVh6CthmprseyHEnfQ/w640-h322/XFL-conceptual.png" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 78%;">The mediation of alternative futures at various levels of abstraction. Diagram by author.<br /><br /></span></div><p><i>This post was previously published on <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/what-is-the-value-of-futures-and-foresight-b2c4a2674f1d" target="_blank">Medium</a>.<br /><br /></i></p><p>Related:<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-experiential-futures-interview.html" target="_blank">An Experiential Futures Interview</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is Storytelling</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-experiential-turn.html" target="_blank">The Experiential Turn</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures Volume I</a> & <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-music-of-community-emerging.html" target="_blank">Volume II</a> | <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338129083_Design_and_Futures">Full-text book</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/04/world-economic-forum.html">Exploring Technology Governance Futures with the World Economic Forum</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">Introducing Experiential and Participatory Futures at the BBC</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/03/experiential-futures-undp.html" target="_blank">Adding Dimensions to Development Futures at UNDP</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/11/using-future-at-nasa.html" target="_blank">Using the Future at NASA</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/bringing-futures-to-stanford-d-school.html" target="_blank">Bringing Futures to Stanford d.School</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/09/experiment-in-public-imagination.html" target="_blank">UNTITLED: A Bold New Experiment in Public Imagination</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/06/ethnographic-experiential-futures.html" target="_blank">Ethnographic Experiential Futures</a> (EXF)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/06/when-reality-outruns-imagination.html">Coral Cross: When Reality Outruns Imagination</a></p></div>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-1388498899007083142021-04-06T12:48:00.015-04:002021-04-09T10:00:00.024-04:00Exploring Technology Governance Futures with the World Economic Forum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz4HYGrNcz7ZSr9seSlerQa29E-LnK1Zk0DluX2RymL6iWqLx7uF35IKy9DiZyM3UlCd5MGlGBleksK5c21Ggy6MSxJ-pXK0-7BGisPsflktLW6l3Z1UWpCv-AZsGqwFKZPFCdvw/s800/beme.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz4HYGrNcz7ZSr9seSlerQa29E-LnK1Zk0DluX2RymL6iWqLx7uF35IKy9DiZyM3UlCd5MGlGBleksK5c21Ggy6MSxJ-pXK0-7BGisPsflktLW6l3Z1UWpCv-AZsGqwFKZPFCdvw/w640-h360/beme.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">A snapshot from the Influence 2035 experiential scenario</span></div><p>This week, the World Economic Forum is hosting its first ever <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/global-technology-governance-summit-2021" target="_blank">Global Technology Governance Summit</a> (GTGS), convening some 3000 leading technologists, academics, businesspeople, policymakers and political representatives to discuss the sprawling array of fast-moving challenges in this space.</p><p>From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal" target="_blank">privacy breach scandals</a> to the Trumpian rise of batshit-crazy <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon" target="_blank">conspiracy thinking</a>, the chaotic gaming of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameStop_short_squeeze">stock prices</a>, to misinformation-fuelled <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/on-whatsapp-fake-news-is-fast--and-can-be-fatal/2018/07/23/a2dd7112-8ebf-11e8-bcd5-9d911c784c38_story.html" target="_blank">mob lynchings</a>, and the weaponisation of online platforms for campaigns of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-45449938" target="_blank">xenophobia</a> or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/podcasts/the-daily/a-vast-web-of-vengeance.html" target="_blank">personal vengeance</a> (the latter was the subject of today's feature story on the New York Times Daily podcast)... These are just some recent examples that spring to mind. The pattern is the point. Countless spot-fires, zoomed out, start to look more like a full-blown conflagration.</p><p>Anyone who has paid even the scantest attention to such developments might discern a phenomenon also noted long ago by a founding figure both in speculative fiction and in the futures/foresight field*, H.G. Wells, in a BBC radio broadcast from 01932:</p><p>“All these new things, these new inventions and new powers, come crowding along; every one is fraught with consequences, and yet it is only after something has hit us hard that we set about dealing with it.”</p><p>To shift from a reactive stance to a more proactive or anticipatory one requires changes that are not just political or institutional in nature, but cultural and psychological as well. This is no less true in relation to technology governance than any other topic. As Wells was arguing almost a century ago, collective forethought is essential –– but broadly, it is not a habit we seem to have cultivated with much care or success.</p><p>The GTGS event gets underway today, technically hosted from Japan, but taking place entirely online, thanks again of course to the continuing Covid pandemic.</p><p>As it does so, a group of graduate designers in our Experiential Futures (XF) class at Carnegie Mellon University have just launched a special set of digital experiential scenarios –– websites and media <i>from the futures</i> to shed light and open up horizons of the topic to explore.</p><p>Each site created by XF participants offers a playful rabbit-hole delving into how the world could look decades from now –– in the 02030s, 40s or 50s –– and a provocatively high-resolution glimpse of how some key issues in technology governance might play out.</p><p>The usual caveat bears repeating: experiential scenarios should not, unless they are actually offered as such, be treated as predictions or preferences, but instead approached as possibilities to think and feel with. What new questions, potentials, or vantage points can they help us consider? </p><p>The storylines and themes contained in these particular projects all build on and respond to the <a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Technology_Futures_GTGS_2021.pdf" target="_blank">Technology Futures</a> report published yesterday by the World Economic Forum and Deloitte, which was shared with us in draft last month.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://sites.google.com/andrew.cmu.edu/tech-tea-podcast" target="_blank"><b>Tech Tea</b></a><br />Tech Tea, a podcast hosted by AI-wrangler Willow and dark web journalist Melanin, focuses on the darker side of the metaverse. Join them as they dive into the recent controversy surrounding powerhouse Global Virtual School.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJEXS39mgCs-nXVD08XCwkYTNbU-AOs8yb6li6GpAYd5HG8gLZgNdX7Ypuw5TPjtwQ4WZauHc-MWwa4Qvcujr-DtNHjKqPn2WMDZTL1k6hgEY5kP4m16b7s5bQtv22_-gBCcp0Zw/s2048/tech-tea.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJEXS39mgCs-nXVD08XCwkYTNbU-AOs8yb6li6GpAYd5HG8gLZgNdX7Ypuw5TPjtwQ4WZauHc-MWwa4Qvcujr-DtNHjKqPn2WMDZTL1k6hgEY5kP4m16b7s5bQtv22_-gBCcp0Zw/w640-h360/tech-tea.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>This podcast from the year 2050 expands on Maiah’s story from the education LEnS of the Technology Futures report.</p><p></p><p>by <b>Alice Chen</b>, <b>Karen Escarcha</b>, <b>Amrita Khoshoo</b> & <b>Hannah Kim</b><br /><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/events/2077dailylifecareerfair6783403158728163328/" target="_blank"><b>Influence 2035</b></a><br />Influence 2035 is an event bringing together panelists to discuss the gig landscape. Join us for candid stories from full-time content creators to data providers and robot admins. Click “Attending” on our event to learn more.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1SP07k658CXvkvd2pIAWb904JvATTM03aZVWrX7REBuObk2S-ySpjNcmlQQLWhb3-8oOwGUn_oiBH21EXMAkLz468wwJZdczIjVYjsOrSvVIM79e5sUR49MOF59zEsw2K3DVgBw/s2048/influence-2035.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1109" data-original-width="2048" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1SP07k658CXvkvd2pIAWb904JvATTM03aZVWrX7REBuObk2S-ySpjNcmlQQLWhb3-8oOwGUn_oiBH21EXMAkLz468wwJZdczIjVYjsOrSvVIM79e5sUR49MOF59zEsw2K3DVgBw/w640-h346/influence-2035.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>This project explores the extreme trends of gig-economy and influencer work appearing in the story of Maple featured in the Technology Futures report.</p><p></p><p>by <b>Jianzhe Gu,</b> <b>Sanika Sahasrabuddhe</b> & <b>Catherine Yochum</b><br /><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://after-math.org/" target="_blank"><b>After-Math</b></a><br />After-Math is a global consultancy committed to helping individuals, teams, and organizations regain independence from virtual influence and data-toxicity in order to rediscover the world around us.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinqWeRcETu4taDPnEoHRNv_acWZiUqYahhqD1p917SdLS8uX6MbOQKUvJCcM08vEk5gm29G-DVS6eFSWhXy8cX2JmgrE9B_jeH3IO4eFDHox4uk5YrB7mgKL1YdCdYJtnyk-PuwQ/s2048/after-math.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1182" data-original-width="2048" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinqWeRcETu4taDPnEoHRNv_acWZiUqYahhqD1p917SdLS8uX6MbOQKUvJCcM08vEk5gm29G-DVS6eFSWhXy8cX2JmgrE9B_jeH3IO4eFDHox4uk5YrB7mgKL1YdCdYJtnyk-PuwQ/w640-h370/after-math.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>This website for a speculative consultancy in the 2040s synthesizes trends, personas, and artifacts from all four scenarios in the Technology Futures report.</p><p></p><p>by <b>Adam Cowart</b> & <b>Russell Singer</b><br /><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://sites.google.com/andrew.cmu.edu/wikipolicy/home" target="_blank"><b>Wikipolicy</b></a><br />Wikipolicy is the policy arm of Wikimedia. Our 2032 Year-in-Review Report shows how we manage accountability, transparency, and logics of care in algorithmic and participatory policymaking advancements.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQWRO8FrTLhyefxmGT5xV0KrgKzxFXeeGSsua-nmLMqBagCsb1hOdhJzk06touZ8Nr5ffYgvfZW_Qj50hWb7a02lXYTZg756E3qsSHaUmFpyUz8SVWU8kJ6zdDK7Cgi-X6fjvh0Q/s2048/wikipolicy.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQWRO8FrTLhyefxmGT5xV0KrgKzxFXeeGSsua-nmLMqBagCsb1hOdhJzk06touZ8Nr5ffYgvfZW_Qj50hWb7a02lXYTZg756E3qsSHaUmFpyUz8SVWU8kJ6zdDK7Cgi-X6fjvh0Q/w640-h400/wikipolicy.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>Seeking to right past wrongs, in this future Wikipolicy is headed by Frank, a former technology executive and character featured in the Technology Futures report.</p><p>by <b>Rachel Arredondo</b>, <b>Kylon Chiang</b>, <b>Esther Kang</b> & <b>Jack McClain</b><br /><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://outliersdatatalent.carrd.co/" target="_blank"><b>Outliers Data Talent</b></a><br />Every company is a data company. Outliers Data Talent connects yours with the data providers you need, from providers of biometrics to location history and more. Top providers are booking fast, so reserve your data talent today.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirL9K9KS9_w8Vlej29-MU5OO2v45UzT-cDdhdaz0VPXZZpn7MTLXz4KOco058UspdhIJsPYCiNPUNwZDfGJa7daCRAOrMTBIqP81UZU9dVN9PoLhmO1lB6qiZOQ6ywexaEbw_vGQ/s2048/outliers.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirL9K9KS9_w8Vlej29-MU5OO2v45UzT-cDdhdaz0VPXZZpn7MTLXz4KOco058UspdhIJsPYCiNPUNwZDfGJa7daCRAOrMTBIqP81UZU9dVN9PoLhmO1lB6qiZOQ6ywexaEbw_vGQ/w640-h400/outliers.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>This hypothetical agency builds on the story of Maple / information LEnS scenario, where job-seekers provide a vast array of personal data around the clock to interested companies in exchange for pay.</p><p>by <b>M Kuznetsov</b>, <b>Alex Polzin</b> & <b>Maddy Sides</b></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>Well done indeed to all these Experiential Futures students! Many thanks to the World Economic Forum's Ruth Hickin (Strategy Lead, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution) for the opportunity to contribute to the conversation in this way. Finally, much appreciation to our recent guest respondents, Michelle King, Leah Zaidi and Jake Dunagan, for incisive and sensitive pre-launch project feedback. </p><div>We hope these digital experiential scenarios will be of interest and value both to event attendees, and to many others invested in these important topics. If you find them useful, whether individually or as a set, please feel free to share.<div><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p><span style="font-size: small;">Update 06apr21: I had mistakenly recalled the number of event participants as being around 1000; the Forum tells me that the correct number is closer to 3000.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">* This is the same broadcast popularised by futurist Richard Slaughter as <a href="https://richardslaughter.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Wells_Wanted_Profs_of_Fsight_1932.pdf" target="_blank">Wanted! Professors of Foresight</a>.</span></p><div>Related:<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2021/03/experiential-futures-undp.html" target="_blank">Adding Dimensions to Development Futures with UNDP</a><br /></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">Introducing Experiential and Participatory Futures at the BBC</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-getting-started-in-experiential.html" target="_blank">A conversation about Experiential Futures with The Omidyar Group</a><br /><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/04/three-dimensions-of-foresight.html" target="_blank">Three Dimensions of Foresight presentation for Columbia University DSL</a><br />> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305333152_Time_Machine_Reverse_Archaeology" target="_blank">The Time Machine assignment brief</a> / <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298461640_Experiential_Futures_Stepping_into_OCADU%27s_Time_Machine" target="_blank">full text article</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/09/theatre-in-pandemic.html" target="_blank">Theatre in Pandemic</a> / <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/theatre-in-pandemic-an-experimental-syllabus-ac66885e886b" target="_blank">full syllabus on Medium</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/10/teaching-long-now.html" target="_blank">The Long Now course at CMU</a></div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2011/07/strategic-foresight-and-design-mba.html" target="_blank">Teaching Strategic Foresight</a> / <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305724413_Strategic_Foresight" target="_blank">full text pdf</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/02/adopt-vision-wikileaks-edition.html" target="_blank">Adopt-a-vision</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/07/knowledge-base-of-futures-studies.html" target="_blank">Knowledge Base of Futures Studies</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2010/06/futures-of-everyday-life.html" target="_blank">The Futures of Everyday Life</a> / <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378_The_Futures_of_Everyday_Life_Politics_and_the_Design_of_Experiential_Scenarios" target="_blank">full text pdf</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/06/impacting-social.html" target="_blank">Impacting the Social: A conversation with Candy Chang and Bryan Boyer</a> / <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305318921_Impacting_the_Social" target="_blank">full text pdf<br /></a><br /></div></div></div>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-6842862264272340672021-03-31T23:59:00.009-04:002022-06-28T20:12:22.475-04:00Adding Dimensions to Development Futures with UNDP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7vHCSz3qz6GGCX8arONrySLE3BNIOOFaM8ExbQPff7kMKJtfVZReFj71SPGcY5pjrZvcoAVYJcqob3_4NZWj5y5zOsbjJYl7RPaBUOVxbffUkgo8Z7v_eFldmMQQtY26h553_Yg/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+2.03.15+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7vHCSz3qz6GGCX8arONrySLE3BNIOOFaM8ExbQPff7kMKJtfVZReFj71SPGcY5pjrZvcoAVYJcqob3_4NZWj5y5zOsbjJYl7RPaBUOVxbffUkgo8Z7v_eFldmMQQtY26h553_Yg/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+2.03.15+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>(Update 28jun22: It was announced today that this project has won at the <a href="https://designawards.core77.com/speculative-design/115126/Imagination-is-a-Commons" target="_blank">02022 Core77 Design Awards</a> in the Speculative Design category! Ceda and I are grateful to Core77 and want to give thanks again to our indispensable collaborators, listed below.)</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>Last week I helped to launch the United Nations Development Programme's annual innovation event, Istanbul Innovation Days (IID), using an experiential futures process and format created for the occasion.</p><p>Back in January, they had come to me with a challenge: how might experiential futures practice be brought to bear for the event's Opening Session? Due to Covid everything was to be run online this year; this kickoff was planned as a panel conversation about global development's futures, live in video chat, with the head of UNDP and invited speakers around the world.</p><p>Mission accepted: I proposed to interview all the panelists in advance, one on one, then design and send an artifact from the future to each, to arrive at their homes by the week before the event. After more than a year on Zoom, thanks to the pandemic, my hope was to breathe some dimensionality into our talking-head squares.</p><p>Each artifact would draw inspiration from ideas about the future shared with me by the speaker in our pre-conversation, and would try to picture a far-reaching shift in relationships and power, manifested institutionally, affecting whatever we mean when we say ‘development’.</p><p>So, what happened? </p><p>Sophie Howe, Welsh Commissioner for Future Generations, the first person in the world to hold that remarkable cross-cutting role, emphasised the critical need for a “holistic view” in governance. I wondered: how might next-level holistic, inclusive decision-making look?</p><p>Sophie received a bilingual Welsh/English mailer from Wales’ Parliament of All Beings in 02056, notifying her that animal wellbeing data indicated consent to move to the next phase of Rewilding in her neighbourhood in Cardiff.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5zkDiyLDF_FAIQELdrLSMRLkUyf074aC3l9VzmqzsQ5cYa64N_EXfgevzC4U6uZIbtXePYAqglIf3_xhAuF4QAp6_jhjPqflirSJi2VVHQznJpBz3D6GHAK-WJxCVIW4OvQkPhg/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+2.04.14+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1150" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5zkDiyLDF_FAIQELdrLSMRLkUyf074aC3l9VzmqzsQ5cYa64N_EXfgevzC4U6uZIbtXePYAqglIf3_xhAuF4QAp6_jhjPqflirSJi2VVHQznJpBz3D6GHAK-WJxCVIW4OvQkPhg/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+2.04.14+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8NBv-zyEjei40DC7B5r2TFlIMOcZrP5qbpv_C9jbWOESmeHeu_AoCstMWKVFOW8MJjUx9W_jWKgIv78Md-mExcQiJ4lSgALaY_oCXrEDt0b4wVDoXr7VMwivtUpnJFMITdxJKZQ/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+2.01.59+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1153" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8NBv-zyEjei40DC7B5r2TFlIMOcZrP5qbpv_C9jbWOESmeHeu_AoCstMWKVFOW8MJjUx9W_jWKgIv78Md-mExcQiJ4lSgALaY_oCXrEDt0b4wVDoXr7VMwivtUpnJFMITdxJKZQ/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+2.01.59+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9et1OMY4p70e_H0MKnK-BMSo_-UXKRblEkEa-YAZ10vYI42fEdIRuziJ9XYmRGKXaiGUexILEx8A0ULF4UfTeFE0Spvp5GwUG-f_GgaFkfsb1p1umiVKdK6uDTMYlZvuJjRlgA/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+2.02.27+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9et1OMY4p70e_H0MKnK-BMSo_-UXKRblEkEa-YAZ10vYI42fEdIRuziJ9XYmRGKXaiGUexILEx8A0ULF4UfTeFE0Spvp5GwUG-f_GgaFkfsb1p1umiVKdK6uDTMYlZvuJjRlgA/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+2.02.27+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>Nanjira Sambuli, a powerhouse tech justice advocate from Kenya, when we spoke registered the absurdity of a few Silicon Valley tech bros ruling platforms that mediate our relationships all around the world, noting “the dream to democratise, decentralise” and “take on the giants”.</p><p>At home in Nairobi, she received a letter written to her as a Board Member for RECODE Africa (REclaim community, COoperativise platforms, DEvolve governance), with a T-shirt for its 3rd Annual Festival in 02030, after Twitter ownership has been taken over by users & workers.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM_c_mlzVo3xdFxwZa1eWM3fwhjZaK0qd9ilgtD-HwrGf9gVUkq6OUp0J_dP8Ypc5aEY_O21hUZ8XYa78JSaIHtUx-aVRVFjKSkuEKu6NRGewbwNWhNF_3PbybL89W1ivuUeRRVA/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.29.50+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1132" data-original-width="2048" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM_c_mlzVo3xdFxwZa1eWM3fwhjZaK0qd9ilgtD-HwrGf9gVUkq6OUp0J_dP8Ypc5aEY_O21hUZ8XYa78JSaIHtUx-aVRVFjKSkuEKu6NRGewbwNWhNF_3PbybL89W1ivuUeRRVA/w640-h354/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.29.50+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq8r0iwcaSdMSm8yRGrr3aQ2b265ThEEYtRJs4CHUjDvLKIyUhVHbaGYbOucXKfX9v6oYPLEMogVtqeR0mjYOo0XhUFU62nQVbOJzvRwQDtedaJ31CaCDz-OE9pO-mbAbIHSrdkg/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.30.21+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq8r0iwcaSdMSm8yRGrr3aQ2b265ThEEYtRJs4CHUjDvLKIyUhVHbaGYbOucXKfX9v6oYPLEMogVtqeR0mjYOo0XhUFU62nQVbOJzvRwQDtedaJ31CaCDz-OE9pO-mbAbIHSrdkg/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.30.21+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>Roman Krznaric, author of The Good Ancestor, told me about the importance of “political innovation” dealing with the “decision making structures” underpinning development at all levels. So what might such transformational change look like on the ground?</p><p>Based in Oxford, Roman received a thank you for serving in the 02032 Oxfordshire Ancestors’ Assembly (modelled on Japan’s current “Future Design” process), and a robe as ritually worn by participants when deliberating the potential impacts of their decisions on future generations.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZyZuEg9l4zKvU9X572APiYs31v0GeOJap6vr6GgtR3sihAkQr-NNskojjepGcUytGkkrw_f_9F7tQcyqtiHd9j78uXr2r_T3gKla9wJ5_Nw5PhTU7_uUuNcshtu8KPY1hJLbquw/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.36.16+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZyZuEg9l4zKvU9X572APiYs31v0GeOJap6vr6GgtR3sihAkQr-NNskojjepGcUytGkkrw_f_9F7tQcyqtiHd9j78uXr2r_T3gKla9wJ5_Nw5PhTU7_uUuNcshtu8KPY1hJLbquw/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.36.16+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYq7K2f6PjfHApNFP5BFiyLJabMzxq_u_PstHb0e0BDUsl0EPkj92zJ8-Ku-z2JSyg-vpcd80_Ijn45bdeI3aaFIdEzgEvqjhABgptOQ5qKttaJRGkpANP-Nxr94b7G3KNckNF1A/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.33.24+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYq7K2f6PjfHApNFP5BFiyLJabMzxq_u_PstHb0e0BDUsl0EPkj92zJ8-Ku-z2JSyg-vpcd80_Ijn45bdeI3aaFIdEzgEvqjhABgptOQ5qKttaJRGkpANP-Nxr94b7G3KNckNF1A/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.33.24+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTkft6Uwoe88NenzfYadNSO97Kg202Qevrs9gpfoveeaqOqwM_wq9C3DzWn0KaxHMyo-jbpnsKnMIHDiIWV_bP7-ub5ZdTudKFFhIzHM7EwQZ7s8Ylss3DrDM_wygB8YzyqqF1hw/s2000/Ancestors_S.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1514" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTkft6Uwoe88NenzfYadNSO97Kg202Qevrs9gpfoveeaqOqwM_wq9C3DzWn0KaxHMyo-jbpnsKnMIHDiIWV_bP7-ub5ZdTudKFFhIzHM7EwQZ7s8Ylss3DrDM_wygB8YzyqqF1hw/w484-h640/Ancestors_S.jpg" width="484" /></a></div><p>Marcela Sabino, Head of Innovation at Brazil’s Museu do Amanha (Museum of Tomorrow), evoked a scenario in which we relate to corporate entities as legal persons very differently: “Companies have to be held accountable for what they're doing.” The question becomes –– how?</p><p>In Rio de Janeiro, Marcela received a screenprinted poster, one in Portuguese and one in English, advertising the public execution/dissolution of a corporation that in 02036 has been convicted of ecocide by the International Criminal Court.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3PZEOIQDLn4DKBrlB1WKvgMTN3c0ngxNBQBsqp-OwaNZbtBae_y45FJFnW7YbKTlSMnFHQ9QgA5gZu_KN8fIFHoxYS_vqmuJGQmqH1KLclLIpsTbvFZXtqEKngc-jqfKcgX_qxA/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.30.51+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3PZEOIQDLn4DKBrlB1WKvgMTN3c0ngxNBQBsqp-OwaNZbtBae_y45FJFnW7YbKTlSMnFHQ9QgA5gZu_KN8fIFHoxYS_vqmuJGQmqH1KLclLIpsTbvFZXtqEKngc-jqfKcgX_qxA/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.30.51+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>Achim Steiner, head of UNDP, observed that by the later 21st century what we currently know as the United Nations “will have to be significantly different. . . . But the fact that we will need a governance platform on which to come together is absolutely essential.”</p><p>At home in New York, he received a hand-calligraphed copy of “The Words Spoken Before All Others”, aka the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, adopted in a ceremony at Onondaga Lake as the Opening Invocation for the General Assembly of the United Peoples, on 22 April 02070.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6SS9QUhRISmo685lP6C6zMUa5CL6mnQIFqY-xyIsrbiGqZCXc79NEpSArXxl7goPweu9CrK2URyFZ6RPsFNFVp5TjhZiVSIg-G3YBE4yf13HZhXVYRY1o90nads2f1EV0DFehBg/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.50.27+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6SS9QUhRISmo685lP6C6zMUa5CL6mnQIFqY-xyIsrbiGqZCXc79NEpSArXxl7goPweu9CrK2URyFZ6RPsFNFVp5TjhZiVSIg-G3YBE4yf13HZhXVYRY1o90nads2f1EV0DFehBg/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.50.27+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih6D0pn4fgCKLhTPYFf65FA1Imm-wug6e6iC8gasowSNRfsozQhi8bOmUrL5hqPp6aq3T_6jTScu8xqGglO07Ujqh-Q5xQ3WRdjNrtyeiGEc3zp-RpP0cmZvkX30khsRmHcfkeww/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.50.03+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih6D0pn4fgCKLhTPYFf65FA1Imm-wug6e6iC8gasowSNRfsozQhi8bOmUrL5hqPp6aq3T_6jTScu8xqGglO07Ujqh-Q5xQ3WRdjNrtyeiGEc3zp-RpP0cmZvkX30khsRmHcfkeww/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.50.03+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio4teBSho_wH3zSLNQ1nF8azICoptajk6MTxwpMjBlW-gjscYLcvUVshjkXiYR0c_4elTUauLRCxakEZxvMw6oJW9SYBZk2L7WJmnsTFoXe-2l4NKV9VSfi-dSc8zAtfg0UpgSFQ/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.51.01+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio4teBSho_wH3zSLNQ1nF8azICoptajk6MTxwpMjBlW-gjscYLcvUVshjkXiYR0c_4elTUauLRCxakEZxvMw6oJW9SYBZk2L7WJmnsTFoXe-2l4NKV9VSfi-dSc8zAtfg0UpgSFQ/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.51.01+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga1zwhUtjeaGy2nlHPikX3ivPHHCquxdYU7MULU9NAUEdtPSRQy52TIpYnCh7qZi_PUFw_t-9Ldg0_a-36O0qQeSQYQVwGt5Cl4Lh0wML6UTlYfcVMxwGBxwAA3yHY4wDQbbyfGQ/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.49.35+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga1zwhUtjeaGy2nlHPikX3ivPHHCquxdYU7MULU9NAUEdtPSRQy52TIpYnCh7qZi_PUFw_t-9Ldg0_a-36O0qQeSQYQVwGt5Cl4Lh0wML6UTlYfcVMxwGBxwAA3yHY4wDQbbyfGQ/w640-h360/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+1.49.35+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div></div><p>When the day of the panel itself arrived, I had the pleasure of moderating the conversation, with Luciana Mermet, UNDP Resident Representative in Bolivia. The speakers didn't know yet what the others had received, so we had everyone use their future artifact as a portal through which to introduce themselves and their ideas to the conversation.</p><p>The Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Turkey, Faruk Kaymakci, also joined the session, as a distinguished “Future Steward”, sharing remarks on and helping draw connections among the perspectives offered.</p><p>It’s a minor miracle how it all came together. The future artifacts arrived in multiple locations around the world, our Internet connections held up, and almost 700 people joined in to listen, chat and ask questions. If you're interested, the Opening Session is available to watch in its entirety here:</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rh4x3QTBKO4?start=579" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p><p>This was an exciting piece of a much bigger conversation, about decolonising and reimagining development for the 02021 edition of IID. It was also an encouraging way for a new experiential futures* format to add both a third dimension (physicality) and a fourth (direct engagement with time) to a 2D medium. I half-jokingly dubbed the format a "4D Panel", and it would certainly work as a replicable structure –– if anyone decides to give it a go, please get in touch.</p><p>The other thing to mention about the format is that it is scaffolded using <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331857932_Turning_Foresight_Inside_Out_An_Introduction_to_Ethnographic_Experiential_Futures" target="_blank">Ethnographic Experiential Futures (EXF)</a> –– a framework that my colleague Kelly Kornet and I derived from a set of precedents for exactly this sort of purpose –– to make it easier to generate customised projects that pair culturally-specific futures research with design-led experiential outcomes. There's more research in the pipeline, so stay tuned.</p><p>This post is a quick one based on a <a href="https://twitter.com/futuryst/status/1377347292747886593" target="_blank">thread shared on Twitter</a> earlier today, and I plan to include more details of the project in a proper write-up in due course. For now, though, much gratitude to the many amazing folks who made this possible.</p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: 700;">* * *<br /><br /></span></div><b>UNDP Objects of the Future (4D Panel) –– #IID2021 Opening Session –– Project Credits and Acknowledgments</b><p></p><div>Co-designer and lead artist:<br />Ceda Verbakel</div><div><br />Robe co-design and construction:<br />Lindsay Goranson<br /><br />Calligraphy:<br />Catherine Marsceau<br /><br />Welsh translation:<br />Angharad Withers<br />Sarah Elizabeth Siân Withers<br /><br />Portuguese translation:<br />Jacques Barcia<br /><br />Screenprinting:<br />Max Emiliano Gonzales<br /><br />Documentation photography:<br />Matt Geiger<br /><br /><div>Special thanks to the following research informants, advisors and sounding boards:</div><div>Jacques Barcia<br />Ginny Battson<br />Cennydd Bowles<br />Jonathan Chapman<br />Jake Dunagan<br />Jasper Grosskurth<br />Jonathon Keats<br />Michelle King<br />Peter MacLeod<br />Sheila Ochugboju<br />Ollie Palmer<br />Hannah Muthoni Ryder<br />Ella Saitta<br />Wendy Schultz<br />Sian Sheu<br />Danny Spitzberg (@BuyThisPlatform)<br />Maya van Leemput<br /><br /></div><div>None of these fine people are responsible for my misunderstandings, errors or other sins<br /><br />Thanks for generous logistical assistance:</div>Leonard Kinyanjui (Nairobi)<br />Sheila Ochugboju (Nairobi)<br />Siri Krznaric (Oxford)<br />Kate Raworth (Oxford)<br />Nina Barbuto (Pittsburgh)<br />Rich Pell (Pittsburgh)<br /><br />Thanks also to Jill Chisnell, Trebor Scholz, Brad Towell, and Cameron Tonkinwise<div><br /></div><div>Thanks for additional design explorations to Myrna Rosen and Amrita Khoshoo</div><div><br /></div><div>Framing by Carol Whitehead</div><div>T-shirt production (PIT) by Clockwise.io<br />T-shirt production (NBO) by Mattel Printing<br />Shipping by FedEx East Liberty & Monroeville PA<br /><br />4D Panel members and artifact inspirers:</div><div>Sophie Howe</div><div>Roman Krznaric</div><div>Marcela Sabino</div><div>Nanjira Sambuli</div><div>Achim Steiner<br /><br />4D Panel Future steward:<br />Faruk Kaymakcı<br /><br />UNDP Innovation liaison:<br />Milica Begovic<br /><br />Thank you to Kelly Kornet for co-authoring the Ethnographic Experiential Futures (EXF) framework which scaffolded this project<br /><br />Thank you to Robin Wall Kimmerer for inspiring the artifact for Achim through her brilliant book <i>Braiding Sweetgrass</i> (see “The Sacred and the Superfund”)<br /><br />Thank you to John Stokes for kind permission to use the text of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. © 1993 Six Nations Indian Museum and The Tracking Project. ISBN 0-9643214-0-8<br /><br />Extra special thanks to Ceda Verbakel, wonderful partner, fellow traveller, and problem-solver-in-chief<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><p><span style="font-size: small;">* Or design fiction, speculative design, etc –– call it whatever you like really –– but know that experiential futures, more recently </span><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338129083_Design_and_Futures" style="font-size: small;" target="_blank">dubbed design futures in some quarters</a><span style="font-size: small;">, has</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378_The_Futures_of_Everyday_Life_Politics_and_the_Design_of_Experiential_Scenarios" style="font-size: small;" target="_blank">its own genealogy and contours</a><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">grounded in decades of futures work; lots to dig into for the curious!</span></p><p><br />Related:<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/04/foresight-is-right.html" target="_blank">Foresight is a Right</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/11/dreaming-together_81.html">Dreaming together</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-spirit-and-letter.html" target="_blank">The Spirit and the Letter</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is storytelling</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/09/1-888-futures.html" target="_blank">1-888-FUTURES</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/10/experiential-futures-at-the-bbc.html" target="_blank">Introducing experiential futures at the BBC</a><br />> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331857932_Turning_Foresight_Inside_Out_An_Introduction_to_Ethnographic_Experiential_Futures" target="_blank">Ethnographic Experiential Futures article</a> / <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/07/knowledge-base-of-futures-studies.html" target="_blank">KBFS</a> / <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/06/ethnographic-experiential-futures.html" target="_blank">original post</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/06/syrian-refugee-girls-imagine-their.html" target="_blank">Syrian refugee girls imagine their futures</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/11/using-future-at-nasa.html">Using the future at NASA</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/bringing-futures-to-stanford-d-school.html" target="_blank">Bringing futures to Stanford d.school</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/07/wanted-25000-miles-of-crime-scene-tape.html" target="_blank">Wanted: 25,000 Miles of crime scene tape</a><br />> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338129083_Design_and_Futures" target="_blank">Design and Futures open access book</a> / <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">intro to Vol. I</a><br /></p></div></div>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-27220556131608000152020-10-30T02:28:00.006-04:002021-04-02T11:51:00.542-04:00Introducing Experiential and Participatory Futures at the BBC<iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08s3bnj/player" width="640"></iframe><p>How do you develop foresight capacity inside an organisation, and experiential futures especially?</p><p>It's a question that comes up a lot. </p><p>Recently I've spoken with government agencies from the UK, Denmark, and Australia, whose leaders all reached out for advice on growing their capability in these spaces.</p><p>The RSA (the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) has just published a report on "<a href="https://www.thersa.org/reports/futures-thinking-foresight" target="_blank">Realising the Value of Futures and Foresight</a>"; I was glad to contribute when the researchers got in touch a few months ago.</p><p>These are exciting signals that the conditions for social foresight are ripening, with experiential and participatory futures approaches migrating and spreading across contexts –– from academia and activism, to arts and culture, to business, politics and governance.</p><p>This post is about a fun project that also represents, I think, an exciting milestone in that journey.</p><p>A long, long time ago, in a pre-COVID otherworld –– last year, that is –– I had the privilege of collaborating with the British Broadcasting Corporation on an effort to bring futures thinking and practices into the design side of the organisation.</p><p>With the brilliant <a href="https://twitter.com/filippocuttica" target="_blank">Filippo Cuttica</a> leading the charge (Filo is BBC's UX Principal for Ethical Experiences; he is also part of art collective <a href="http://iocose.org/bio.html" target="_blank">IOCOSE</a>), and supported by a formidable in-house design posse, we devised a process for introducing around 200 people to the space of alternative futures.</p><p>Since our participants would mostly be designers of various kinds, we were resolved that these ideas should land with folks not just in theory, but in the most embodied way possible. So at an away day for the whole design side of the Beeb, hosted in Manchester's grand old Alfred Hall, I gave a keynote address to get some shared concepts and background into the collective mind, and then we transitioned to bringing alternative futures to life, on the spot.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZw78VLyzV2_mpR18zeVKGxaWY2-OLwQnAPhhjCpoQcSRrdW2Aj_IRFvu53PxdcwTOzXc2dCquT0xxzghX5w9k12M2BS2xfgKlySBiD3tFiT0qOydbGcdqR6P_ubDmN1iycIgRA/s2048/IMG_2993.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZw78VLyzV2_mpR18zeVKGxaWY2-OLwQnAPhhjCpoQcSRrdW2Aj_IRFvu53PxdcwTOzXc2dCquT0xxzghX5w9k12M2BS2xfgKlySBiD3tFiT0qOydbGcdqR6P_ubDmN1iycIgRA/w640-h480/IMG_2993.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ts62OW2nzydkho3mtphNKhb7Wba7YFvto3jrG8EW9V-trnzDG7w_EiVjBg03sQTdCXBKB4wEKekvyfCd6_esX2iwKRjl0HxzUMOsXQbjz4f9WhJVYs67jwHiqoJU1vpbrKY0Jw/s1599/50958f71-60f1-432f-9700-7736cab64c77.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1599" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ts62OW2nzydkho3mtphNKhb7Wba7YFvto3jrG8EW9V-trnzDG7w_EiVjBg03sQTdCXBKB4wEKekvyfCd6_esX2iwKRjl0HxzUMOsXQbjz4f9WhJVYs67jwHiqoJU1vpbrKY0Jw/w640-h480/50958f71-60f1-432f-9700-7736cab64c77.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.48px;">Being quite excited about the event, I took a *lot* of pictures, including all the photos in this post<br />(except this one of me speaking, obviously... which was taken by Filippo Cuttica)</span></div><p style="text-align: left;">Everyone had been invited to bring in junk from home –– old shoes; defunct appliances; all sorts of things that they would otherwise have thrown out –– to serve as raw material. The group spent the afternoon in small teams, reinterpreting these "found" items using our card game The Thing From The Future as scaffolding for imagination, and then physically transforming them into a crazy array of artifacts from alternative futures. At that point they put their wares "on sale", across dozens of stalls set up in the style of a bazaar or flea market, complete with a special currency created for the occasion that let everyone ultimately "vote" on their favourite designs.</p><p>Lo and behold: the Futures Bazaar! A surprisingly coherent container for a mad hodgepodge of material ruminations. The video produced by the BBC team (at the top of this post) really captures the glorious chaos of the day. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTWei5FRsnGAULpuaVJ6H0_mfDzO15e88tbEqGIUQZbB_m_5Tpd9IpJcVKBV5cbzubdmS71o3N8JxH8n0J_dDQ6KcthD69lIum9UHoMCy3-4HfNzeGuVBtaoiHff81yNMp47k6Mg/s2048/IMG_3112.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTWei5FRsnGAULpuaVJ6H0_mfDzO15e88tbEqGIUQZbB_m_5Tpd9IpJcVKBV5cbzubdmS71o3N8JxH8n0J_dDQ6KcthD69lIum9UHoMCy3-4HfNzeGuVBtaoiHff81yNMp47k6Mg/w640-h480/IMG_3112.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiWvlWre1llMwbZePy6Hlk90bgoAkVVNEL90CHqarWAQVUWT8OtulrqyAd1llIsZovIMhhrbtD10Oc2EUW1XuVWqfoLXR0Y9sfpCLRI0SAO40Fg7DB8RdtcsONtwLeoF0NchJV3A/s2048/IMG_3374.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiWvlWre1llMwbZePy6Hlk90bgoAkVVNEL90CHqarWAQVUWT8OtulrqyAd1llIsZovIMhhrbtD10Oc2EUW1XuVWqfoLXR0Y9sfpCLRI0SAO40Fg7DB8RdtcsONtwLeoF0NchJV3A/w640-h480/IMG_3374.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVA2I8-HLVyyiFtTWrFG24WJmmjebeEymEzAMHqJBsbvENsjYnlOsNDl3E_VaGyK0hV5CnqlDOcuiSzE8mOgFaddcguMt_Sn_POhPfgVbuPZWSLMMLk5II0GZOiMF2YWSo803f2g/s2048/IMG_3400.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVA2I8-HLVyyiFtTWrFG24WJmmjebeEymEzAMHqJBsbvENsjYnlOsNDl3E_VaGyK0hV5CnqlDOcuiSzE8mOgFaddcguMt_Sn_POhPfgVbuPZWSLMMLk5II0GZOiMF2YWSo803f2g/w640-h480/IMG_3400.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyKvnKG6VUEL09_-I03LiO9G4WZN_2klcgi99u84Z6ciJrXvdUzLBmgObTGC6BM9Knap8hFCBKOaeF9zTiLoeY5ZlWNw1rjnmF6c4eNtH6C6_9OtFTd8arrEq9WmsL5CPUhxQCpg/s2048/IMG_3398.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyKvnKG6VUEL09_-I03LiO9G4WZN_2klcgi99u84Z6ciJrXvdUzLBmgObTGC6BM9Knap8hFCBKOaeF9zTiLoeY5ZlWNw1rjnmF6c4eNtH6C6_9OtFTd8arrEq9WmsL5CPUhxQCpg/w640-h480/IMG_3398.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This co-created centrepiece, the Futures Bazaar itself, was complemented by a range of interactive demos organised onsite by BBC media tech unit <a href="https://www.bbc.com/blueroom" target="_blank">Blue Room</a>, including an adapted version (pictured below) of our experiential scenario from a few years back, <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/05/naturepod.html" target="_blank">NaturePod</a>, featuring 3D video footage that the team had recently ventured out to a forest near Manchester to record.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwkuSZqn7n1KRytkT8BaMZ3QDDOgUT_dez5DnT4nnREMemZke3ukqaD1ORoYOvfLXoEvA6e0278A_AVRwpx8nT-9nH8eNqn7t2Gz2xsYRi36UNBR7WEm0wh5CuWbVoGbYF3XVzCg/s2048/IMG_3479.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwkuSZqn7n1KRytkT8BaMZ3QDDOgUT_dez5DnT4nnREMemZke3ukqaD1ORoYOvfLXoEvA6e0278A_AVRwpx8nT-9nH8eNqn7t2Gz2xsYRi36UNBR7WEm0wh5CuWbVoGbYF3XVzCg/w640-h480/IMG_3479.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBQvKW3QaCi9t622Yp4texePcCqcoL6Rc9lk24dzn4Q-WEJn3kSyUijorTUHmZSkpI7OS9SFCsZ1LrXfSY6QCF4kEEnVknniIn8Xaix4n6avr7Sw3Rl4IqjCnSPoisp-OB_PIoaQ/s2048/IMG_3478.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBQvKW3QaCi9t622Yp4texePcCqcoL6Rc9lk24dzn4Q-WEJn3kSyUijorTUHmZSkpI7OS9SFCsZ1LrXfSY6QCF4kEEnVknniIn8Xaix4n6avr7Sw3Rl4IqjCnSPoisp-OB_PIoaQ/w640-h480/IMG_3478.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><p>It was exciting to build, in scope and ambition, on previous design jam deployments of The Thing From The Future. And turning household refuse into design fiction gold is an inherently satisfying form of creative alchemy, especially at scale. Scores of people, all playing and making their way into the futures together.</p><p>To revisit this work now, after more than half a year of working remotely, I find myself really missing the energy of co-creating in person. (It seems most of the time, I manage to avoid thinking about that; covid-coping reflex.)</p><p>But what makes a process like this tick, and how does it contribute to developing foresight capability?</p><p>I see two key factors driving it. The first is clear constraint. The second is permission to play. In a sense these pull in opposite directions, and that's the point. There's a productive tension in the middle, a sweet spot for creative, surprising generativity, neither too scripted nor too loose. Military drills have clear parameters, but also a tendency towards the predictable, this being of course among their main aims. On the other side, a young child's doodling may manifest a kind of pure play, but one scrawling sketch can look very much like another, and another, and another. Paradoxically, extremely open processes can produce results comparable in their unsurprisingness to extremely planned ones.</p><p>In jazz or theatrical improv, it's when the improvisers consciously adopt or, if they're really skilled, feel their way into a shared set of enabling constraints, "finding the game", that things start to click. The signal-to-noise ratio leaps. Pleasurable surprises appear. Embracing the convergent forces of constraint and the divergent forces of play in balance takes us somewhere interesting –– in this case, a gleefully absurdist and thoroughly engaging mode of co-creation.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2b-jfLRs0Ogy2axPG8jjA4FbOO0Vn22txetdHJ0W_FyVGymS_cuVKJk_WpVn4zwideeKDMo1Qtfx26WbxU2VDtDP6UnQjqidrQjmsbaFX4-XMJiLuD6noLryGS1gAMghbYkXa2A/w640-h480/IMG_3314.HEIC" style="color: #0000ee;" width="640" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBL9CFYmXr-8MUpnwYC959Y8ez8R-JteKUrQxq74q5wkCB2pUh3HcT44hMshfJwscq7os7mj0lVh1O4q-xsC3kAAxZmwYMta0tVgGQkv6lRLGEr_c91AD28b6-HhSeCAlS-JpttA/w640-h480/IMG_3406.HEIC" style="color: #0000ee;" width="640" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHlpDmmifPDOD5EQOQIWVhkMU0ml6PquMS9NJPma8A2OEXGaWCz2kVLZbJVideg5N02o9mhJU1jhiW1DWRXKebjm5zmH3j9xNowhWISrPQcmMPXYRigx5Sxwng_5RzYJpBTJ-9oQ/s2048/IMG_3301.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHlpDmmifPDOD5EQOQIWVhkMU0ml6PquMS9NJPma8A2OEXGaWCz2kVLZbJVideg5N02o9mhJU1jhiW1DWRXKebjm5zmH3j9xNowhWISrPQcmMPXYRigx5Sxwng_5RzYJpBTJ-9oQ/w640-h480/IMG_3301.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivb2hjufc251bB0gdukCYg7msS9kM67RM6TZ_JOiZaP-USdzBXr_uIQ57uO0gkPMKseC7xT1aScT9-PQDecC5z0ZpwRhHgtE601ndjuLPYZKZzliU26nOiUBmlsGcvF1LH1x9oOw/s2048/IMG_3453.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivb2hjufc251bB0gdukCYg7msS9kM67RM6TZ_JOiZaP-USdzBXr_uIQ57uO0gkPMKseC7xT1aScT9-PQDecC5z0ZpwRhHgtE601ndjuLPYZKZzliU26nOiUBmlsGcvF1LH1x9oOw/w640-h480/IMG_3453.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div></div></div><p>Several layers of productive constraints are operating here. These include, naturally, time itself; we broke a fairly complex set of tasks into distinct stages, which sharpened focus, brought urgency, and raised energy levels. Another is the overall premise, "make a future artifact with this thing", paired with the specific semiotic or interpretive potential of any given object: each item that participants had brought from home could plausibly be "cast" as many future things, but not as absolutely anything. More granularly, beneath the "future thing" umbrella, the structure of a Thing From The Future prompt offers a kind of<i> future</i> to consider, as well as a <i>theme</i>, a particular context of society or human endeavour, to help the imagination along. A player might incorporate a found object into a prompt something like the following:</p><p>"In a {REGIMENTED} future, there is a {pair of old slippers} related to {JUSTICE}. What is it?"</p><p>Which might end up generating something like this:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaHFUr5ENiJnsvW-G6vDfzX9GbQTzkIqh48xzPIT7z28fk-spctvWtXjB91rC4IrZmeSeEGnVJtEK27HkIUN3qHqviy1vV52rNZFNNA9fRnbT34hkJVZUydsNgxHxLOwz-psZIXg/s2048/IMG_3270_edit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaHFUr5ENiJnsvW-G6vDfzX9GbQTzkIqh48xzPIT7z28fk-spctvWtXjB91rC4IrZmeSeEGnVJtEK27HkIUN3qHqviy1vV52rNZFNNA9fRnbT34hkJVZUydsNgxHxLOwz-psZIXg/w640-h480/IMG_3270_edit.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX2P417bxxRdPMdAuPjlIDhT6xAF2dSenxf9X2sJu_cVJNpuk5bDA9ZdGY_7jImQRM40iJbhHzFUdfTKt7zOdofjquzqJMyrtmzUF6CF6mlOcj-TWl0FqeLBbGC0_zFYRc3Cg8iQ/s2048/IMG_3180.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX2P417bxxRdPMdAuPjlIDhT6xAF2dSenxf9X2sJu_cVJNpuk5bDA9ZdGY_7jImQRM40iJbhHzFUdfTKt7zOdofjquzqJMyrtmzUF6CF6mlOcj-TWl0FqeLBbGC0_zFYRc3Cg8iQ/w640-h480/IMG_3180.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div>Okay, you might say. People seem to be enjoying themselves and being creative. But so what? How does this help with the development of an organisational foresight capability?</div><p>A general answer is that many, if not most, organisations need play more than they realise. Workplace cultures often implicitly devalue and sacrifice, intentionally or not, anything unusual, subversive, humorous or nonstandard. This makes for infertile contexts, inhospitable to new ideas, and perhaps to diversity on other dimensions too (cultures, backgrounds, values). In my experience it's common for organisations to be more brittle, blinkered, and reactive than they might think they are, and to that extent, more vulnerable to changes in their operating environment that they have not made room to consider.</p><p>Foresight practice, a conversation space that's deliberately much broader than forecasting (an important subset of it), requires some openness to the non-extrapolative and non-obvious –– viz. Dator's second law: "Any useful statement about the futures should at first appear to be ridiculous".</p><p>More specifically, this particular kind of play arguably helps lower the bar to having more serious, strategically load-bearing conversations about alternative futures. I've written elsewhere about how The Thing From The Future is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855" target="_blank">designed to operate</a>, so won't reiterate that here, but as the celebrated designers <a href="https://www.eamesoffice.com/blog/five-things-charles-ray-eames-teach-us-about-play/" target="_blank">Charles and Ray Eames used to say</a>, "Toys are not really as innocent as they look. Toys and games are the prelude to serious ideas."</p><p>Am I saying that this is "the right way" to introduce futures thinking into organisations? No. It was, however, a great way to do it here, partly because this specific organisation is full of creatives, makers, and storytellers. Also, the context of an away day made a bit of fun welcome, even essential. We understood that participatory, playful and hands-on elements needed to be foregrounded here, and so they were.</p><p>In a more corporate, bureaucratic, or self-serious context, such as strategic conversation for a government department, supranational outfit, or large business, other approaches might be more suitable. Less out-on-a-limb for the participants while still inviting their engagement with future possibilities physically, emotionally, and narratively.</p><p><a href="http://media.ifrc.org/innovation/solferino-academy/the-future-is-now/" target="_blank">The Future Is Now</a> project, which we advised as well as helped implement at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the world's largest humanitarian network, mobilised experiential futures approaches in a number of important ways, in order to introduce, enable and integrate foresight throughout a vast organisation. It ended up fuelling an unprecedented level of futures awareness and activity, now shaping strategy at the global level, as well as within many national societies. (We can look at that case more in another post to come.)</p><p>Well, that all sounds very nice in principle, you may say, but we can't do most of these physical interventions or collaborations at the moment –– what about the pandemic?</p><p>So, part of the reason we called experiential futures "experiential futures", since first plotting out and arguing for this much-needed broadening of foresight practice a decade and a half ago, is that the relevant canvas is huge. It's not about a particular medium or context of deployment. As large as the space of "possible future artifacts" may be –– and I have argued that it has to be much larger than the set of "all human artifacts ever created in history"; if history has happened but futures have not, then the latter space is bound to be ontologically multiple, encompassing the aggregated contents not of just one historical timeline, but countless potential ones –– the point is that there's no reason, for our purposes, to be exclusively interested in objects, or even in physical, face-to-face encounters, important as those are. This is tied in with why the frames of "design fiction" and "speculative design", while both valuable vectors for popularising a subset of experiential futures' possibility space among designers and the design-curious, can sometimes get in their own way a little bit.</p><p>The relevant issue for organisations or cultures recognising a need to navigate change more effectively than they have in the past is not "how do we make objects that speak about futures?" It is also not, "how can speculative design or design fiction or help with our policy/strategy challenge?" Nor is it even "how can experiential futures help with x or y?", which reifies a constantly-evolving collection of practices that spring from and must continue to be fed by what seems to me to be the key underlying question: "<i>what can we do to navigate change more effectively</i>?" Any experience that helps people to grapple with possible futures and to take wiser action in the present is in scope. Experiential futures simply designates a possibility space where the challenge is ultimately to make better collective choices among all available options, and the means for realising these are whatever you can come up with.</p><p>On this view, the ongoing covid-19 pandemic and its limitations are just another set of enabling constraints. It doesn't much matter if you can't meet in person; do immersive future exhibits with social distancing, or for one person at a time. Send stuff through the post, or by email. Or create digital experiences, or audio ones with no screens in sight. We recently did a hybrid drama/design course on <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/theatre-in-pandemic-an-experimental-syllabus-ac66885e886b">devising theatre in pandemic conditions</a>, which included online live action roleplaying games. We've staged Zoom-native, as opposed to in-person, <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-time-travellers-story.html" target="_blank">Time Machines</a> (more on that soon, too). A bunch of us around the world just ran the first edition of a <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/09/experiment-in-public-imagination.html" target="_blank">decade-long annual festival program of experiential futures</a>, all created and carried out under covid-19 pandemic constraints. And so on.</p><p>People ought to be exploring alternative futures in the highest-impact ways available, especially with the devastating consequences of a conspicuous failure of effective foresight rippling, or rather ripping, through our daily lives, globally, right now.</p><p>Filo Cuttica says this in his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/gel/articles/futures-bazaar">excellent write-up</a> of this foray into experiential futures:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>If there’s one lesson to take away from the pandemic, it's the importance of looking ahead. And not just "looking ahead", but "feeling ahead". By imagining together in structured ways, and creating the experience of change before it happens, rather than while it's happening, we have a hope of planning, and even affecting our future. ...</p><p>The idea [of this event was] to introduce the team to a seemingly obvious, and yet hard to grapple with idea: that the future hasn’t happened yet, that we can play an active role in shaping, but that before we can collectively choose what should happen, we ought to explore what could happen.</p><p></p></blockquote><p>As noted at the top; it's great that more and more institutions are realising how embedding an augmented futures capability might be valuable. At the BBC, with this effort an internationally significant organisation spanning cultural and governance sectors has taken some deceptively playful first steps down an important path, and I'm excited to see where it might go.</p><p>If this sounds like something that your community or institution should be exploring, but you aren't sure what to do next, try the links below for a start.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8E93Y43FhfpRttY3TcfTLyMkdezPfWk7ugLXPUI2wxmJkrN_3DmCFaLpvqv76HFvBK5QeMJWDaekXFdLOpN7p1zH1QhAe2fqMano1ygdpqi0tueqbEEWD_y9c4iJRS5FPRy2Dpw/s2048/IMG_3095.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8E93Y43FhfpRttY3TcfTLyMkdezPfWk7ugLXPUI2wxmJkrN_3DmCFaLpvqv76HFvBK5QeMJWDaekXFdLOpN7p1zH1QhAe2fqMano1ygdpqi0tueqbEEWD_y9c4iJRS5FPRy2Dpw/w640-h480/IMG_3095.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrnYNp34HWAqVfHu4wXJ1LOybmwWavLiZKqkSltOKQY0ADoCgiiQSsZUzhsdSgGN_2AJlBuF9O0RNL-LCQ7u-MZ3avItIx6RzSOHQ-6zRd-mOZTQoqZtMda_md1XQjD60TZvto0w/s2048/IMG_3077_edit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrnYNp34HWAqVfHu4wXJ1LOybmwWavLiZKqkSltOKQY0ADoCgiiQSsZUzhsdSgGN_2AJlBuF9O0RNL-LCQ7u-MZ3avItIx6RzSOHQ-6zRd-mOZTQoqZtMda_md1XQjD60TZvto0w/w640-h480/IMG_3077_edit.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>Thanks and congrats again to Filo, to his team and their network of wonderful colleagues, and not least, to their awesome bosses at the BBC for supporting these efforts. I also want to mention prior work that in some ways made this delightful experiment possible, especially the series of participatory futures events that Jeff Watson and I (Situation Lab) organised years ago with our good friends Elliott Montgomery and Chris Woebken (Extrapolation Factory); Futurematic Vending Machine at OCAD, Futurematic: Canal St at NYU, and 1-888-FUTURES at USC; as well as the Discoverability Media Jam for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) with Rich Lachman at Ryerson University, and the Posteridade design jam staged with Marcela Sabino and her team at the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro.</p><p>Related<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/11/dreaming-together_81.html" target="_blank">Dreaming Together</a> | <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322927055_Dreaming_Together_Experiential_Futures_as_a_Platform_for_Public_Imagination" target="_blank">pdf</a> from the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Made-Up-Fictions-Tim-Durfee/dp/153234788X" target="_blank">Made Up: Design's Fictions</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/09/experiment-in-public-imagination.html" target="_blank">UNTITLED: A Bold New Experiment in Public Imagination</a> | <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/inside-a-bold-new-experiment-in-public-imagination-550a02f0b825" target="_blank">Medium</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-getting-started-in-experiential.html">On Getting Started in Experiential Futures</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/bringing-futures-to-stanford-d-school.html" target="_blank">Bringing Futures to Stanford d.School</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/11/using-future-at-nasa.html" target="_blank">Using the Future at NASA</a> | <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334307616">pdf</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/10/augmenting-cities.html" target="_blank">Augmenting Cities with Niantic and Knight Foundation</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-thing-from-future.html" target="_blank">The Thing From the Future</a> | <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855" target="_blank">pdf about the game design</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-time-travellers-story.html" target="_blank">Time Machines</a> <br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/05/naturepod.html" target="_blank">NaturePod</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/09/theatre-in-pandemic.html" target="_blank">Theatre in Pandemic</a> | <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/theatre-in-pandemic-an-experimental-syllabus-ac66885e886b" target="_blank">full syllabus on Medium</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/09/1-888-futures.html" target="_blank">1-888-FUTURES with Extrapolation Factory</a><br /></p>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-6499158591090888272020-09-30T12:44:00.004-04:002020-10-07T11:21:05.068-04:00Theatre in Pandemic<p>"Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next." — <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca" target="_blank">Arundhati Roy</a></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7BzXrLsCcfPJ_4Ez81grzMqy4VcUIEsR25eSobXg8V_JbKbS4HqwNivLI9xE920evG3X92NfO_oxq-KaczgkR9IKVR0zR3aNsHjZtbvg3HEuA4OGU9U7-O4lmPjDm2lODj3SSw/s2000/glitch-2-sm.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1108" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7BzXrLsCcfPJ_4Ez81grzMqy4VcUIEsR25eSobXg8V_JbKbS4HqwNivLI9xE920evG3X92NfO_oxq-KaczgkR9IKVR0zR3aNsHjZtbvg3HEuA4OGU9U7-O4lmPjDm2lODj3SSw/s600/glitch-2-sm.jpg" width="600" /></a><span style="font-size: 12.48px;">A group of <i>Theatre in Pandemic</i> participants test out a new streaming platform</span></div><p><br />This summer, together with my colleague <a href="https://nicaross.com/" target="_blank">Nica Ross</a> from Carnegie Mellon's School of Drama, we staged an experimental research course called <i>Theatre in Pandemic</i>.</p><p>It took place against the backdrop of not only the COVID-19 crisis but also a national and global effort to confront police violence and structural racism.</p><p>Both call for radically different approaches to theatre, but seem to pull in different directions. The former made working in the same physical space impossible. The second demanded heightened attention to questions of power and consent; the terms of co-creation between artists as well as the terms of encounter between artists and their publics. In other words, one set of conditions militated against building the strong connections and trusting relationships that are central to theatrical art-making, while the other brought the importance of those same connections and relationships into the sharpest possible focus.</p><p>The result of our grappling with that challenging contradiction was one of the most experimental and exciting classes I've ever taught.</p><p>The syllabus started as a skeleton that we deliberately left under-specified so as to enable adaptation and emergence in the fleshing out. It included Fluxus scores, online larp, ritual design, transmedia ideation, critical examinations of media and their enabling constraints, and a whole lot of play.</p><p>That is, we put aside the temptations (and hazards) of trying to replicate on Zoom any kind of theatre as we knew it before. Instead, we set out in search of new possibilities through experimentation and games, resulting in a set of design briefs and performances for a pandemic-prompted "<a href="https://medium.com/the-playable-theater-project" target="_blank">playable theatre</a>".</p><p>An outline of our six half-day sessions or 'episodes' perhaps gives a sense of the arc.</p><p></p><blockquote><p>Episode 1: This is Theatre Now<br />• In-Class Action: Pass Around a Shared Object<br />• Weeklong Action: Create a Score</p><p>Episode 2: Building Worlds Together<br />• In-Class Action: Play a Live Action Roleplaying Game<br />• Weeklong Action: Design a Ritual</p><p>Episode 3: Mediums and Media<br />• In-class Action: Research and Experiment with online tech/art projects<br />• Weeklong Action: 60 Second Play<br /></p><p>Episode 4: A Play and a Project<br />• In-Class Action: The Thing From The Future<br />• Project Launch: The Final Action</p><p>Episode 5: Studio Time</p><p>Episode 6: Final Action</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Gratifyingly, and as hoped, the three projects produced by our dozen participants were wildly different from one another.<br /></p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>Queerantine 2020</i> by Lyam Gabel, Lenora Gant, and Petra Floyd<br />A user-navigated web-based archive with mixed media content, both contextualising and telling the story of a triad of people trying to navigate the criminal justice system, queerness, academia, and life in a pandemic.</p></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbijBeRhxKmwj-fK7JnU-v7pYCGVBcKw7VfW0RxmCjGK5_8a8KMLitTCX7wK6gdfmZNcoyIlQzQTT_zSC8XrqGOoCxp1zT8SDwgxUSWhqdKAsUhwkntOMW21ia06gEIvoNE0gxlw/s2000/Queerantine-2-sm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1183" data-original-width="2000" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbijBeRhxKmwj-fK7JnU-v7pYCGVBcKw7VfW0RxmCjGK5_8a8KMLitTCX7wK6gdfmZNcoyIlQzQTT_zSC8XrqGOoCxp1zT8SDwgxUSWhqdKAsUhwkntOMW21ia06gEIvoNE0gxlw/w640-h378/Queerantine-2-sm.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><blockquote><p><i>PBC</i> by Zeja Copes, Sean Leo, Maggie McGrann, and Carey Xu <br />A live-streaming, 360-degree cut-up play incorporating the words of James Baldwin, Michelle Tea, Hua Chunying, and CNN to create a conversation at the intersection of diverse lives, conflict and care.</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6NBVnCswloEzsBd5U-MbJmR2qrOguylqN1zwOOXKlkIwPKjSTk6EkHIGlI0Hu8yqoeGc1s7YwzZV8TYl5S2bcT2VmgZlFFXYlL0HZsMdMikl4cOdmjA0eNYTv7z79xpboCeGVw/s2590/PBC.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1214" data-original-width="2590" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6NBVnCswloEzsBd5U-MbJmR2qrOguylqN1zwOOXKlkIwPKjSTk6EkHIGlI0Hu8yqoeGc1s7YwzZV8TYl5S2bcT2VmgZlFFXYlL0HZsMdMikl4cOdmjA0eNYTv7z79xpboCeGVw/w640-h300/PBC.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><blockquote><p><i>S.99520</i> by Davine Byon, Major Curda, Rachel Kolb, and Cynthia Xu<br />An online larp (or live action online game, aka ‘laog’) in which United States Senators and industry lobbyists persuade, bribe and cajole each other in the closing minutes before the crucial vote on the Bill for the Green New Deal. Hosted on the web-based virtual space and conferencing platform gather.town that stylistically emulates an 8-bit video game, the participants navigate their way around the game space to find each other, activate video chat, and engage in high-stakes negotiations.</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwMDJ8hQX2jS-jKsYJyXAXgdSsHnKrNKOXYegz1jbteIu7wC8uk_PRr6Dsr05EHewS7veY-xHkiTuyrAowNAMZl9iJq52H1oDb-Yeiloh4nvXHa92UclbRLF-4i9LgIUdoU7jkpQ/s2048/Gather.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1521" data-original-width="2048" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwMDJ8hQX2jS-jKsYJyXAXgdSsHnKrNKOXYegz1jbteIu7wC8uk_PRr6Dsr05EHewS7veY-xHkiTuyrAowNAMZl9iJq52H1oDb-Yeiloh4nvXHa92UclbRLF-4i9LgIUdoU7jkpQ/w640-h476/Gather.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p><p>Thanks in part to the interest that folks showed in what we were doing when I <a href="https://twitter.com/futuryst/status/1276267142745382912" target="_blank">tweeted</a> about the course a few months ago, we've open-sourced the <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/theatre-in-pandemic-an-experimental-syllabus-ac66885e886b" target="_blank"><i>Theatre in Pandemic</i> syllabus</a>, complete with all reading and media resources, in-class and weekly 'actions' or assignments, plus additional links and commentary, as well as a <a href="https://vimeo.com/444986655" target="_blank">demo reel</a> of the participants' efforts (see below).</p><p>My experiential futures practice and classes have for many years drawn on theatrical modes, including immersive theatre, live action roleplaying, and guerrilla performance –– and as it happens my first ever pay cheques, at 13, came from being in a professional production of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. But this was the first chance I've had to collaborate with the School of Drama. It was a blast.</p><div>Our hope is that others might find some leads or inspiration in these documents of our struggle to connect, co-create, and reimagine collaborative art in a very challenging time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, much gratitude to Nica and to all our participants.</div><p style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/444986655" width="640"></iframe></p><p><br />Related:<br />> <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/theatre-in-pandemic-an-experimental-syllabus-ac66885e886b" target="_blank">Theatre in Pandemic: An Experimental Syllabus</a> at Medium<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/06/impacting-social.html" target="_blank">Impacting the Social</a> [<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305318921">pdf</a>]: A conversation with Candy Chang and Bryan Boyer<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/02/build-your-own-time-machine.html" target="_blank">The Time Machine</a> [<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305333152" target="_blank">pdf</a>]: Immersive futures assignment brief<br />> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298461640" target="_blank">Experiential Futures: Stepping into OCADU's Time Machine [pdf]</a><br />> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305281472" target="_blank">Designing for Emergence / Why Christchurch Should Not Plan for the Future [pdf]</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/10/teaching-long-now.html" target="_blank">The Long Now course</a> at CMU<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/11/future-documentary.html" target="_blank">Future Documentary course</a> at SAIC<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/01/how-to-move-to-canada.html" target="_blank">American Futures course</a> at SAIC<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/02/adopt-vision-wikileaks-edition.html">Adopt-a-Vision / Experiential Futures</a> at OCAD<br />> <a href="https://vimeo.com/56456456">The Futures School</a> at NUS [video]<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2011/07/strategic-foresight-and-design-mba.html" target="_blank">Strategic Foresight course</a> at CCA<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-jamming-101.html" target="_blank">Intro to Politics course incl. Guerrilla Futures</a> at UH<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/09/in-memoriam.html" target="_blank">In Memoriam / Guerrilla Futures intervention</a> at SXSW<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is Storytelling</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/06/when-reality-outruns-imagination.html">When Reality Outruns Imagination</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/08/immersive-futures-for-hawaii-2050.html" target="_blank">Immersive scenarios for Hawaii 02050 in 02006</a> and <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">revisited a decade later</a></p>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-77510155814680087292020-09-18T15:10:00.003-04:002020-09-18T15:15:46.161-04:00Inside a Bold New Experiment in Public ImaginationThey say the future is unwritten. It’s also UNTITLED.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtPHBdcqhD2tcJ0eHDMGWfqcjL30tJ-ih0lDNYbJ6rrMuAP2KC5N0mEml-wPOV8xp_OTH9Ka-aP0V2_12gDLdrxzEXh3wROzhiL1ScxKHqor47qYTtO9_V3POaakRlyqcYGCTvvQ/s1030/Untitled-combinations-all-colours-2-e1597997164592-1030x949.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="949" data-original-width="1030" height="590" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtPHBdcqhD2tcJ0eHDMGWfqcjL30tJ-ih0lDNYbJ6rrMuAP2KC5N0mEml-wPOV8xp_OTH9Ka-aP0V2_12gDLdrxzEXh3wROzhiL1ScxKHqor47qYTtO9_V3POaakRlyqcYGCTvvQ/w640-h590/Untitled-combinations-all-colours-2-e1597997164592-1030x949.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>An exciting global initiative in support of public imagination kicks off this week with the launch of the festival <a href="https://untitled.community/about/" target="_blank">UNTITLED</a> (17 & 18 September 02020). It’s being staged online through the shared efforts of an <a href="https://untitled.community/alliance/" target="_blank">alliance</a> of activist and changemaking organisations from around the world, and coordinated by the Finnish nonprofit <a href="https://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/" target="_blank">Demos Helsinki</a>.<div><br /></div><div>This is the first in a series that’s planned to run each year through 02030. As one of the founding curators I have to admit that this is an unusually turbulent and in many ways inauspicious-seeming historical moment for attempting to get a visionary collective action off the ground. But as you might imagine, that’s part of the point.</div><div><br /></div><div>I ‘sat down’ virtually with one of the prime movers of UNTITLED, Demos Helsinki founder <a href="https://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/ihmiset/roope-mokka-2/" target="_blank">Roope Mokka</a>, to capture the story so far and take a snapshot of how things look on the eve of this ambitious event.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div><br /></div><div><b>SC: </b>Roope, we had an exchange a couple of years back about a project you were working on with a set of 1.5 degree climate lifestyle scenarios — and you were wondering how to ‘get experiential with foresight’. Things have changed a lot since then! Tell us the story behind this initiative — how did it come about, and what’s motivating it?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RM:</b> It really began with kind of an existential crisis in the think tank Demos Helsinki. To understand it one has to understand that we are an employee-governed organisation; we’re all ‘partners’, but we collectively own the organisation that employs us. What this means is that things such as impact are most valued, instead of growth of revenue, headcount, profit or other typical success goals for organisations that sell services.<br /><div><br /></div></div><div>A few years ago we came to see that, despite our ‘success’ (growing from 10 to 50 people, establishing international operations, and having ever-bigger strategic projects with ever-bigger governments, corporations and NGOs), we were still heading towards social and ecological collapse. Our impact measures were all going off the charts, but the world around us was falling apart.</div><div><br /></div><div>At the same time we had been working on a large-scale societal vision and narrative project together with the Finnish innovation fund, Sitra. This was a unique opportunity to drill into what is particular in our age and its relationship to the future. One thing emerged above all, and that was that we are living in a new era, or even <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Introduction_to_Antonio_Gramsci/irbPCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA69" target="_blank">between eras</a>, as Gramsci famously pointed out. Assumptions of the industrial era had proven false, and the post-industrial era had started everywhere but in the very structures that govern our life. The project came to be called <a href="https://www.sitra.fi/en/publications/rewiring-progress/#8-activities-to-support-a-new-type-of-progress">Next Era</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>So there was both organisational demand and a research basis for the need to reimagine the world around us. We decided that we had to set up a kind of platform where different organisations and people could come together and explore what the next society might look like. We also understood the need to go beyond projects, so we ended up initiating a ten year process. And this has to happen at a somewhat global scale, so that is part of what we are aiming for.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>SC: </b>Why the name UNTITLED?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RM:</b> As we are talking about the ‘post-’world (be it post-liberal, post-normal, post-truth, post-industrial, post-capital(ist), etc) we remain the prisoners of the thing we aim to leave behind. The ‘don’t think of an elephant’ of our age is ‘don’t think of a post-capitalist era’.</div><div><br /></div><div>Basically we lack images, names and ways to think about a world that has thoroughly transformed. We are more accustomed to betting on the future and competing in guessing what the future is, than doing the hard work of imagining and experimenting with what we imagine.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Untitled’ refers to the fact that we are incapable of naming and explaining what a world and human look like beyond all these ongoing transformations.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGyfmAoYn_GepEnAM7xNSLfzz3FaHnY3zz5IOg91buYcbQMNC0IBfGVZHf71X5zYX4hJY0BEH4wxk-HKxdtwaggiqhTjcn5Zg17y3xEVS_-rHgbWZ0s0_yE2AJISzY4BoD3aG0BQ/s1030/untitled-graphics-factory-template6-1030x579.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="579" data-original-width="1030" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGyfmAoYn_GepEnAM7xNSLfzz3FaHnY3zz5IOg91buYcbQMNC0IBfGVZHf71X5zYX4hJY0BEH4wxk-HKxdtwaggiqhTjcn5Zg17y3xEVS_-rHgbWZ0s0_yE2AJISzY4BoD3aG0BQ/w640-h360/untitled-graphics-factory-template6-1030x579.gif" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><b>SC: </b>This is one of the first large-scale experiments with a civically oriented public imagination or experiential futures program, and there’s sort of a theory of change built into it, isn’t there?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RM:</b> We did not have a theory to start with, more of a ‘burning platform’. Now we’re getting there. In a nutshell it is: Refusing to go back to normal, imagining the unimagined, and experimenting with things that matter.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our first assumption is that ‘transformation is one’; there are no separate sectoral transformations: post-capitalism — late capitalism — surveillance capitalism — crisis of capitalism––crisis of liberalism — decline of democracy — era of meritocratic autocracy — self-organisation — post truth — digital transformation — fourth industrial revolution — data economy — exponential technology — inner transformation — inner growth — awakening to holistic consciousness — deep adaptation — decarbonisation — climate crisis — post-fossil era — sixth wave of mass extinction — ecosystem collapse… these are all one. Or at least, they are only meaningful in relation to each other.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some of us may have a preferred theory, vision or ideology that explains what happens when we follow one trajectory: for example, after capitalism comes a data driven planning economy; after liberalism comes meritocratic autocracy, and so forth. But these are fundamentally flawed ways of looking at the future. What is meritocratic autocracy after the sixth wave of mass extinction? Nothing.</div><div><br /></div><div>If we start looking at these as one, we face a phenomenon of a different magnitude. Many old theories lose their ability to predict, as the premises of society, behaviour, economics and institutions change. From this two things follow: the fundamental categories disappear and new ones emerge. This has happened before; we speak casually about a nation, a worker, science, or money as if these have always existed.</div><div><br /></div><div>What we are experiencing right now changes the fundamentals of who we are as human beings. In some sense, the material, social, economic, and technological transformations are piling up to an ontological transformation; a transformation in what we humans are. Understood this way, we should focus on imagination / the unimaginable. The word ‘transformation’ hints that something that already exists takes a new form, but that is not the case in ontological transformations, where many entirely new things emerge.</div><div><br /></div><div>UNTITLED thus proposes a certain process of imagination and experimentation. It starts with refusing to go back to normal, continues with imagining the unimaginable, and leads to experimenting with others.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s a space for different imaginations, where people can build on each others’ imaginaries, and expand together their view of the untitled future.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeg6wCRbR0_CbpjHShXXQL8WW5oItsGW8cYFoavm9TT7YVbGldB5n5Iu2UuVINLyYTEzTqs3usjySnO12ab2a2iYlEpS_bpAA5Wx3dDQIakkRCQHFaEaN1Gd1awlm-HBmT87flYA/s1000/Untitled_Platform_Feb14-02-02_white.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="1000" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeg6wCRbR0_CbpjHShXXQL8WW5oItsGW8cYFoavm9TT7YVbGldB5n5Iu2UuVINLyYTEzTqs3usjySnO12ab2a2iYlEpS_bpAA5Wx3dDQIakkRCQHFaEaN1Gd1awlm-HBmT87flYA/w640-h376/Untitled_Platform_Feb14-02-02_white.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><b>SC: </b>I remember we started the planning conversations back in January, before any of us had even heard the name ‘covid-19’ — the novel coronavirus itself was still untitled! How did the event evolve with the pandemic?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RM:</b> This has been a helluva ride and it ain’t getting easier! Launching a global process that centers around a festival in 02020? We postponed the main event, lost some funders and members, and redesigned operations, from a 100% onsite festival with some online access, to a 100% online festival with a small site in Helsinki.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a way though, covid has helped: there is no need to convince people that there is no going back to normal and the need to reimagine the world around us.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>SC: </b>What other events, initiatives or institutions have provided inspiration?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RM:</b> We started by looking at the World Economic Forum and Burning Man in particular. WEF has got huge agenda power — it gives permission to the elites to speak about difficult issues such as climate change and economic injustice. Burning Man has a unique modus operandi, supporting a very large annual arts event in the Nevada desert, and seeding an array of local ‘burn’ events around the world, with only 80 or so employees.</div><div><br /></div><div>We also looked at different portfolio projects, from accelerators to governments’ strategic experiments. And of course, tons of participatory foresight and experiential events.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then we looked at founding meetings such as those of the Situationist International, the Club of Rome (which was apparently a horribly bad experience), the Mont Pelerin Society, and all kinds of stuff really! I think we all hate traditional conferences, summits and networking events, so that helped as well, in scoping something new.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>SC: </b>Give us an outline of the program for this first year. What do you think is most exciting about it?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RM:</b> We have some 400 participants, from 30 countries and 11 timezones; 60 sessions of arts, imagination, conversation and experimentation. Some really interesting experiments have been lined up, from ‘housing with income’ to ‘universal basic hope’.</div><div><br /></div><div>The program is entirely co-curated by the <a href="https://untitled.community/alliance/" target="_blank">founding alliance</a> and that is what makes it special. We share a vision but have many different perspectives on it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The festival starts on the (European) morning of Thursday September 17th with a set of conversations as well as art and imagination workshops. The same afternoon, we come together for the Ceremony for All, to elevate and open our minds. In the evening (that’s morning for Americas and beyond) we continue with conversations + art and imagination sessions. At the end of the day we gather to reflect on what we imagined.</div><div><br />On Friday 18th we focus especially on the practical side of imagination with experiment workshops where we plan and initiate real life experiments — this is the true crown jewel of UNTITLED, and something that we hope will develop to set it apart from other communities of imagination. That evening we gather again to close the festival and celebrate the start of the UNTITLED decade.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPAoyELTp7huL2YsuynYIoTv7CEFGazip5QiQWBbtz3O3vEPCfyRK4m73cGVEdpSW41btOeb2O3uOC2szy5Eb24wiZ9jHZZ4No-RsMlrGSFjzEZhNZzZF_-CuWGitQYJgEPANQHA/s1030/untitled-graphics-factory-template2-e1597932173155-579x1030_landscape.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="579" data-original-width="1030" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPAoyELTp7huL2YsuynYIoTv7CEFGazip5QiQWBbtz3O3vEPCfyRK4m73cGVEdpSW41btOeb2O3uOC2szy5Eb24wiZ9jHZZ4No-RsMlrGSFjzEZhNZzZF_-CuWGitQYJgEPANQHA/w640-h360/untitled-graphics-factory-template2-e1597932173155-579x1030_landscape.gif" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><b>SC: </b>Where would this be in 02030, if it unfolds as you hope?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RM:</b> Well in 02030 we have the last year of operation, and that means we should have gone through many phases. Most importantly we should have experimented with all important institutional forms that the new era requires. The world will not necessarily have completely changed as a result of this effort (like it did not change immediately after the Mont Pelerin meeting), but the basic principles of change are there. We should have also involved a reasonably large part of the world’s population in imagination and experimentation, otherwise we will fail for sure.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>SC: </b>So this is very much designed as an iterative experiment; what should we be looking to learn from the first iteration?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RM:</b> Now we are testing how this combination, the exploration of the ‘unimagined’ through arts and conversation, and the initiation of real life experiments, works together. That is the hardest part of what we are doing, I think.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s also an online festival. Luckily no-one knows what that means, so it’s not something that you can easily fail in!</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>Registration for UNTITLED 02020 has closed, but folks can explore the <a href="https://untitled.community/" target="_blank">website</a>, sign up for the <a href="https://untitled.community/newsletter/">mailing list</a>, follow <a href="https://twitter.com/imagineuntitled" target="_blank">@imagineuntitled</a> on Twitter, or attend one of the ongoing <a href="https://untitled.community/events/imaginary-society/" target="_blank">Untitled Imaginary Society</a> meetups, which are open to all. Futures permitting, the next edition of the festival will take place in June 02021.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks to Roope Mokka for this interview, and kudos to the entire team of organisers and participants for making the event possible.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXvuMO49gHE2SnVYbiMUEJwnPz_iK5T-VuhRFd4rzf0pncNldF3YXs6MF-4ARxcF7LdnFAeG-5nRuH4WxdHc7eCuRfNAtjjxb5RgsK55ls5mJhltaMFTM3mnSjKbnjjlwtJ89fXQ/s1030/golor_grid720-685x1030_landscape.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="1030" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXvuMO49gHE2SnVYbiMUEJwnPz_iK5T-VuhRFd4rzf0pncNldF3YXs6MF-4ARxcF7LdnFAeG-5nRuH4WxdHc7eCuRfNAtjjxb5RgsK55ls5mJhltaMFTM3mnSjKbnjjlwtJ89fXQ/w640-h426/golor_grid720-685x1030_landscape.gif" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><i>This post was previously published on <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/inside-a-bold-new-experiment-in-public-imagination-550a02f0b825" target="_blank">Medium</a>.</i></div><br /><div>Related:</div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-future-cant-wait.html" target="_blank">The Future Can’t Wait</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/04/us-earth-force.html" target="_blank">U.S. Earth Force</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/11/dreaming-together_81.html" target="_blank">Dreaming Together</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/04/foresight-is-right.html" target="_blank">Foresight is a Right</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/critical-activism.html" target="_blank">Critical Activism</a> (interview with Anab Jain)</div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/07/imagining-transitions.html" target="_blank">Imagining Transitions</a> (interview by Rob Hopkins)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/10/experiential-futures-brief-outline.html" target="_blank">Experiential Futures: A Brief Outline</a></div><div>> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2011/04/an-experiential-scenario-for-post.html" target="_blank">An Experiential Scenario for Post-Revolution Tunisia</a></div>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-70415144498113841422020-08-31T23:59:00.010-04:002020-09-01T10:58:57.768-04:00The Spirit and the Letter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKPeI2F95zTZidE0XMzq2Tb9sAOk7jWuMsAyXHY5sa_SnDW2RRaDgzkgDXk574AG0YUXOZMBtqJh2mOc78cC2MCiIKCA1LC4oVhBmHlpqjgehZxI9V8cULwPl8xzDzwDhbotTTxA/s2048/Screen+Shot+2020-09-01+at+2.11.11+AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1103" data-original-width="2048" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKPeI2F95zTZidE0XMzq2Tb9sAOk7jWuMsAyXHY5sa_SnDW2RRaDgzkgDXk574AG0YUXOZMBtqJh2mOc78cC2MCiIKCA1LC4oVhBmHlpqjgehZxI9V8cULwPl8xzDzwDhbotTTxA/w640-h345/Screen+Shot+2020-09-01+at+2.11.11+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>As the new school year gets underway I've been thinking about some of the reading that left an impression on me this summer. Tonight my mind goes to the collection <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18903999-dreaming-too-loud" target="_blank">Dreaming Too Loud</a></i> by the remarkable human rights barrister <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Robertson" target="_blank">Geoffrey Robertson</a>, who is known for representing, among others, Salman Rushdie, Julian Assange, the Aboriginal Tasmanian Centre, and A.S. Neill's Summerhill School. His other books include <i>Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice</i> and <i>Who Owns History? Elgin's Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure</i>. A man of uncommon moral clarity and a wickedly sharp turn of phrase, Robertson was once described as "the greatest living Australian" by the now much missed Christopher Hitchens.</p><p>I was in search of insight into the ingenious show that he used to host in the 1980s on Australian public television, <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6817274/" target="_blank">Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals</a> </i>(a cousin of the long-running <i><a href="http://www.fredfriendly.org/about/" target="_blank">Fred Friendly Seminars</a> </i>on PBS in the United States, and their roots are intertwined, as Robertson relates in his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38880922-rather-his-own-man" target="_blank">memoir</a>). This brilliantly improvised quasi-roleplaying-game format for supporting public imagination and debate could sometimes be controversial –– the hypothetical transcribed in the book comes from an episode dealing with the politics of media ownership in Australia, which apparently ruffled the wrong feathers, and disappeared without ever being broadcast –– but this is just one facet of a long and colourful career illuminated from many angles in <i>Dreaming Too Loud</i>.</p><p>Among the themes of Australian history and society running through in the book is the abysmal treatment of the country's first inhabitants and the need for legal redress: "Restorative justice requires some atonement to indigenous Australians."</p><p>I was born in Adelaide, South Australia –– <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaurna" target="_blank">Kaurna Country</a> –– although my family moved overseas when I was very young, and I have had too few opportunities to spend time there since, so my ignorance of the place is sadly extensive. Something I learned from this book is that the Letters Patent issued by the king of England in 01836 that founded South Australia, then the only state free of convicts in a country otherwise settled as a series of penal colonies, explicitly included the following condition:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>Provided always that nothing in these Letters Patent contained shall affect or be construed to affect the rights of any Aboriginal Natives of the said Province to the actual occupation or enjoyment in their own Persons or in the Persons of their Descendants of any Land therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such Natives.</p><p></p></blockquote><p>As Robertson points out, almost two hundred years of studied disregard for the letter and spirit of the law were to follow. But this fascinating legal timebomb from the early nineteenth century, a potential basis eventually for the kind of sudden paradigmatic shift that international legal scholars call a <a href="https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.jessup/ilsaqrtly0019&section=30" target="_blank">Grotian moment</a>, remained, like a cultural earthquake <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-people-who-vanished.html" target="_blank">waiting to happen</a>.</p><p>Introducing the article 'Give Adelaide Back', he notes:</p><blockquote><p>Adelaide may have been an act of theft, but, unlike most colonial acquisitions, it might one day be returned –– if lawyers in the future can work out how to enforce the patent as the king of England and his Whig ministers, back in 1836, intended. This would provide an example of how, in the law, time past is present in time future.</p></blockquote><p>Towards that end he ventures some legal formulations that might be helpful, including a 'Statute of Liberty', a counterpart to the United States Bill of Rights, which is something that the Australian Constitution has never included. Understandably this is a special point of interest and concern for a human rights lawyer. The proposed Preamble starts as follows:</p><blockquote><p>Whereas the people of Australia, united in one indissoluble Commonwealth, declare it the democratic duty of their parliaments and elected bodies and government officials to uphold, protect and advance their hard-won liberties, and being:</p><p><b>Humble</b> in acknowledging the first owners and occupiers of this unique continent, whose ancestors have walked about on its earth for many thousands of years before British settlement;</p><p><b>Sorrowful</b> for the dispossession, discrimination and degradation they have endured and</p><p><b>resolved</b> hereafter to respect their relationship with the land and to atone for past wrongs by future equity...</p></blockquote><p></p><p>This proposed document appears in full elsewhere in the same collection, but Robertson has previously published a whole <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11238477-the-statute-of-liberty" target="_blank">book</a> setting out the argument, too.</p><p>A provision on the Special Rights of Indigenous People is suggested as follows:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>Indigenous people have distinct cultural rights and must not be denied the right, with other members of their community:<br />i) to enjoy their identity and culture;<br />ii) to maintain and use their language;<br />iii) to maintain their kinship ties;<br />iv) to maintain spiritual and material relationships with the land and waters according to their customs of old.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Evaluating the specifics of these proposals is not my purpose here. What catches interest is their force and simplicity as prototypes of legal artifacts from the future –– we might say, time future crystallised in time present.</p><p>In the law words have a certain magic. They are used not merely to interpret but to map the very contours of the world. Among its affordances as a practice in our society, then, is the fact that if you can find the right words at the right moment, they can work like a spell. A skilfully woven thread tying past and present facts to tomorrow's legal logic can just about pull a future into existence. I don't know that this fully landed with me in law school –– and there's a bit more to it than that of course –– but after many years of working with all sorts of media and strategies to bring futures to life, I appreciate the potency and currency of words in the legal realm in a different way now.</p><p>I've also been tracking a long, slow loop through <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/10/experiential-futures-brief-outline.html" target="_blank">experiential futures</a> back towards where I began in the law, and the challenges and opportunities of synthesising the two. What radically different arrangements in systems of law and justice might lie on the other side of the racial justice reckoning that we're moving through in America and other settler societies at the moment? In different ways, two enormously inspiring books I've also read in the past couple of months have ushered my curiosity further in that direction; <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17465709-braiding-sweetgrass" target="_blank">Braiding Sweetgrass</a></i> by Robin Wall Kimmerer (thanks to my friend <a href="https://twitter.com/LrningInstigatr" target="_blank">Michelle King</a>) and <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20342617-just-mercy" target="_blank">Just Mercy</a></i> by Bryan Stevenson (thanks to <a href="https://www.vox.com/21327742/bryan-stevenson-the-ezra-klein-show-america-slavery-healing-racism-george-floyd-protests" target="_blank">The Ezra Klein Show</a>).</p><p>This reminds me –– a professor I recently met from the law school at the University of Pittsburgh, <a href="https://www.law.pitt.edu/people/tomar-pierson-brown" target="_blank">Tomar Pierson-Brown</a>, pointed me to a remarkable series of legal publications called <a href="https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1623&context=lawineq" target="_blank">Feminist Judgments</a> that started in the UK a decade ago and set a pattern since borrowed by writers in other common law jurisdictions. Each collection presents a set of historic legal judgments, "using only the precedent in effect and the facts known at the time of the original decision", critically reimagined and rewritten through a feminist lens. I love the depth and detail of this mode of engagement, the counterfactual hypothesising with teeth, the committed performance of principle with far greater groundedness than much of what passes for speculation in some other contexts.</p><p>And here again, the summoning of a power in legal writing to dream alternative directions, and not just tell but show the truth of that vital activist and futurist dictum: other worlds are possible.</p><p>Related:<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/04/foresight-is-right.html" target="_blank">Foresight is a Right</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/12/an-artifact-from-australias-future.html" target="_blank">An Artifact from Australia's Future</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2012/01/on-money.html" target="_blank">On the Money</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-people-who-vanished.html" target="_blank">The People Who Vanished</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/06/gaming-alternative-futures-anything.html" target="_blank">Anything But Text</a> <br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/12/journalism-from-future.html" target="_blank">Journalism from the Future</a><br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/06/syrian-refugee-girls-imagine-their.html" target="_blank">Syrian refugee girls reimagine their futures</a></p>Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-32667783925081072622020-07-31T15:14:00.001-04:002020-07-31T15:19:44.466-04:00Knowledge Base of Futures Studies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Just published this month is <i>The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies 2020</i>, the latest in an edited series collecting <a href="https://twitter.com/futurist_Ahines/status/1278341896293801989" target="_blank">key works in foresight over time</a>.<br />
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The <a href="https://foresightinternational.com.au/kbfs/" target="_blank">original version</a> of KBFS was released in 01996, the same year I first encountered the futures/foresight field; the most recent update came out in 02005, the year I went to study with Jim Dator at the University of Hawaii's <a href="https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/142-A01.pdf" target="_blank">'Manoa School' of futures</a>. So it's been a long while, and a huge amount has changed in the field over that period.<br />
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I'm excited to have two pieces in this collection, both coauthored with terrific colleagues –– <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kkornet/" target="_blank">Kelly Kornet</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-hayward-7576992/" target="_blank">Peter Hayward</a>. Both articles are adaptations of work previously published, and speak to aspects of how the field has evolved over the past decade and a half towards more participatory, playful, experiential and inclusive modes.<br />
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<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341763663" target="_blank">The Polak Game</a> (aka "Where Do You Stand?"), written with Peter, is about a classic workshop and classroom game in the futures field, which Hayward invented, inspired by the remarkable work of Dutch sociologist and proto-futurist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Polak" target="_blank">Fred Polak</a>. The game offers a user-friendly structure for facilitating far-reaching conversation among foresight students and clients, introducing "images of the future" as a basic property of both cultures and individuals, thus helping pave the way to more advanced tools and frameworks. It first appeared in 02017 as a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322144099" target="_blank">peer-reviewed article</a> in the Journal of Futures Studies (JFS).<br />
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<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341763596" target="_blank">Ethnographic Experiential Futures (EXF)</a>, written with Kelly, introduces a framework for hybrid design/futures research and practice that is all about making images of the future more legible and concrete, and seeing what one can learn from doing so. The piece sets out a practical structure and set of prompts for devising projects and interventions, with a view to promoting the availability of a more diverse and deeper array of scenarios for consideration, in all sorts of contexts, ultimately in service of developing a social capacity for foresight. It first appeared in 02019 as a peer-reviewed article, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331857932" target="_blank">Turning Foresight Inside Out</a>, in the JFS <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">special double issue on Design and Futures</a> co-edited with Cher Potter.<br />
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Fifteen years is a long time, and to be fair not all of the changes that the futures/foresight field has seen are (or could be) reflected in a selection which, as this version's co-editor Andy Hines <a href="https://www.andyhinesight.com/books/knowledge-base-of-futures-studies-2020-launches/" target="_blank">points out</a>, was subject to real constraints. But there are over 500 pages of material from contributors around the world, and I'm looking forward to digging in! Meanwhile the next edition, we might hope, will appear sooner rather than later, and will also seize the opportunity to push even further in surfacing the tremendous diversity of views and approaches to futures research, scholarship and practice from all corners of a burgeoning and multifaceted global conversation.<br />
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Well done to the three dozen contributing authors, and to editors <a href="https://foresightinternational.com.au/fi-info/" target="_blank">Richard Slaughter</a> and <a href="https://www.andyhinesight.com/about/" target="_blank">Andy Hines</a>, for this valuable contribution! While previous editions were sometimes hard to find, this new collection is electronically available directly from the publisher, the <a href="https://www.apf.org/store/viewproduct.aspx?ID=16603386" target="_blank">Association of Professional Futurists</a>.<br />
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Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/06/ethnographic-experiential-futures.html" target="_blank">Ethnographic Experiential Futures</a> / <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341763596" target="_blank">full-text pdf from KBFS 2020</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/12/where-do-you-stand.html" target="_blank">The Polak Game</a> / <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341763663" target="_blank">full-text pdf from KBFS 2020</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/12/design-and-futures-ebook-and-paperback.html">Design and Futures book release</a> / <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338129083" target="_blank">full-text pdf</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/04/transforming-future.html" target="_blank">Transforming the Future book release</a> / <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323696039" target="_blank">full-text pdf</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">Ghosts of futures past</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-history-of-experiential-futures.html" target="_blank">A History of Experiential Futures</a></div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-15989830715849795932020-06-30T22:33:00.000-04:002020-07-01T10:14:54.399-04:00When reality outruns imagination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I wrote this reflection a few months ago, just after the COVID-19 pandemic was recognised as such. Now posting here to make it easier to find.<br />
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A key purpose of futures practice is to invest thought in possible contingencies, so that when something unexpected suddenly happens you are better prepared.<br />
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COVID-19 is a vivid illustration of both the importance and the limits of foresight. Let me tell you a story.<br />
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This story is about how the first serious game funded by the CDC came about –– a near-future pandemic simulation, back in 02009 –– and how it was overtaken by real events. And what we learned from that.<br />
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In 02007, my colleague Jake Dunagan (now at Institute for the Future) and I were both grads in the futures program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In our work there, at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, we had already <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">designed and run immersive scenarios</a>, set in the year 02050, to engage lawmakers and public in the state’s sustainability planning process.<br />
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We then started experimenting with other approaches we hadn’t seen in futures work before, but that seemed worth exploring too. One thing we tried was doing physical installations and encounters in public to bring possible worlds to life, which we called <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/futuryst/guerrilla-futures" target="_blank">guerrilla futures</a>. It drew inspiration from some early interventions by The Yes Men, tactical media and culture jamming à la Adbusters, Brazilian forum theatre pioneer Augusto Boal, some then-recent alternate reality games, and also, well before any of the above, Situationist <i>détournement</i>.<br />
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We developed scenarios for our favourite neighbourhood, Honolulu’s Chinatown, through conversations with residents, and then collaboratively translated these futures into experiences in the streets.<br />
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One was about <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/mcchinatown.html" target="_blank">the cultural changes gentrification might bring to the area</a>.<br />
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Another explored <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/green-dragon.html" target="_blank">the potential meaning for Chinatown of China’s geopolitical rise</a>.<br />
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The last scenario was about <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/bird-cage.html" target="_blank">a deadly flu outbreak</a>. It came partly from our research into the history of the Chinatown district, which at the turn of the 20th century had been burned down after being struck by an epidemic of bubonic plague.<br />
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This experiential scenario was specifically designed to echo history, in order to help generate connection to and discussion about future possibilities. Outbreaks, like earthquakes, happen periodically. They can’t be completely avoided; only mitigated through effective anticipation, preparation and response.<br />
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The gentrification scenario landed our <a href="http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Oct/15/ln/hawaii710150349.html" target="_blank">guerrilla project</a>, FoundFutures: Chinatown, on the <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/267832297/" target="_blank">front page</a> of the state's daily newspaper. It seems we had staged it plausibly enough that some people briefly thought Starbucks, TGI Fridays, and overpriced luxury lofts were really moving in.<br />
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But it was the pandemic scenario that caught the attention of the Hawaii Department of Health (DOH). They came to us and asked how experiential futures might help prepare the population. We started exploring, and the DOH set about the slow process of seeking grant funding.<br />
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A year on, they had received a grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and still wanted to collaborate. By then, late 2008, I was working as a Game Master on <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/08/humans-have-23-years-to-go.html" target="_blank">Superstruct</a>, “the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game,” an online social platform staged by IFTF and designed by Jane McGonigal, Jamais Cascio, and Kathi Vian. Superstruct was seriously groundbreaking, engaging thousands of players internationally in imagining themselves a decade later –– “real play rather than role play” –– telling stories collaboratively to extend humanity’s survival horizon in-world.<br />
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Especially with this successful alternate reality game (ARG) as a newly-minted reference point, the health department loved our pitch: an online pandemic flu ARG with added real-world discovery vectors on the ground in Hawaii; future artifacts installed in public places to boost awareness, participation, and ultimately, resilience.<br />
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The core design team set to work –– me, Matthew Jensen, and Nathan Verrill, with Jake Dunagan helping out as permitted by his new full-time job at IFTF –– and we quickly identified the overarching storytelling challenge at hand; one set to make or break the whole project: How could we help our audience with no living memory of a precedent, most anyone under 45, to connect viscerally to what it feels like to live through a pandemic? By this point, early in 02009, there had not been one in more than 40 years –– the 'Hong Kong Flu,' in 01968.<br />
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We constructed our in-game scenario around a hypothetical, peer-to-peer, Hawaii-based disaster response org called <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/04/coral-cross-is-coming.html" target="_blank">Coral Cross</a>, which had been founded, in our telling, after a devastating hurricane hit the islands in 02011. This part was sort of modelled against the real example of Hurricane Katrina (02005), to help people connect to the stakes. But it posited a constructive, emergent use of social media –– still very new in 02009. We basically planned to have people roleplay online within that frame.<br />
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We also had to produce near-future media assets to put on the diegetic (in-world) Coral Cross website. These would be aimed at helping players grasp the strangeness, and seriousness, of being able to catch a deadly disease from a doorknob. The hypothetical pandemic was inherently challenging to us, too, because of course we hadn’t had that experience either.<br />
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So one day in April 02009, I'm at the East West Center directing a film shoot for the project: a press conference set in 02012, three years into the future, where the Hawaiian Governor’s office announces the WHO declaration of a fully-blown, level 5 pandemic of this imaginary in-game disease.<br />
<br />
In the midst of filming, a text message appears on my phone from Matthew, then working from Chicago. One word: “Oink.” Plus a link to an obscure report about an emerging swine flu strain apparently showing up in Mexico and California.<br />
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Everyone agreed this was a very strange coincidence.<br />
<br />
The disease spread. Within days it had graduated to the front pages of newspapers all over the world.<br />
<br />
And the major push we had put in to making this unfamiliar experience of a pandemic more imaginable was instantly made redundant by reality.<br />
<br />
For me and the project team, this was just about the most bizarre and unexpected conceivable turn. An elaborately constructed "what if" that we had spent months plotting out, unprecedented in the past 40 years, was now being outstripped by events in real time.<br />
<br />
I was reeling.<br />
<br />
We were still some weeks out from launch, and quickly realised: our plans, this project, absolutely had to change.<br />
<br />
We contacted our clients at the health department, who at first tried to reassure us it would be fine to stay the course. We politely insisted otherwise. Fortunately, soon enough everyone was on the same page: it would not be responsible, or even make sense, to run a live social online game about an imaginary pandemic against the backdrop of an actual one.<br />
<br />
We had to move quickly. What’s the only thing that can spread faster than a virus? Information.<br />
<br />
Our elaborate hypotheticals went out the window. “Alternate reality game” morphed into “<a href="http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2009/May/24/ln/hawaii905240381.html" target="_blank">emergent reality game</a>.” While still a playable pandemic preparedness campaign, we were now racing a real disease, H1N1 swine flu. The new plan: harness unfolding events to fuel engagement. We rebooted the whole effort to have it revolve directly around helping players learn how to avoid getting sick and spreading illness.<br />
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The new Coral Cross launched some weeks later. Players everywhere registered, earned “vigilance” for engaging the medical quiz content we had prepared with expert CDC guidance, and shared their views on the delicate, serious ethical dilemmas around allocating an eventual vaccine.<br />
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H1N1 marched on. However, it was gradually becoming clear that, thankfully, mortality rates were well below those feared at first.<br />
<br />
This welcome news had a dark underside. Concern was activated, only to be followed by an experience for many no different than a regular flu season. The medical establishment, in good faith, had cried wolf, and the wolf duly arrived! –– technically it was a pandemic –– but instead of a terrifying monster, this toothless creature had limped into town. We were left wondering: was the net effect maybe in fact <i>less</i> preparedness?<br />
<br />
Hawaii DOH and the CDC were awesome to work with. They were also incredibly happy with the project as, we were told, their first experiment with a "serious game". Many players showed impressive, genuine, heartening engagement.<br />
<br />
And yet.<br />
<br />
As you know, last week the WHO <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51839944" target="_blank">declared</a> COVID-19 a pandemic. Not influenza, of course, but for our purposes, a similar enough breed of fiasco. I’ve been flashing back to Coral Cross the past few weeks, and I’ve been asked about the project and its lessons.<br />
<br />
First, making Coral Cross was I think the first time I’d personally learned or thought much about the catastrophic 01918 Spanish Flu, as well as the best practices for avoiding sickness, etc. A decade ago, sneezing into cupped hands was still pretty standard polite practice.<br />
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Second, it is a genuinely humbling, quite surreal, and deeply ironic experience to have a well-meaning initiative that is all about thinking ahead and resilience get blown out of the water while it is diligently being set up. As ever, “The best laid schemes of mice and men…”<br />
<br />
But I think the main lesson is this: Pandemic preparedness is not a one-shot proposition. Neither, for that matter, is community resilience. Nor is the capacity for foresight more broadly. These things require habit. Collectively, they are cultural. Society critically needs an ongoing, collective, plural, high quality forward view.<br />
<br />
I look at it in terms of <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/04/three-dimensions-of-foresight.html" target="_blank">three dimensions</a>: difference, diversity, and depth. We must address not just the <i>difference</i> of a single (however currently-likely-seeming) scenario, though that's as far as many folks go. We also need a <i>diversity</i> of alternative futures, constantly updated. And <i>depth</i>, reckoning with what these entail as lived experiences.<br />
<br />
Granted, this is a tall order. But it is also what over half a century of futures/foresight practice and education are all about. Our community is worldwide, not just in one particular place, culture, or department. Many hands have helped to develop, hone and share these skills. (Note: not everyone with "futurist" in their bio necessarily knows about the field, history, methods, etc) If new to you, let me invite you to explore.<br />
<br />
To be clear: current urgencies need urgent attention. In addition: we need to cultivate wiser, more farsighted and systemically-literate habits of mind, as individuals, as organisations, and yes, as whole societies; a distributed capacity that some of us call social foresight.<br />
<br />
I know it can be done at those smaller scales, because I've spent more than a decade and a half doing it. Meanwhile, what we must do collectively is increasingly clear. Whether we will step up is currently an open question.<br />
<br />
“History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.”<br />
–– Kurt Vonnegut, <i>Slapstick</i><br />
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<br />
(Originally shared on <a href="https://twitter.com/futuryst/status/1240323430886621185" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, then <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-reality-outruns-imagination-stuart-candy/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.)<br />
<br />
Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2020/04/three-dimensions-of-foresight.html" target="_blank">Three Dimensions of Foresight</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">Hawaii 02050: Ghosts of futures past</a><br />
<div>
> <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/futuryst/guerrilla-futures" target="_blank">Guerrilla Futures</a> (slide deck)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/bird-cage.html" target="_blank">Foundfutures Chinatown: The Bird Cage</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/08/humans-have-23-years-to-go.html" target="_blank">Superstruct</a></div>
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/04/coral-cross-is-coming.html" target="_blank">Coral Cross is coming</a> / <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/07/coral-cross-concludes.html" target="_blank">Coral Cross concludes</a> <br />
> <a href="https://boingboing.net/2009/05/21/coral-cross-arg-abou.html" target="_blank">Boing Boing post from back when this happened</a></div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-25811926838268208982020-05-31T22:46:00.002-04:002020-06-01T13:43:51.524-04:00The Future Can't Wait<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12.48px;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/world/australia/fires-red-skies-Mallacoota.html" target="_blank">Photo</a> by Matthew Abbott for the New York Times</span></div>
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<i>I wrote this piece in the first week of January. It appears in the just-published Summer 2020 edition of </i>Design Journal<i> from the Smithsonian Design Museum, Cooper Hewitt, in New York. It’s hard to believe how long ago the start of this year feels, and how quaint my obliviousness, stuck in amber, to the string of crises that have unfolded since — the COVID-19 pandemic, oil market chaos, historic levels of unemployment, and in the past week, demonstrations across the United States. Our context has shifted again and again, but I think the argument is reinforced by all this change.</i><br />
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***</div>
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<b>Eden is burning.</b><br />
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A small coastal town in Australia has become a household name in the past twenty-four hours, besieged by raging bushfires colouring land and sky a surreal martian red, and causing residents to flee for the ocean, the safest refuge in a world aflame.<br />
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Today, under unprecedented emergency orders from the Prime Minister, the navy arrives to help with evacuation. The fires in Eden and dozens of other places have already torn through an area the size of Switzerland.<br />
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This is all a few hundred miles northeast of where my wife and I, both Australian, are on our annual pilgrimage back from the United States. Right now our family group is standing on the deck of another navy vessel, a World War II minesweeper, long ago decommissioned and turned into a small maritime museum. Normally the backdrop would be a spectacular Melbourne skyline. Instead we see a grey curtain that looks like fog, but isn't. The smell of smoke is unmistakeable. The ongoing catastrophe is at once bodily present and utterly remote from our pleasant after-lunch walk.<br />
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A museum guide leads us to the crew quarters, pointing out a framed black-and-white photo of grinning sailors crammed into this space. I try to picture daily life during the war: dozens of servicemen eating, arguing, and playing Mahjong endlessly, spending their nights in hammocks strung from the low ceiling. The central purpose of the exhibit is of course to help visitors connect to this earlier time - but even standing here, surrounded by historical paraphernalia and listening to stories from our knowledgeable guide, one struggles to imagine the lived everyday reality of a vanished era.<br />
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As with the present-day experience of others, especially in circumstances very different or distant from our own, so too when it comes to history. Considering it from afar is one thing; really comprehending it is another.<br />
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Thinking about the future confronts this same problem, intensified. No one knows exactly what the future holds, so unlike the past or present we have no direct evidence to compare with what is in our minds.<br />
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Yet the collective task of properly engaging alternatives is among the most important we face. Fortunately we now have more effective ways to do it than ever before.<br />
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<br />
Prompted by the Second World War and the Cold War that followed, a pragmatic set of approaches for navigating large-scale change and uncertainty has arisen over the past few generations. The near-unthinkable stakes of nuclear conflict forced governments to develop big-picture "what if" scenarios, and investigate how they might influence events toward preferred futures, and away from nonpreferred ones.<br />
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In the 01970s, oil companies and other organisations started exploring the advantages of an institutional capacity to think ahead. Parallel to these developments in the corridors of power, a more grassroots and humanistic tradition of futures workshops and education was also emerging, studying the "images of the future" held by individuals and groups, and how to understand, critique, and create them.<br />
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"Future" singular became "futures" plural. A new transdisciplinary field was born, known variously as strategic foresight, futures studies, or simply "futures." Now, paying intellectual attention to possible futures is a positive step, but it does not in itself guarantee an appropriate impact on present-day decisions. The bushfires blazing in southeastern Australia are a case in point. They have captured global attention as a kind of postnatural disaster: something long foreseen, and shaped directly and indirectly by collective choices, but for years not taken seriously in a political sense. This long-fuse, seemingly far-fetched scenario, well outside of anyone's lived experience, has now burst forth and is wreaking havoc in real time.<br />
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How then can we connect to possible, probable, and preferred futures viscerally, such that they feel real enough to make a difference, now? This vital question has become a focus for a community of practice building on foresight's foundation. At conferences and festivals, in classrooms and city streets, we are learning and using whatever it takes to bring futures to life, from physical artifacts, photo illustrations, and videos to online games and simulations, street art, guerrilla interventions, immersive theatre, and live-action roleplaying. In recent years in the design world, speculative design and design fiction (an analogue to science fiction, but oriented to physical rather than literary creations) have surged to prominence.<br />
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This whole array of strategies is called <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/introduction-to-experiential-futures-in.html" target="_blank">experiential futures</a>. If one wants to bring potential realities to life, and have them register with the body and make a dent in current choices, then all experiences that help achieve that are part of this design space. They can be used to explore any question or topic, bring any world to life. Here are a few examples of projects we've done on the themes at hand:<br />
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For the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341785055" target="_blank">International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies</a> biennial strategy meetings, future artifacts dramatised a potentially changed landscape of humanitarian need. What if displaced coastal populations began to mobilise politically, across culture and language barriers, around their common plight?<br />
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For the <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/u-s-earth-force-58a2c1576d35" target="_blank">World Bank's Climate Investment Funds, and Institute for the Future</a>, we imagined far-reaching changes in the US federal response, creating a future advertising campaign around it. What if, in the late 02020s, climate inaction gave way to large-scale military mobilisation? Strange echoes now of the deployments just announced in Australia.<br />
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For the <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">Hawaiian state legislature</a>, to support public engagement with a sustainability planning process, we placed hundreds of policymakers and constituents in a quartet of parallel immersive scenarios for the islands, set in 02050. In one room, governance had been restructured around precolonial values and traditions; in another was a naturalisation ceremony for climate refugees. And so on.<br />
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These are not predictions, but "what ifs" in four dimensions, aimed at improving the quality, accessibility, and impact of futures conversation. Miscellaneous approaches are coalescing into a systematic set of ways for humans to play productively with possibilities, and ranging beyond the standard technological questions by bringing life to often neglected social, cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions.<br />
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Becoming common practice brings the opportunity for deep impact. As well as spending time in the imaginary worlds of comic book heroes, for instance, we might spend time in potential future realities. We might debate and decide less on the basis of ideology and slogans, and more on the basis of collectively explored pathways and policies designed to shape them.<br />
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The museum has emerged as an indispensable platform for helping these developments along. If you haven't already encountered a major hybrid design/futures exhibition, at an institution like the Museum of Modern Art, New York, or the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, chances are you soon will. New facilities - essentially cultural institutions of foresight - like the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, the ArtScience Museum in Singapore, MOD in Adelaide, and the Museum of the Future under construction in Dubai, have lately been established to let visitors encounter what could come to be, as much as what has been.<br />
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Museums have always enabled the cultures they are embedded in to remember what matters; but memory and imagination are two sides of one coin. In a volatile era, we need all the help we can get to bring both into currency. What of the past should we hold on to - but also, how might things be otherwise, in better and wiser times to come, and what role can we each play in finding our way there? The rise of experiential futures is fueled by cultural need, and though the need is different everywhere it shows up, it shows up everywhere.<br />
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An important societal transition is just getting underway. Collections of speculative future artifacts are a promising start, but wider horizons of experiential futures - immersive, generative, participatory, and large-scale - remain to be explored, growing the collective capacity for foresight through our cultural institutions.<br />
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Today, Eden is burning. As the smoke clears, this moment will pass from headlines into history, a newly minted past to learn from to the best of our ability. Already apparent among its lessons to take to heart is our urgent need to get much better at thinking and feeling through what might lie ahead, too.<br />
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The good news is: we can.<br />
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***</div>
<br />
<i>A full-text PDF of the article can be downloaded <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341734711_The_Future_Can't_Wait" target="_blank">here</a>. This </i>Design Journal <i>issue also includes contributions from climate and science writer Tatiana Schlossberg, </i><i>Native Renewables </i><i>executive director </i><i>Wahleah Johns, and a</i><i>tmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, and it can be found in its entirety <a href="https://www.cooperhewitt.org/publications/design-journal-summer-2020/" target="_blank">here</a>. My thanks to Pamela Horn for the invitation to contribute.</i><br />
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<i>Update 01june20: Top image changed and introductory note added to mirror the post on <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/the-future-cant-wait-8527cc47610d" target="_blank">Medium</a>.</i><br />
<br />
Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/always-tomorrow-now.html" target="_blank">Always Tomorrow Now</a>, an interview with the Curator of the Museum of Tomorrow, Brazil<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/introduction-to-experiential-futures-in.html" target="_blank">Experiential futures in <i>The Economist</i></a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">Ghosts of Futures Past</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/10/experiential-futures-brief-outline.html" target="_blank">Experiential Futures: A Brief Outline</a><br />
> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341785055" target="_blank">Integrating Foresight at the World’s Largest Humanitarian Organisation</a>, a forthcoming piece on experiential futures at the international Red Cross/Red Crescent; this project was also discussed in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DWGiHi4Yj4" target="_blank">recent interview for IFTF's Foresight Talks</a> (video)</div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-74821396892051634072020-04-23T10:44:00.002-04:002021-10-13T20:43:04.398-04:00Three Dimensions of Foresight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As the covid-19 crisis unfolds, many of us are looking to an extravagantly uncertain future with anxiety, as well as a new appreciation and appetite for whatever brings confidence and clarity to prospection.<br />
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How might concerned citizens engage in more effective futures thinking and storytelling?<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="373" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/GYRXa84ScVMnol" style="border-width: 1px; border: 1px solid #ccc; margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%;" width="595"> </iframe> <br />
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<a href="http://www.digitalstorytellinglab.com/" target="_blank">Columbia University's Digital Storytelling Lab</a> (DSL), led by a veteran experimental storyteller, my friend <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Weiler" target="_blank">Lance Weiler</a>, has responded to the pandemic by offering ingenious, collaborative, and free opportunities for hundreds of folks in quarantine and isolation all around the world to come together, imagine alternative futures, and manifest them through co-created digital story artifacts.<br />
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The project is called <a href="https://www.fromthefutures.org/" target="_blank">From the Futures</a>. With this effort, Lance, Columbia DSL and team are tending a welcome oasis of collective creativity for our moment.<br />
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They invited me to help kick things off with an introduction to a framework related to the <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/10/experiential-futures-brief-outline.html" target="_blank">experiential futures</a> space that the project inhabits and plots out. The <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/futuryst/three-dimensions-of-foresight" target="_blank">slides</a> embedded above distil that talk, "Three Dimensions of Foresight".<br />
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The three dimensions can be seen as corresponding to various manoeuvres or methods in the futures repertoire that typically require quite a bit of practice to master. But even for those trying experiential futures for the first time (which would include many From the Futures participants), they can also be mobilised right away via a series of practical moves towards storytelling more <i>different</i>, <i>deep</i>, and <i>diverse </i>than it might otherwise be:<br />
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• <i>Difference</i> : let us seek seeds of change in the present that could be really transformative if they were to grow.<br />
• <i>Depth</i> : let us try to not just think, but also feel, our way into these imagined conditions by devising specific future artifacts and diverse media to bring the imagined possibilities to life as if they came to pass.<br />
• <i>Diversity</i> : let us operate generally in terms of plural futureS, but even if constructing a single scenario or possibility for a particular project, find what is fresh and uncommon for the ecology of thinkable and feelable futures, since a new story may be dramatically more valuable than yet another telling of one that we have already heard many times before.<br />
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The framework has its origins in my <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2010/06/futures-of-everyday-life.html" target="_blank">doctoral project on experiential futures</a>. There I ventured an arguments about the need to build on, and systematically range beyond, the most common practices and methods of previous generations of futurists. I wanted to show that foresight practitioners could and should embrace a range of "experiential" (a deliberately big umbrella) approaches, in pursuit of the requisite realism and resonance to affect how we think and what we do in the present. Often this would mean seeking and evoking <i>depth;</i> making a future's details and implications available and graspable –– tangibly, sensorially, viscerally –– in ways usually lacking from the even most carefully researched, well written horizon scans or scenarios. This approach includes an assumption or acknowledgement that things at later points in time are bound to be as real, complex, and full of contradictions as the present. We should strive then to get "under the skin" of the futures we face, and engage them not in the abstract as intellectual constructs, but through evocative concrete experiences, as potential realities in waiting.<br />
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In this connection I wrote about the need for a "mundane turn" in futures practice (<i><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378" target="_blank">The Futures of Everyday Life</a></i>, 02010, pp. 89–94), by analogy with an important shift of orientation that had already taken place decades earlier in cultural history, tying this quest for modest but evocative fragments, details and textures of worlds to come, to design and discussion in the present of artifacts or experiences that might exist in those futures (hence the phrase "futures of everyday life"). Among other contributors, Nick Foster's perceptive essay <a href="https://www.core77.com/posts/25678/the-future-mundane-25678" target="_blank">The Future Mundane</a>, and Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby's influential book <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/speculative-everything" target="_blank">Speculative Everything</a> (both 02013) carried these sorts of ideas further among design audiences. It has been satisfying to see <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">the spread of futures-curious, design-led practices</a> like design fiction and speculative design summoning new explorers and fellow travellers to this terrain.<br />
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The three dimensional lenses on futures practice came into sharper focus soon after the dissertation work, and they helped frame our first run of the Strategic Foresight course in the Design Strategy MBA program at California College of the Arts (02010). That course is outlined <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305724413" target="_blank">here</a>. Since then, and refined thanks to audiences and student groups over the years, 3D foresight has become one of the main ways I introduce futures to newcomers.<br />
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For those who might like a more methodologically detailed overview of 3D foresight, with additional examples, I recently gave a lecture across campus at Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction Institute, <a href="https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=a0e5f7f6-15f1-47a4-b382-aacd01160a16" target="_blank">How to think about the future</a>.<br />
<br />
Our <a href="https://vimeo.com/406248377" target="_blank">video of the talk to From the Futures participants (via Zoom)</a> has already been shared, and Lance's written accounts of the initiative so far can be found in the posts <a href="https://medium.com/columbia-dsl/designing-for-immersion-within-zoom-a20b09480732" target="_blank">Designing for immersion in Zoom</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/columbia-dsl/from-the-futures-experiments-in-collaborative-art-collective-wayfinding-in-a-time-of-ambiguity-54e85ec4978c" target="_blank">From the Futures: experiments in collaborative art and collective wayfinding in a time of ambiguity</a>.<br />
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A wonderful sense of the swarming, emergent, hive-mind creativity that this process has helped to unleash, and to guide, is captured visually in <a href="https://vimeo.com/406515165" target="_blank">the timelapse below</a>. If interested in receiving updates or taking part yourself, head <a href="https://www.fromthefutures.org/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="335" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/406515165?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="595"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2010/06/futures-of-everyday-life.html" target="_blank">The Futures of Everyday Life</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2011/07/strategic-foresight-and-design-mba.html" target="_blank">About the first Strategic Foresight course at CCA</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305724413" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/10/experiential-futures-brief-outline.html" target="_blank">A Brief Outline of Experiential Futures</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design for the Next Context</a> (Closing Keynote at 02010 AIGA Conference)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-experiential-turn.html" target="_blank">The Experiential Turn</a> (with Jake Dunagan)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-getting-started-in-experiential.html" target="_blank">On Getting Started in Experiential Futures</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is Storytelling</a></div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-66925925749921486582020-04-22T17:59:00.001-04:002022-11-16T10:33:23.707-05:00U.S. Earth Force<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Introducing the sixth branch of the American military, founded in 02029.<br />
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What happens when the world's richest and most powerful country puts its full weight behind efforts to address climate disruption?<br />
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Earth Force is neither a prediction nor a preference, but a possibility, a way of asking how climate action might look if addressed seriously at a federal level.<br />
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A belated response to the crisis, when it comes, could be all the more pronounced; making up for lost time.<br />
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To date the United States has waged war on various things including poverty, drugs, and terror. A range of responses and a mix of feelings may arise about the idea of adding global warming to the list.<br />
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Making space to sort through these responses, and their implications, is a reason to consider such possibilities in advance.</div>
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Grand as some of our collective challenges and actions might be, they will also play out in the most ordinary of contexts.<br />
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If this really happened, it would show up in all sorts of encounters in everyday life: at airports, sporting events, shopping malls, and school campuses. It would leave visible and tangible traces across all media, from cinemas to recruitment stations, news reports, and social feeds.<br />
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The medium of billboard advertising may be mundane, but the kinds of questions it can pose are momentous.<br />
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With well over half a trillion dollars spent each year on American military capability, what is the possible scope and impact of climate action at such a scale?<br />
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How might the militarisation of governance proceed once systemic issues like this start to be approached seriously on a whole-of-society basis?<br />
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When and in what ways will military culture adapt to engage with an unprecedentedly diverse and globally-minded wave of younger citizens, the “March for Our Lives” values of Generation Z?<br />
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<br />
I took all these photos of billboard sites within minutes by foot or bicycle of our house in Pittsburgh.<br />
<br />
The idea was to explore some potential macro-changes of historic significance by crafting a number of local, micro-glimpses of what that reality might entail on the ground.<br />
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I also wanted to look at some of the tensions between national-scale and planetary-scale affinities, logics, and symbols.<br />
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The project speaks to the notion of <i>duty</i> in at least two different registers.<br />
<br />
Our duty to the future is to rectify the catastrophic, systematic errors that we have known for some time are causing global warming.<br />
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Our duty to ourselves is to widen the horizons of imagination, debate, and action today.<br />
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<br />
A word of background: this experiential scenario was supported by Institute for the Future (IFTF) and the World Bank's Climate Investment Funds (CIF), as part of a project also involving a number of other commissioned artists working in various media, called Artists Imagining the Future of Climate Action. At IFTF's invitation, I pitched the concept in April 02018.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This story is about activating and amplifying the latent and hugely significant potential of a wildly well-resourced aspect of American governance and infrastructure. In our scenario, the U.S. Earth Force is established in the mid 2020s (alongside the existing Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard), with a view to gradually reducing and supplanting the need for conflict-based military forces by prioritizing global climate security. In terms of the RFP, this experiential scenario tells a ‘White Mirror’ story. It is a story about owning up to the most inconvenient of truths, and starting to turn the ship around.</blockquote>
As my research and thought process went along, the specific media, future artifacts and communications strategy for extruding the scenario morphed a bit, and the diegetic timeline pushed out to after the 02028 election. The central concept stayed the same. (Incidentally, a couple of months after getting the green light from IFTF, I began hearing about President Trump's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/us/politics/trump-space-force-sixth-military-branch.html" target="_blank">plan to create a Space Force</a>. Not that it matters particularly, but this project was not conceived or intended as a response to that idea.)<br />
<br />
The resulting set of billboard images of the U.S. Earth Force recruitment campaign was completed in September 02018. A few weeks later, the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/" target="_blank">IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C</a> was released, decisively shifting the public conversation and ushering in over the following year a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_climate_strikes" target="_blank">new phase</a> of the climate movement that made Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/21/extinction-rebellion-london-protesters-offer-pause-climate-action" target="_blank">household names</a>. More recently, the covid-19 pandemic has of course <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/covid-19-climate-change/" target="_blank">altered the footing for climate action</a> yet again.<br />
<br />
This project was initially under wraps, to give its sponsors a chance to share the commissioned artworks first.<br />
<br />
As the world marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, I'm sharing <i>U.S. Earth Force</i> with some hope that it may help in a modest way to enrich our collective capacity to imagine and initiate vital climate action in this decade.<br />
<br />
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***</div>
<br />
<i>Many thanks to branding consultant Devika Khowala and compositing consultant Matthew McGehee. For help with field visits and early design explorations, thanks to research assistants Helen Hu and Cathryn Ploehn from CMU Situation Lab. Special thanks for scenario and research advice to <a href="http://www.michaeldila.com/" target="_blank">Michael Dila</a>, <a href="https://soif.org.uk/speakers/rosemarie-forsythe/" target="_blank">Rosemarie Forsythe</a>, <a href="https://www.berggruen.org/people/nils-gilman/" target="_blank">Nils Gilman</a>, <a href="https://skoll.org/contributor/karen-grattan/" target="_blank">Karen Grattan</a> and <a href="http://www.alexsteffen.com/about" target="_blank">Alex Steffen</a>. Finally, gratitude to all at IFTF and World Bank CIF for vital support in the creation of this project.</i><br />
<br />
<i>This post was also published on <a href="https://medium.com/@futuryst/u-s-earth-force-58a2c1576d35" target="_blank">Medium</a>.</i><br />
<br />
Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/04/foresight-is-right.html" target="_blank">Foresight is a right</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">Ghosts of futures past</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-of-regret.html" target="_blank">A climate of regret</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/03/politicians-discussing-global-warming.html" target="_blank">Politicians discussing global warming</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/02/participatory-cli-fi-making-of.html" target="_blank">Participatory cli-fi</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/02/mapping-c-change.html" target="_blank">Mapping c-change</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/critical-activism.html" target="_blank">Critical activism</a></div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-68932605060661380622020-03-31T23:55:00.000-04:002020-03-31T23:58:09.755-04:0021st century divination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WgZcrZ1KnfM" width="560"></iframe></div>
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This video was shot right after a workshop, devised and run with experimental philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathon_Keats" target="_blank">Jonathon Keats</a>, called <b>New Divination Techniques for Generating Alternative Futures</b>.<br />
<br />
It was part of a large collective effort mounted by the international futures community late last year at UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation).<br />
<br />
The Global Futures Literacy Design Forum took place at the organisation's headquarters in Paris and consisted of more than two dozen "learning-by-doing labs" curated, organised and facilitated by top futures researchers, teachers and practitioners from Oxford to Jamaica.<br />
<br />
The event was open to the public –– I'm not sure of the final number of attendees, but some 600 folks registered –– and was explicitly <a href="https://en.unesco.org/events/global-futures-literacy-design-forum" target="_blank">aimed</a> at demonstrating, celebrating, and extending futures literacy humanity’s capacity to imagine and use the future(s) in all sorts of contexts, for all sorts of purposes.<br />
<br />
I was also involved in another session; <b>Imagination and Creativity: Gaming the Future of Migration and Climate Change</b> together with my fellow futurists John Sweeney (Qazaq Research Institute for Futures Studies), Anisah Abdullah (Strathclyde Business School), and Daniel Riveong (Futures Centre).<br />
<br />
Thanks to the head of futures literacy at UNESCO, Riel Miller, I've collaborated with the organisation several times before, and I was excited when he approached me last year about the Forum.<br />
<br />
Its key objectives were institutional on the one hand and disciplinary on the other: "One is to prepare the ground for a UNESCO Ministerial Summit on Futures Literacy in late 2020 by showcasing and refining a range of already proven techniques for integrating Futures Literacy into government activities. Two is to build awareness and networking related to the development and diffusion of Futures Literacy."<br />
<br />
Here's the description of the our workshop on 21st century divination techniques that appeared in the event catalogue:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
One of the greatest human foibles is our ability to find patterns in just about anything, imagining that random phenomena carry meaning. Might that trait, technically known as apophenia, also be one of our greatest gifts? In this experimental workshop – prototyped especially for this occasion by conceptual artist Jonathon Keats and experiential futurist Stuart Candy – participants are invited to re-visit ancient modes of divination and also to devise some new ones. Simultaneously playing with and against tradition, our aim will not be convergence and prediction, but to generate new and diverse possibilities for action by collectively exploring and exploiting some of our most powerful psychological quirks.</blockquote>
<br />
A note of personal context here: legitimate futures/foresight practice is at times <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/08/barbershop-futures.html" target="_blank">misunderstood</a> as or unfairly conflated with a kind of charlatanry. I've generally aimed to avoid adding any fuel to that fire by eschewing anything that smacks of soothsaying –– tarot, tasseomancy, astrology, and so on (well... except for this one time at Burning Man, when I agreed to play the Oracle... but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCEbPhbmbQY" target="_blank">that's another story</a>).<br />
<br />
The low level of futures literacy in the population at large often finds people projecting trope-riddled preconceptions and prejudices about what a futurist's job entails, and particularly assumptions revolving around a misplaced obsession with prediction, and it's already challenging enough getting people to engage seriously in thinking about possible futures without playing into their most unflattering assumptions.<br />
<br />
However, I recognise that it's also possible to protest too much, and get trapped by personal policies that can become too rigid. So when Jonathon, a superb conceptual artist, experimental philosopher and writer whose work I've admired for years, proposed a collaboration around exploring the possibilities for 21st century divinatory practices, the spirit of his curiosity –– avoiding wild-eyed faith on one side or blanket disapproval on the other –– got me interested. I took a step towards getting over a long-ingrained aversion. As he pointed out to me in one of our pre-event design conversations, the air of suspicion, and even demonisation, that attaches to these practices in post-enlightenment Western culture might usefully be taken as a cue not to avoid, but to be curious about, what we're collectively avoiding or denying.<br />
<br />
Jonathon and I are currently working to bring the process to other participants in other locations, so I won't say too much here in terms of workshop detail, but I think it's worth adding, as COVID-19 spreads around the world, that even those of us who have spent decades helping to prepare organisations for inevitable surprises, are challenged to reckon with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-reality-outruns-imagination-stuart-candy/" target="_blank">the question of how effective, or otherwise, our efforts have been</a>.<br />
<br />
It seems about time for a dramatic, collective rethink of how we engage with future possibilities.<br />
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<br />
The full catalogue of UNESCO's Global Futures Literacy Design Forum is available in <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000372250" target="_blank">English</a> and in <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000372250_fre" target="_blank">French</a>, and a range of additional videos describing other programs at the event can be found <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWuYED1WVJINPMuig2yJntpzMBCfkWHOw" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/08/barbershop-futures.html" target="_blank">Barbershop Futures</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/04/transforming-future.html" target="_blank">Transforming the Future</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/11/la-chose-du-futur-paris.html" target="_blank">La Chose du Futur à Paris</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/12/where-do-you-stand.html" target="_blank">Where Do You Stand?</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/11/using-future-at-nasa.html" target="_blank">Using the Future at NASA</a><br />
> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-reality-outruns-imagination-stuart-candy/" target="_blank">When Reality Outruns Imagination</a> (Coral Cross)<br />
> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCEbPhbmbQY" target="_blank">On Playing the Oracle</a>: Foresight 101 at TEDx (video)</div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-62691902610078756132019-12-29T06:38:00.000-05:002019-12-29T06:38:28.339-05:00Design and Futures ebook and paperback release<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
Good news, everyone! The <i>Journal of Futures Studies</i> special double issue on Design and Futures, appearing in back to back editions earlier this year, has just been re-released by JFS publishers Tamkang University Press (Taiwan) as a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338129083_Design_and_Futures" target="_blank">single-volume book</a>.<br />
<br />
The omnibus <i>Design and Futures</i> collects all 30 essays, manifestos, interviews and peer-reviewed articles from 49 contributors across 16 countries, preserving the content, layout and pagination of the original double issue.<br />
<br />
There are pieces by <i>Minority Report</i> production designer Alex McDowell, Museum of Modern Art design curator Paola Antonelli, <i>Hyperobjects</i> author Timothy Morton, Superflux principal Anab Jain, NASA JPL visual strategist David Delgado, the Decolonising Design Collective, <i>Service Innovation Handbook</i> author Lucy Kimbell, <i>Design as Politics</i> author Tony Fry, and many more.<br />
<br />
Towards enabling the widest possible access and helping move the practice and scholarship forward, <i>Design and Futures</i> is available both as a free ebook, and in paperback with no price markup.<br />
<br />
Here's the complete table of contents.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>DESIGN AND FUTURES, Volume I</b></div>
<br />
<b>Editors’ Introduction (Vol. I)</b><br />
Stuart CANDY (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) and Cher POTTER (University of the Arts London; Victoria and Albert Museum, UK)<br />
<br />
<b><i>ARTICLES</i></b><br />
<br />
<b>Turning Foresight Inside Out:
An Introduction to Ethnographic Experiential Futures</b><br />
Stuart CANDY (CMU, USA) and Kelly KORNET (Kalypso, Canada)<br />
<br />
<b>Politics of Designing Visions of the Future</b><br />
Ramia MAZÉ (Aalto University, Finland)<br />
<br />
<b>Crafting Spaces Between Design and Futures:
The Case of the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform</b><br />
Cher POTTER (UAL; V&A Museum, UK), DK OSSEO-ASARE (Pennsylvania State University, USA), and Mugendi K. M’RITHAA (Independent Designer-Researcher, Kenya)<br />
<br />
<b>Strategic Foresight Studio:
A First-Hand Account of an Experiential Futures Course</b><br />
Jake DUNAGAN (Institute for the Future, USA), Alida DRAUDT (Strategic Foresight Partners LLC, USA), JJ HADLEY (Slalom, USA), Ryan HOGAN (Mozilla, USA),
Leticia MURRAY (Gensler, USA), Gregory STOCK (Firefly, USA), and Julia Rose WEST (Ancestry, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>Designing Futures From the Inside</b><br />
Anne BURDICK (Art Center College of Design, USA; University of Technology Sydney, Australia)<br />
<br />
<b><i>ESSAYS AND INTERVIEWS</i></b><br />
<br />
<b>How the Future Happens</b><br />
James AUGER and Julian HANNA (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Portugal)<br />
<br />
<b>Critical Activism</b><br />
Anab JAIN (Superflux, UK; University of Applied Arts, Austria) and Stuart Candy (CMU, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>Storytelling Shapes the Future</b><br />
Alex MCDOWELL (University of Southern California, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>I Design Worlds</b><br />
Liam YOUNG (SCI-Arc, USA) and Stuart CANDY (CMU, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>Anticipating Future System States</b><br />
Jamer HUNT (The New School, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>A Manifesto for Decolonising Design</b><br />
Decolonising Design Collective: Danah ABDULLA (Brunel University, UK), Ahmed ANSARI (CMU, USA),
Ece CANLI (Independent Scholar, Portugal), Mahmoud KESHAVARZ (Uppsala University, Sweden), Matthew KIEM (Independent Scholar, Australia), Pedro OLIVEIRA (Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Germany),
Luiza PRADO (MeetFactory, Czech Republic), and Tristan SCHULTZ (Griffith University, Australia)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>DESIGN AND FUTURES, Volume II</b></div>
<br />
<b>Editors’ Introduction (Vol. II)</b><br />
Stuart CANDY (CMU, USA) and Cher POTTER (UAL; V&A Museum, UK)<br />
<br />
<b><i>ARTICLES</i></b><br />
<br />
<b>Destinations for Polyamorous Futures and Their MAD Lovers</b><br />
Maya VAN LEEMPUT (Erasmus University College, Belgium)<br />
<br />
<b>Worldbuilding in Science Fiction, Foresight and Design</b><br />
Leah ZAIDI (Independent Scholar, Canada)<br />
<br />
<b>SPACECRAFT: A Southern Interventionist Art Project</b><br />
Ralph BORLAND (Independent Artist and Curator, South Africa)<br />
<br />
<b>Are We (Really) Designing Futures?
The Design of Tomorrow Program at CENTRO</b><br />
Karla PANIAGUA (CENTRO Advanced Design Institute, Mexico)<br />
<br />
<b>A Futures-Design-Process Model for Participatory Futures</b><br />
Stefanie A. OLLENBURG (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)<br />
<br />
<b>Imagining 2060:
A Cross-Cultural Comparison of University Students’ Perspectives</b><br />
Jeanne HOFFMAN (Tamkang University, Taiwan)<br />
<br />
<b>Transforming Environmental Values for a Younger Generation in Taiwan: A Participatory Action Approach to Curriculum Design</b><br />
Kuo-Hua CHEN (Tamkang University, Taiwan)<br />
<br />
<b><i>ESSAYS AND INTERVIEWS</i></b><br />
<br />
<b>You Never Know How the Past Will Turn Out</b><br />
Timothy MORTON (Rice University, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>Design in the Future</b><br />
Paola ANTONELLI (Museum of Modern Art, USA) and Cher POTTER (UAL; V&A Museum, UK)<br />
<br />
<b>Making Things Physical</b><br />
Maja KUZMANOVIC (FoAM, Belgium), Tina AUER (Time’s Up, Austria), Nik Gaffney (FoAM, Belgium), and Tim BOYKETT (Time’s Up, Austria)<br />
<br />
<b>Napkin Futures: Fragments of Future Worlds</b><br />
Nik BAERTEN (Pantopicon, Belgium)<br />
<br />
<b>Change the Model</b><br />
Dan HILL (Vinnova, Sweden) and Stuart CANDY (CMU, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>What If There Were More Policy Futures Studios?</b><br />
Lucy KIMBELL (UAL, UK)<br />
<br />
<b>Your Move: Lessons Learned at the Interstices of Design, Gaming, and Futures</b><br />
Aaron ROSA (Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Germany) and John A. SWEENEY (Narxoz University, Kazakhstan)<br />
<br />
<b>Using the Future at NASA</b><br />
David DELGADO (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA) and Stuart CANDY (CMU, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>Post-Island Futures: Designing for Uncertainty in a Changing Climate</b><br />
Lizzie YARINA (MIT Urban Risk Lab, USA)<br />
<br />
<b>Starting at the End: A Journey in Time</b><br />
Tony FRY (University of Tasmania, Australia)<br />
<br />
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***</div>
<br />
We're thrilled at the interest the project has attracted and delighted that the hard work of our writers has been finding an audience around the world.<br />
<br />
If you'd like a single searchable-text pdf file for your reference, or a hard copy of this remarkable collection on your bookshelf...<br />
<br />
• <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338129083_Design_and_Futures" target="_blank">Free downloadable pdf of <i>Design and Futures</i></a><br />
• Paperback at cost <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Design-Futures-Stuart-Candy/dp/1709990082/" target="_blank">from amazon.com</a> / <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1709990082" target="_blank">.ca</a> / <a href="https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/1709990082" target="_blank">.co.jp</a> / <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1709990082">.co.uk</a> / <a href="https://www.amazon.de/dp/1709990082" target="_blank">.de</a> / <a href="https://www.amazon.es/dp/1709990082" target="_blank">.es</a> / <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/dp/1709990082" target="_blank">.fr</a> / <a href="https://www.amazon.it/dp/1709990082" target="_blank">.it</a><br />
<br />
Please read, share and enjoy!<br />
<br />
Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures: Intro to Vol. I</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333386701_Introduction_to_the_special_issue_Design_and_futures_Vol_I" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-music-of-community-emerging.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures: Intro to Vol. II</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334307538_Introduction_to_the_Special_Issue_Design_and_Futures_Vol_II" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/11/using-future-at-nasa.html" target="_blank">Using the Future at NASA: An Interview with David Delgado</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334307616_Using_the_Future_at_NASA" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/critical-activism.html" target="_blank">Critical Activism: An Interview with Anab Jain</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332831663_Critical_Activism" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/i-design-worlds.html" target="_blank">I Design Worlds: An Interview with Liam Young</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332831666_I_Design_Worlds" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334307716_Change_the_Model" target="_blank">Change the Model: An Interview with Dan Hill (pdf)</a></div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-40570429105620642542019-11-30T18:53:00.000-05:002019-11-30T19:14:21.486-05:00Using the Future at NASA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ0Ukr3jtqnHsZqJrtBJeFPFOQbUpw6NIrFkiLsZmebgH8xevIZx3JHi_9Lj6E5LIkm-m0mQR3JZJ5Xyw2pC3Cjx3ZfD-QExUJjAjxFViPajPbke7SUaNBUPci42gGEQWYLwmghQ/s1600/kepler16b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="865" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ0Ukr3jtqnHsZqJrtBJeFPFOQbUpw6NIrFkiLsZmebgH8xevIZx3JHi_9Lj6E5LIkm-m0mQR3JZJ5Xyw2pC3Cjx3ZfD-QExUJjAjxFViPajPbke7SUaNBUPci42gGEQWYLwmghQ/s640/kepler16b.jpg" width="442" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">A <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/682/space-tourism-posters/" target="_blank">poster from the future</a> by The Studio, NASA JPL's visual strategy team</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.davidjdelgado.com/" target="_blank">David Delgado</a> is a Visual Strategist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (<a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/" target="_blank">NASA JPL</a>), a U.S. federal research and development centre in Pasadena, California. Along with his longtime collaborator Dan Goods, we met last year at a symposium in Berlin geared towards exploring exhibition concepts for Dubai's Museum of the Future (which is currently under construction).<br />
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A conversation we began there has carried on since, including several site visits to JPL, around how experiential futures and worldbuilding can serve internally- and externally-facing communications alike, as well as both short- and long-term needs; spanning organisational culture and morale as well as imagination, strategy, and mission formulation.<br />
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David and his colleagues at NASA offer an inspiring and mind-expanding example of using experiential futures / design fiction in a space of simultaneous fantasy and real-world exploration; shaping our own now, and maybe someday, others too.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> Tell me about JPL’s series of posters from the future of space travel.<br />
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<b>DD:</b> A while back, a famous scientist was planning on coming to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and so the Exoplanet Exploration Office asked us to do something to celebrate the diversity of planets that were being discovered. There are thousands of them, and they have all kinds of crazy characteristics that are super interesting. Some rain molten glass, some have two suns, some are considered diamond planets, some are just big gassy giants. Naturally, we wondered what it would be like to go there, and we thought travel posters would be a fun way to showcase different planetary characteristics. So we went to the 1930s, ‘40s style of illustrated travel poster, and met with scientists to make sure that each one was based on a scientific foundation. But at the same time we wanted it to be joyful. We also wanted to kind of plant that seed: Maybe we can really go to these places.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> So where did this idea come from? There’s been a lot of activity at the intersection of design and futures over the last decade.<br />
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<b>DD:</b> Yeah! We sort of fell in love with the idea of imagining these futures, and we made the first few posters. And then Dan Goods and I spoke at the AIGA Conference, and after speaking we were killing some time, and went and saw this crazy futurist –– you, Stuart –– talking about this sort of experiential futures campaign to raise people’s attention. And there was also this cone of possibilities diagram that you showed on the screen, which really helped to crystallise the idea for us, and gave us a way to talk about it strategically and show other people. We may be at the very tip of that cone right now, and going to these future worlds is somewhere farther out in that flurry of many different dots, but the whole notion is to continue doing things that will get us closer to that. How we get there, we don’t know, but we know that we need to keep on progressing. And so it was really a catalyst to the way that we thought.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> That’s great to hear!<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">A cone of possibilities. Diagram and discussion in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378" target="_blank">The Futures of Everyday Life</a></span></div>
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<b>DD:</b> And then, apparently, everybody liked it. There were 1,200,000 downloads in one week when we first released the whole set. It was kind of nuts.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> Amazing. And the details of the posters were based on the state of the science, what is known about these different planets.<br />
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<b>DD:</b> That’s right, and we focused on one special thing about each faraway planet, following the model of the original travel posters themselves. You’re going to be in a forest, or the desert. We allowed people’s imaginations to grow from there.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> How did it come about?
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<b>DD:</b> It was internal. The design brief was to decorate a hallway –– that’s where these came from, the request to decorate a hallway.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> [laughs] I love that. Instead, you ended up decorating a million hallways.<br />
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<b>DD:</b> Right! What’s cool is that it grew organically. We had three posters, meant for internal use, and everybody started liking it, and the director of JPL fell in love with it. The director was on vacation at the Grand Canyon, and sent an email saying, “Look at this calendar – let’s do one for the posters!” We went from having three to doing another nine very quickly.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> So then you did stickers?<br />
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<b>DD:</b> Yes. The posters happened, then we had a change of director of JPL, and a huge workload going on at the time. There was a request for us to give a gift to the Laboratory itself, to all of the JPLers. It was kind of an effort to raise morale; at least, that was our approach.<br />
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Given that a lot of people are working super hard on really amazing projects, we looked at each of those projects and imagined: what could this lead to? So we decided to create these stickers for clubs and societies from the future that you could join when interplanetary travel is possible, but representing what’s currently being worked on.<br />
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Each person at JPL got four sets of twelve different designs, like a swag pack that they could hand out to their friends and family, and that would give them a way to tell the story about what JPL is doing, and feel proud about their own work and contribution.<br />
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Strategically, the clubs are storytelling devices. At JPL you’ll see people put the stickers all over their computer, or people driving around with just an E, for Earth, like the European bumper stickers. When you’re travelling throughout the solar system, you need to represent where you’re from! It’s all done with a wink and a smile.<br />
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There’s the Secret Order of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.<br />
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There’s a big push to identify near-Earth asteroids and make sure that Earth stays safe from impact, so we created the Asteroid Patrol.<br />
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One was inspired by the 40th anniversary of the Golden Record, so we created the Proud to be Human Club. The Golden Record and Pioneer had all these things about Earth, so we merged them together. There’s a lot of reasons to be proud to be human, and let’s just celebrate that for a second.<br />
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Enceladus is a moon of Saturn. It’s also an ice covered planet that shoots out geysers of water. And so since it’s covered in ice, we have the Enceladus Hockey League.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">Designs from the project <a href="http://www.davidjdelgado.com/new-index#/clubs-for-the-modern-explorer/" target="_blank">Clubs for the Modern Explorer</a>, an internal gift from the JPL Director to Lab employees; images courtesy of David Delgado</span></div>
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<b>SC:</b> These are great.<br />
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<b>DD:</b> We had to think about Earth in a different perspective too, as our original home, that we will always consider the first place. It’s this mothership that we are coming and going from; a Buckminster Fuller-inspired, “Spaceship Earth” idea.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> I bet they were a hit.<br />
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<b>DD:</b> Yeah, they were a huge hit. Everybody loved them<br />
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<b>SC:</b> So the clubs and associations thing actually came out of having done some worldbuilding already, and going, “Well, if this existed, then so would these...”<br />
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<b>DD:</b> Right. It came from one of the posters, actually, about Titan, a moon of Saturn. One of the great things about Titan is there’s these big seas of hydrocarbons –– think of like, liquid nitrogen, but it’s liquid methane. So the design was this beautiful image of the seas with Saturn in the background. This part never made it into the poster, but we were kind of imagining what the boat rental place would be, and the logo for it –– and that started us thinking, maybe we could look at logos as a device to communicate something. If that exists, travelling around between planets, what are some cool clubs that you could join in that world?<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">A space tourism poster from the <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/682/space-tourism-posters/" target="_blank">series produced at NASA JPL</a></span></div>
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<b>SC:</b> That’s really interesting. So how would you describe the use of experiential scenarios or design fiction at JPL, what has it done for you?<br />
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<b>DD:</b> Well, for one thing it took the conversation out of the present, and allowed people’s imaginations to become involved, thinking about not only what kinds of things are happening now, but where they may lead in the future.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> That doesn’t happen regularly?<br />
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<b>DD:</b> It does happen regularly, but it’s usually positioned within the focus of creating new missions. It’s strategic in a different way.<br />
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The reason we really gravitated towards it is because it allowed us to create a motivational tool. For people at JPL it sort of reinforced the reason they started working there in the first place: they want to do something big, contribute to humanity, be at the cutting edge. Using the future to help motivate people became a powerful way to communicate internally. If you’re part of space exploration, you are part of a group building this continuous series of steps that will lead to something very special.<br />
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I think once the poster downloads happened, we realised that it was much bigger than communicating internally. There is this shared public dream of being up in space –– it has been in science fiction for a very long time –– but these places are real. These designs brought them one step closer, gave them more power.<br />
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It was this whole experiment in understanding the value of using the future as a tool for the imagination.<br />
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This piece was published earlier in the year as an article in the Journal of Futures Studies special issue on <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-music-of-community-emerging.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures, Volume II</a>. It can be downloaded here (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334307616" target="_blank">pdf</a>).<br />
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Thanks again Dave, and fellow travellers at JPL!<br />
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Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures Volume I</a> & <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-music-of-community-emerging.html" target="_blank">Volume II</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-getting-started-in-experiential.html" target="_blank">On getting started in experiential futures</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-school-of-worldbuilding.html" target="_blank">The School of Worldbuilding</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327235291_The_School_of_Worldbuilding" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/i-design-worlds.html" target="_blank">I Design Worlds</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332831666_I_Design_Worlds" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/critical-activism.html" target="_blank">Critical Activism</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332831663_Critical_Activism" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is Storytelling</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/04/transforming-future.html" target="_blank">Gaming Futures Literacy</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855_Gaming_futures_literacy_The_Thing_From_The_Future" target="_blank">pdf</a>)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2010/06/futures-of-everyday-life.html" target="_blank">The Futures of Everyday Life</a> (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378_The_Futures_of_Everyday_Life_Politics_and_the_Design_of_Experiential_Scenarios" target="_blank">pdf</a>)</div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-936430741452021932019-10-21T14:08:00.000-04:002019-10-22T21:11:33.295-04:00Augmenting Cities<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">Augmenting Cities image <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/nianticweb-media/nianticlabs/augmentingcities.pdf" target="_blank">via</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">Niantic CEO John Hanke opens the event | <a href="https://nianticlabs.com/augmentingcities" target="_blank">Photo</a>: Niantic / Knight Foundation</span></div>
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We were excited to take part in an invitational symposium a few weeks ago, <a href="https://nianticlabs.com/augmentingcities/" target="_blank">Augmenting Cities</a>, that brought together under one roof 150 game designers, artists and urbanists from a number of countries "to reflect on how people, cities, and technology will evolve and be shaped through augmented reality (AR)".<br />
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The gathering was convened by groundbreaking AR games company <a href="https://nianticlabs.com/" target="_blank">Niantic</a> –– the folks behind <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Go" target="_blank">Pokémon Go</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game)" target="_blank">Ingress</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter:_Wizards_Unite" target="_blank">Harry Potter: Wizards Unite</a> –– together with the <a href="https://knightfoundation.org/" target="_blank">Knight Foundation</a>, a leading urban philanthropic fund. It was hosted at the Oakland Museum of California, itself part of a city that has recently seen rapid and far-reaching transformation through the Bay Area's latest tech boom.<br />
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As the <a href="https://nianticlabs.com/augmentingcities" target="_blank">event description</a> notes, "Just as mobile communication and computing has altered the evolution of cities over the last 20 years, AR technology stands to fundamentally change how we connect with each other and experience communities for decades to come." But what might that fundamental change look like?<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">USC Situation Lab director Jeff Watson (centre) speaks on a panel with (left to right): Ina Fried (Axios; moderator), Gene Becker (Samsung), Ross Finman (Niantic), Ilana Lipsett (IFTF), and Kevin Slavin (The Shed) | Photo: Stuart Candy / Situation Lab</span></div>
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So on the back of two days of presentations and panel discussions by game and experience design luminaries, including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2013/jul/14/felix-barrett-punchdrunk-theatre-stage" target="_blank">Felix Barrett</a> (founder of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punchdrunk_(theatre_company)" target="_blank">Punchdrunk</a>), <a href="http://sarahbrin.com/" target="_blank">Sarah Brin</a> (<a href="https://meowwolf.com/" target="_blank">Meow Wolf</a> strategic partnerships director), audio artist <a href="https://duncanspeakman.net/" target="_blank">Duncan Speakman</a>, game designer <a href="https://www.katiesalen.me/about" target="_blank">Katie Salen</a> (UC Irvine), and Niantic founder <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hanke" target="_blank">John Hanke</a> –– as well as our own <a href="https://remotedevice.net/" target="_blank">Jeff Watson</a> (director of USC Situation Lab) and Sitlab collaborator <a href="https://www.watershed.co.uk/studio/residents/jen-stein" target="_blank">Jen Stein</a> (creative lead at Experimental Design) –– we were asked to devise and run the culminating session, an afternoon's activity for all participants to explore possible futures in this area.<br />
<br />
Our mission was to come up with a hands-on, playful, and collaborative intervention that would help develop not only deeper social connections among attendees, but also potentially actionable initiatives in this fast-changing urban AR design space. With around 150 participants and only two hours to get through generating, refining, selecting, and sharing out concepts, it was a worthy challenge.<br />
<br />
I led process design and facilitation with a fantastic team made up of Stein, Watson, and CMU Situation Lab associate <a href="https://helloceda.com/" target="_blank">Ceda Verbakel</a>. We realised that thanks to the venue's particular layout and the number of attendees, players would have to take these co-creative steps at the same time while sited in different locations. This helped to birth, at last, a project that had been gestating for some time; a self-contained facilitation kit.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">Participant teams proceed through the Urban Playshop staged by Situation Lab at the Augmenting Cities symposium | <a href="https://nianticlabs.com/augmentingcities" target="_blank">Photo</a>: Niantic / Knight Foundation</span></div>
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<a href="https://nianticlabs.com/blog/augmenting-cities-recap/" style="font-size: 78%;" target="_blank">Photo</a><span style="font-size: 78%;">: Niantic / Knight Foundation</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 78%;"><a href="https://nianticlabs.com/blog/augmenting-cities-recap/" target="_blank">Photo</a>: Niantic / Knight Foundation</span></div>
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In teams of three or four players, future-artifact ideas were incepted using combinatorial prompts from a modified version of our game <a href="http://situationlab.org/project/the-thing-from-the-future/" target="_blank">The Thing From The Future</a>, with ideation rounds timeboxed at 3–5 minutes. This first phase allowed folks to explore in relatively open fashion to start with, and produced a wide variety of imaginative responses. In the second phase, each team selected two of their most promising ideas from the collection that they had generated together, surfacing some of their most thematically relevant concepts and provocations. They then partnered up with another team, to receive feedback and discover which of the two candidate concepts should be developed, in the third and home stretch of the Playshop, into a pitch or advertisement to share live on stage with everyone in the last session of the conference.<br />
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We at Situation Lab don't always have the time to write our projects up for sharing more widely, although we have featured at our website some of the <a href="https://situationlab.org/gameplay-variations-for-the-thing-from-the-future/" target="_blank">gameplay approaches and variations</a> developed over several years, and we continually partner with groups around the world, with a focus on values-aligned initiatives and organisations, to offer customised processes that scaffold rigorous imagination, co-creative exploration, and strategic conversation.<br />
<br />
Last year for instance, we ran sessions or whole events in this design space with, to name a few, the Omidyar Group, Pennsylvania's Department of Education, Alaska's Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Mexico City's Laboratorio para la Ciudad, the Association of Professional Futurists, and Institute for the Future (IFTF) with the World Bank Climate Investment Funds. In 02019 so far, Sitlab has collaborated with, among others, the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Stanford d.school, the Obama Foundation, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the brand-new Pittsburgh high school City of Bridges, and (in collaboration with IFTF's Governance Futures Lab) United States Conference of Mayors gatherings in Austin and Honolulu.<br />
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This post is prompted by a desire to share a bit more of what we've been doing, and more particularly by the terrific energy generated in this initiative. For more information on Augmenting Cities check out the event <a href="https://nianticlabs.com/augmentingcities" target="_blank">webpage</a>, <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/nianticweb-media/nianticlabs/augmentingcities.pdf" target="_blank">overview</a> (pdf), and <a href="https://nianticlabs.com/blog/augmenting-cities-recap/" target="_blank">recap</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.48px;">Participants devise and share ideas using a specially adapted version of The Thing From The Future | Photo: Stuart Candy / Situation Lab</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">Photo: Stuart Candy / Situation Lab</span></div>
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Many thanks to our fantastic Playshop participants, to our awesome facilitation team, and to Niantic and Knight Foundation for spearheading the initiative.<br />
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We look forward to further developments in this exciting and fast-moving area, and find it hopeful that processes like these –– supporting rigorous imagining in emerging design spaces, as they are being explored and mapped –– are rapidly finding their way into many organisational and community toolkits, to help new ideas and their implications come into focus.<br />
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<i>(Report also posted at <a href="http://situationlab.org/augmenting-cities/" target="_blank">Situation Lab</a> website. This version updated 22oct19.)</i><br />
<br />
Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/bringing-futures-to-stanford-d-school.html" target="_blank">Bringing Futures to Stanford d.school</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/11/on-foresight-in-organisations.html" target="_blank">On Foresight in Organisations</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-getting-started-in-experiential.html" target="_blank">On Getting Started in Experiential Futures</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-thing-from-future.html" target="_blank">The Thing From The Future</a> / <a href="http://situationlab.org/project/the-thing-from-the-future/" target="_blank">Sitlab project page</a><br />
> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855_Gaming_futures_literacy_The_Thing_From_The_Future" target="_blank">Gaming Futures Literacy</a> (article)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/04/transforming-future.html" target="_blank">Transforming the Future</a> (book)</div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-54441681892206101072019-10-10T15:46:00.003-04:002019-10-11T13:56:24.497-04:00Teaching The Long Now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">Photo: <a href="https://blog.longnow.org/02013/06/19/long-now-salon-funding-update/" target="_blank">The Long Now Foundation</a></span></div>
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I've been involved with The Long Now Foundation, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility, since 02006. Then a year into grad school for futures, I spent a memorable summer at the office in San Francisco, working on various initiatives including <a href="http://longbets.org/" target="_blank">Long Bets</a>, as well as a proposal put together with my friend Camron Assadi for something we called Long Shorts; short films about long-term thinking (an idea subsequently adopted at the Foundation as a way of introducing many of its monthly public lectures). I suggested what has since become a Long Now motto, <i>Carpe Millennium</i>. And at the end of that first stint, executive director Alexander Rose invited me to become the Foundation's first Fellow, an association that continued happily over two more summer residencies, and onward through almost a decade and a half to date, spanning many developments in the organisation and its projects, and periodic collaborations.<br />
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As it turns out though, this semester, Fall 02019, marks the first chance I've had, after more than ten years of teaching futures, to put together a class on the topic of long-term thinking more broadly. How does it work in different domains? How can we render it accessible and useful? What difference does or should it make to designers? While just a prototype seven-week 'mini', a half-semester course at Carnegie Mellon School of Design, the topic has sparked lots of interest among folks I've discussed it with, so for this post I'm sharing our syllabus (shorn of admin and school policy bits and with links added where possible), in case others may get something out of it.<br />
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A few points of context:<br />
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• This is my personal and maybe idiosyncratic take on things, rather than an official Long Now Foundation course, but I've made use of some of the rich material the organisation has amassed over the years. For example, we've been using Stewart Brand's version of 'pace layers' (see the diagram below) as a structuring and sequencing heuristic for the curriculum, starting at the longest and slowest register of nature, with a deep time walk spanning the 4.5 billion years of Earth's history, and proceeding upward through the layers of culture, governance and infrastructure, so that by the end we're dealing with the kinds of faster-moving concerns the students are accustomed to thinking about day to day: a lot of design seems to operate on a rapid temporality somewhere near the top. The idea behind this order is to use that exposure to the longer-term early on, to help de-familiarise the familiar short-term, and re-perceive the mundane everyday, by the end.<br />
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• I call the classes 'episodes' and the segments within them 'acts', a format idea borrowed from the brilliant long-running public radio series <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/" target="_blank">This American Life</a>. Signposting classes this way turns out to make the time easier to plan and pace out, and more legible to students and guests, while also adding a dash of theatricality to typically prosaic matters of course structure and lesson planning. We kick off each episode punctually with a selected 'long short', an intellectual and creative appetiser of sorts, and also partly an encouragement to people to arrive on time, which is helpful when you're scheduled for an 8:30am start in the fall, with days getting shorter and mornings colder. Each week's long short is a surprise beforehand and is added into the syllabus afterwards for reference.<br />
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• A monthly series of <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/" target="_blank">seminars about long-term thinking (SALT)</a>, curated by Brand, has been running since 02003. By this point, the SALT talks represent a large collection of thought-provoking explorations; hundreds of lectures, freely available online, dealing with topics from linguistics and politics to space travel, philosophy and geology. At the start of the course I asked each participant to pick one to add to the syllabus. This touch of curricular co-creation helped tilt the content towards their interests, better than my guesses would, and incorporated deeper involvement by having them run a discussion or activity around their chosen talk. (We have the good fortune in this case to have an intimate class size of eight students, mostly grads, from across the university; some elements would be set up quite differently if the group were much larger.) In case you haven't come across the SALT series before, you might start with the same one that our class did; geologist Marcia Bjornerud's remarkable talk from July this year, <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02019/jul/22/timefulness/" target="_blank">Timefulness</a>.<br />
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<b>The Long Now</b><br />
<b><i>Thinking, Storytelling and Designing with Long Timespans</i></b><br />
<br />
School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University<br />
Instructor: Stuart Candy, Ph.D. (he/him)<br />
Fall 02019 // Fridays 8:30–11:20am<br />
Course no. 51819 // Graduate level // 6 units // Aug 30–Oct 11<br />
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<b>Description</b><br />
<br />
“Civilizations with long nows look after things better. In those places you feel a very strong but flexible structure which is built to absorb shocks and in fact incorporate them.” –– Brian Eno<br />
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The Long Now is about what becomes possible when we engage with longer timespans. We will deal with experiential scenarios and time-based media to enable new perspectives on the anthropocene and beyond; drawing on diverse sources and views from history and foresight, geology, physics, cosmology, indigenous studies, and design – including the design of legal, political and economic systems. You'll never look at time the same way again.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">Pace Layers by Stewart Brand (01999), <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Ed0XwaX_fHIC" target="_blank">The Clock of the Long Now</a></i>, p. 37 | Diagram <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rosenfeldmedia/27128184047" target="_blank">via</a>.</span></div>
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<b>Approach</b><br />
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This course takes inspiration from the work of the Long Now Foundation, a cultural organisation dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility, where the instructor, a professional futurist, has been affiliated for many years.<br />
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We examine territory seldom covered in other university courses due to the rarity of long-term thought in the wider culture, with the aim of offering intellectually adventurous students from diverse programs a set of interdisciplinary perspectives to challenge, deepen and enrich whatever else they may be doing.<br />
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<b>Learning Outcomes</b><br />
<br />
By the end of this course students should be able to:<br />
• See further: Engage with diverse temporalities and patterns of perception at different scales<br />
• Travel more widely: Research, understand and synthesise insights from disparate disciplines<br />
• Be critical: Make the present strange, discerning key ethical, philosophical and cultural dimensions of our era and society<br />
• Be constructive: Use various media to convey and elicit longer-term perspectives<br />
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<b>Course Overview and Schedule</b><br />
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Here is an outline of the arc of the course and topics covered week by week.<br />
<br />
1. Welcome to the Long Now<br />
2. A Walk Through Deep Time<br />
3. Seven Generations in the Anthropocene<br />
4. Stories and Timespans<br />
5. Design for the Long Run<br />
6. Living in a Material World<br />
7. Creation Crit<br />
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There are seven classes in this course, with 3+ weekly reflections, one SALT-based presentation / activity (student selections marked ∆ below), and a final project per student. Guests will be joining us most weeks, from a range of disciplinary and organisational perspectives.<br />
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Episode 1: <i>Welcome to the Long Now</i><br />
Activity: Intro to course<br />
Reading & Media before class: N/A<br />
Long Shorts:<br />
• American Museum of Natural History, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUwmA3Q0_OE" target="_blank">Human Population Through Time</a><br />
• Charles Eames and Ray Eames, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0" target="_blank">Powers of Ten</a><br />
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Episode 2: <i>A Walk Through Deep Time</i><br />
Class-led presentations begin (25%)<br />
Activity: Field trip –– bring water bottles, comfortable shoes, and a snack<br />
Guest: <a href="https://design.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mark-baskinger" target="_blank">Professor Mark Baskinger</a>, CMU School of Design & <a href="http://moonarts.org/about/" target="_blank">MoonArk</a><br />
Long Short:<br />
• Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel and Heidi Wittlinger, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPwXNFU7oU" target="_blank">Das Rad / The Wheel</a><br />
Reading & Media (**optional):<br />
• Brand, The Clock of the Long Now [pdf book excerpt]<br />
• Walker, The Art of Noticing [pdf book excerpt]<br />
• Sterling, Pace Layering [pdf chapter]<br />
• Bjornerud, Timefulness ∆ [online audio/video]<br />
• Bjornerud, Timefulness** [pdf book excerpt]<br />
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Episode 3: <i>Seven Generations in the Anthropocene</i><br />
Activity: Field trip –– bring water bottles and comfortable shoes<br />
Guest: <a href="https://carnegiemnh.org/researcher/staff-directory/nicole-heller/" target="_blank">Dr. Nicole Heller</a>, Carnegie Museum of Natural History<br />
Long Short:<br />
• Claire L. Evans, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXSEyttblMI" target="_blank">The Evolution Of Life in 60 Seconds</a><br />
Reading & Media:<br />
• Matza & Heller, Anthropocene in a Jar [pdf chapter]<br />
• Nixon, The Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea [pdf chapter]<br />
• Brannen, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/" target="_blank">The Anthropocene is a Joke</a> [online article]<br />
• Davis, <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/jan/13/wayfinders-why-ancient-wisdom-matters-modern-world/" target="_blank">The Wayfinders</a> ∆ [online audio/video]<br />
• Pinker, <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/mar/13/new-enlightenment/" target="_blank">A New Enlightenment</a> ∆ [online audio/video]<br />
Class-led presentations continue<br />
<br />
Episode 4: <i>Stories and Timespans</i><br />
Final assignment launches (25%)<br />
Guests: <a href="https://www.adamlobel.org/about.html" target="_blank">Acharya Adam Lobel</a>, Point Park University; <a href="https://remakelearning.org/person/king-michelle/" target="_blank">Michelle King</a>, Learning Instigator<br />
Long Shorts:<br />
• Donolinio Studio, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEGcwXkwso4" target="_blank">100 Years in 10 Minutes</a><br />
• Helixaeon Inc., <a href="https://player.vimeo.com/video/326674368" target="_blank">Helix</a><br />
Reading & Media:<br />
• brown, Emergent Strategy [pdf book excerpt]<br />
• Haraway, Staying With the Trouble [pdf book excerpt]<br />
• Fallows, <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/oct/06/civilizations-infrastructure/" target="_blank">Civilization’s Infrastructure</a> ∆ [online audio/video]<br />
• Mahbubani, <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/apr/23/has-west-lost-it-can-asia-save-it/" target="_blank">Has the West Lost It? Can Asia Save It?</a> ∆ [online audio/video]<br />
Activity: Meditations on the long now<br />
Class-led presentations continue<br />
<br />
Episode 5: <i>Design for the Long Run</i><br />
Guest: <a href="https://www.joguldi.com/" target="_blank">Professor Jo Guldi</a>, Southern Methodist University, author of <i><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/open-access/the-history-manifesto" target="_blank">The History Manifesto</a></i><br />
Long Shorts:<br />
• Schich et al., <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4gIhRkCcD4U" target="_blank">Charting Culture</a><br />
• Heal the Bay, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLgh9h2ePYw" target="_blank">The Majestic Plastic Bag</a><br />
• Önduygu, <a href="http://dailynous.com/2018/10/09/gorgeous-interactive-timeline-philosophical-ideas/" target="_blank">The History of Philosophy</a> [interactive web tool; explore in your own time]<br />
Reading & Media:<br />
• Brockman et al., <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02019/feb/25/possible-minds/" target="_blank">Possible Minds</a> ∆ [online audio/video]<br />
• West, <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-always-die-and-life-gets-faster/" target="_blank">Why Cities Keep on Growing, Corporations Always Die, and Life Gets Faster</a> ∆ [online audio/video]<br />
• Guldi, The Designer’s Role [pdf]<br />
• Guldi & Armitage, The History Manifesto [pdf book excerpt]<br />
Activity: Co-creation in class<br />
Class-led presentations continue<br />
<br />
Episode 6: <i>Living in a Material World</i><br />
Guest: <a href="https://design.cmu.edu/people/faculty/jonathan-chapman" target="_blank">Professor Jonathan Chapman</a>, CMU School of Design, author of <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=DJMGCAAAQBAJ" target="_blank">Emotionally Durable Design</a></i><br />
Long Shorts:<br />
• Madsen, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-HxmFk" target="_blank">Into Eternity (Trailer)</a><br />
• Kalina, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPPzXlMdi7o" target="_blank">Noah Takes a Photo of Himself Every Day for 12.5 Years</a><br />
Reading & Media (**optional):<br />
• 99% Invisible, <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/" target="_blank">Ten Thousand Years</a> [podcast]<br />
• Sandia National Laboratories, <a href="https://prod-ng.sandia.gov/techlib-noauth/access-control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf" target="_blank">Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant</a>** [pdf report]<br />
• Christian, <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/02016/jun/20/algorithms-live/" target="_blank">Algorithms to Live By</a> ∆ [online audio/video]<br />
• Chapman, <a href="https://therestartproject.org/podcast/emotionally-durable-design/" target="_blank">Emotionally Durable Design</a> [podcast]<br />
• Powers, The Overstory [pdf book excerpt]<br />
• Urban, <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html" target="_blank">Your Life in Weeks</a> [blog post]<br />
Activity: ‘Mattering’ workshop<br />
Class-led presentations conclude<br />
<br />
Episode 7: <i>Creation Crit</i><br />
Activity: Reviews of final project submissions<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">A few billion years into deep time with Mark Baskinger | Photo: Stuart Candy</span></div>
<br />
<b>Assessment</b><br />
<br />
25% Participation and engagement in class<br />
25% Presentation and leading discussion<br />
25% Weekly reflections (minimum three required; due the Monday after each class by 5pm)<br />
25% Final project<br />
<br />
<b>Selected Bibliography</b><br />
<br />
• Bjornerud, Marcia. (2018). <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691181202/timefulness" target="_blank">Timefulness: How thinking like a geologist can help save the world</a>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<br />
• Borrows, John (Kegedonce). (2010). <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/drawing-out-law-4" target="_blank">Drawing out law: A spirit’s guide</a>. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.<br />
• Boulding, Elise. (1990). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PZKSXbJ4dKgC" target="_blank">Building a global civic culture: Education for an interdependent world</a>. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.<br />
• Brand, Stewart. (1994). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=zkgRgdVN2GIC" target="_blank">How buildings learn: What happens after they’re built</a>. New York: Viking.<br />
• Brand, Stewart. (1999). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Ed0XwaX_fHIC" target="_blank">The clock of the long now: Time and responsibility</a>. New York: Basic Books.<br />
• Brannen, Peter. (2019, August 13). <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/" target="_blank">The Anthropocene is a Joke</a>. The Atlantic.<br />• Brannen, Peter. (2019, October 11). <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/anthropocene-epoch-after-all/599863/" target="_blank">What Made Me Reconsider the Anthropocene</a>. The Atlantic.<br />
• brown, adrienne maree. (2017). <a href="https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html" target="_blank">Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds</a>. Chico, CA: AK Press.<br />
• Carse, James. (1986). <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Finite-and-Infinite-Games/James-Carse/9781476731711" target="_blank">Finite and infinite games</a>. New York: Free Press.<br />
• Chapman, Jonathan (2015). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=DJMGCAAAQBAJ" target="_blank">Emotionally durable design: Objects, experiences and empathy (2nd ed.)</a>. London: Routledge.<br />
• Chatwin, Bruce. (1987). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Soc0yN78SFgC" target="_blank">The songlines</a>. New York: Viking.<br />
• Collins, Jim and Jerry I. Porras. (1994). <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062119087/built-to-last/" target="_blank">Built to last: Successful habits of visionary companies</a>. New York: HarperBusiness.<br />
• Cullinan, Cormac. (2011). <a href="https://www.greenbooks.co.uk/wild-law" target="_blank">Wild law: A manifesto for earth justice (2nd ed)</a>. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.<br />
• Delanda, Manuel. (1997). <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/thousand-years-nonlinear-history" target="_blank">A thousand years of nonlinear history</a>. New York: Zone Books.<br />
• Escobar, Arturo. (2018). <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/designs-for-the-pluriverse" target="_blank">Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds</a>. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.<br />
• Ghosh, Amitav. (2016). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jmuCDAAAQBAJ" target="_blank">The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable</a>. Haryana, India: Penguin Books.<br />
• Gleick, James. (1999). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=hOvaAAAAMAAJ" target="_blank">Faster: The acceleration of just about everything</a>. New York: Pantheon Books.<br />
• Global Business Network. (2003). <a href="https://www.nwmo.ca/~/media/Site/Files/PDFs/2015/11/04/17/31/481_85_NWMO_workshop_report.ashx?la=en" target="_blank">Looking Forward To Learn: Future Scenarios For TestingDifferent Approaches To Managing Used Nuclear Fuel In Canada</a>. NWMO Background Papers 8–5. Toronto: Nuclear Waste Management Organization.<br />
• Griffiths, Jay. (1999). <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/293024/a-sideways-look-at-time-by-jay-griffiths/" target="_blank">Pip pip: A sideways look at time</a>. London: Flamingo.<br />
• Guldi, Jo and David Armitage. (2014). <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/open-access/the-history-manifesto" target="_blank">The history manifesto</a>. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.<br />
• Haraway, Donna. (2016). <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/staying-with-the-trouble" target="_blank">Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene</a>. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.<br />
• Haskins, Caroline. (2019, May 6). <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neaz3d/airpods-are-a-tragedy" target="_blank">AirPods Are a Tragedy</a>. Vice.<br />
• Hora, Stephen C., Detlof von Winterfeldt and Kathleen M. Trauth. (1991). <a href="https://www.wipp.energy.gov/library/cca/CCA_1996_References/Chapter%207/CREL3329.PDF" target="_blank">Expert Judgment on Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant</a>. Sandia Report SAND 90–3063. Albuquerque, NM: Sandia National Laboratories.<br />
• Johnson, Steven. (2006, October 8). <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08games.html" target="_blank">The Long Zoom</a>. New York Times Magazine.<br />
• Kohlstedt, Kurt. (2018, January 26). <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/article/beyond-biohazard-danger-symbols-cant-last-forever/" target="_blank">Beyond Biohazard: Why Danger Symbols Can’t Last Forever</a>. 99% Invisible.<br />
• Krznaric, Roman. (2019, March 19). <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190318-can-we-reinvent-democracy-for-the-long-term" target="_blank">Why We Need to Reinvent Democracy for the Long-term</a>. BBC.<br />
• Macleod, Joe (2017). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=YGa-swEACAAJ" target="_blank">Ends: Why we overlook endings for humans, products, services and digital. And why we shouldn’t</a>. Closureexperiences.com.<br />
• Manaugh, Geoff. (2019, April 18). <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/walker-lane-move-over-san-andreas-fault/" target="_blank">Move Over, San Andreas: There’s an Ominous New Fault in Town</a>. Wired.<br />
• Matza, Tomas and Nicole Heller. (2018). Anthropocene in a jar. In: Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero, and Robert S. Emmett (eds.). <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo27213130.html" target="_blank">Future remains: A cabinet of curiosities for the anthropocene</a> (pp. 21–28). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.<br />
• Morin, Edgar and Anne Brigitte Kern. (1999). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=66B-AAAAMAAJ" target="_blank">Homeland Earth: A manifesto for the new millennium</a> (trans. Sean M. Kelly and Roger LaPointe). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.<br />
• Morton, Timothy. (2019). <a href="https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/09-Morton-You-Nevr-Know.pdf" target="_blank">You never know how the past will turn out</a>. Journal of Futures Studies, 23(4): 97–100. doi: 10.6531/JFS.201906_23(4).0009<br />
• Nixon, Rob. (2018). The anthropocene: The promise and pitfalls of an epochal idea. In: Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero, and Robert S. Emmett (eds.). <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo27213130.html" target="_blank">Future remains: A cabinet of curiosities for the anthropocene</a> (pp. 1–18). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.<br />
• Ozeki, Ruth. (2013). <a href="http://www.ruthozeki.com/writing-film/a-tale-for-the-time-being" target="_blank">A tale for the time being</a>. Edinburgh: Canongate.<br />
• Powers, Richard. (2018). <a href="http://www.richardpowers.net/the-overstory/" target="_blank">The overstory: A novel</a>. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.<br />
• Rao, Venkatesh. (2011). <a href="http://www.tempobook.com/" target="_blank">Tempo: Timing, tactics and strategy in narrative decision-making</a>. Ribbonfarm, Inc.<br />
• Sardar, Ziauddin (ed.). (1999). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qhZmAAAAMAAJ" target="_blank">Rescuing all our futures: The future of futures studies</a>. Westport, CT: Praeger.<br />
• Spier, Fred. (2015) <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Big+History+and+the+Future+of+Humanity%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781118881729" target="_blank">Big history and the future of humanity (2nd ed.)</a>. Chichester, England: Wiley Blackwell.<br />
• Stapledon, Olaf. (1930). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=cgDap5L8fsMC" target="_blank">Last and first men</a>. London: Methuen.<br />
• Stephenson, Neal. (2008). <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZnsZfWOpdukC" target="_blank">Anathem</a>. New York: William Morrow.<br />
• Sterling, Bruce. (2014). Pace Layers. In: Susan Yelavich & Barbara Adams (eds.). <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/design-as-future-making-9780857858399/" target="_blank">Design as future-making</a> (pp. 214–224). London: Bloomsbury.<br />
• Tabet, Michelle. (2013, January 22). <a href="https://architectureau.com/articles/the-scale-of-tomorrow/" target="_blank">The scale of tomorrow: Architects as agents of change</a>. ArchitectureAU.<br />
• Trauth, Kathleen M., Stephen C. Hora, and Robert V. Guzowski. (1993). <a href="https://prod-ng.sandia.gov/techlib-noauth/access-control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf" target="_blank">Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant</a>. Sandia Report SAND 92–1382. Albuquerque, NM: Sandia National Laboratories.<br />
• Walker, Rob. (2019). <a href="http://robwalker.net/noticing/" target="_blank">The art of noticing: 131 ways to spark creativity, find inspiration, and discover joy in the everyday</a>. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.<br />
<br />
<b>Some Other Media and Resources</b><br />
<br />
• Long Now Foundation, <a href="http://longnow.org/seminars/" target="_blank">Seminars About Long-term Thinking (SALT)</a> lecture series (audio and video)<br />
• Godfrey Reggio, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085809/" target="_blank">Koyaanisqatsi</a> (documentary)<br />
• Jonathan Blow, <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/Braid/" target="_blank">Braid</a> (video game)<br />
• Randall Munroe, xkcd (webcomic), <a href="https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Timelines" target="_blank">various timelines</a><br />
• Ben Robbins, <a href="http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/" target="_blank">Microscope</a> (tabletop game)<br />
• Lasse Lundin, <a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/180187/trip-through-time-seen-through-eyes-fir-tree" target="_blank">A Trip Through Time Seen Through The Eyes of a Fir Tree</a> (tabletop game)<br />
• Thomas King, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2398900256" target="_blank">The Truth About Stories</a>. The 2003 CBC Massey Lectures (audio)<br />
• Situation Lab, <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-thing-from-future.html" target="_blank">The Thing From The Future</a> (card game)<br />
• Michael Madsen (dir.), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194612/" target="_blank">Into Eternity: A Film for the Future</a> (documentary)<br />
• Ainscow, Rae, Woodward et al., <a href="https://www.deeptimewalk.org/" target="_blank">Deep Time Walk</a> (app)<br />
• Brian Eno, The Microsoft Sound (composition): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Ak5VgyEoc" target="_blank">original</a>; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoX3E2WFcc" target="_blank">slowed 4000%</a>; <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/music/popquiz/article/Q-and-A-With-Brian-Eno-2979740.php" target="_blank">Q&A in SF Chronicle</a><br />
• Dash Marshall, <a href="https://vimeo.com/307806967" target="_blank">Very Slow Movie Player</a> (video/design)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
Much gratitude to my students, to our fabulous guest informants and colleagues, and to the Long Now Foundation for the inspiration.<br />
<br />
Do get in touch with any questions, suggestions, or tales of experiments of your own that this may feed into.<br />
<br />
Update 11oct19: <i>Added to the bibliography Peter Brannen's piece published in the Atlantic today; revisiting and reconsidering his previous, sceptical discussion of the Anthropocene, maybe the most controversial reading covered in the class.</i><br />
<br />
Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is Storytelling</a> (includes a kind of overview of a decade's teaching)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/bringing-futures-to-stanford-d-school.html" target="_blank">Bringing Futures to Stanford d.school</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/01/how-to-move-to-canada.html" target="_blank">American Futures</a> (SAIC project)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/11/future-documentary.html" target="_blank">Future Documentary</a> (SAIC course)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/03/strategic-foresight-meets-tactical-media.html" target="_blank">Guerrilla Futures</a> (OCAD course)<br />
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> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/02/adopt-vision-wikileaks-edition.html" target="_blank">Adopt-a-vision</a> (OCAD project)</div>
<div>
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/killer-imps.html" target="_blank">Killer Imps</a> (RCA visit)</div>
<div>
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2011/07/strategic-foresight-and-design-mba.html" target="_blank">Strategic foresight and the Design MBA</a> (CCA course)</div>
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-jamming-101.html" target="_blank">Future-Jamming 101</a> (UH Manoa project)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/06/long-term-thinking-rocks.html">Some</a> . <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/06/prediction-will-eat-itself.html">early</a> . <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/07/time-too-short-at-long-now.html">posts</a> . <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/07/blog-of-long-now.html">written</a> . <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/07/so-long-for-now.html">while</a> . <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/12/further-long-views.html">at</a> . <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/06/biggest-long-bet.html">Long</a> . <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2008/08/artifact-for-future.html">Now</a> (02006–08)</div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-52685010965722446592019-09-30T23:59:00.000-04:002019-10-01T00:12:33.896-04:00The School of Worldbuilding <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bauhaus-futures" target="_blank">Bauhaus Futures</a></i> is an edited collection just published by MIT Press to mark the 100th anniversary of a short lived but profoundly influential institution.</div>
<br />
Founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany in 01919, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus" target="_blank">Bauhaus</a> was an interdisciplinary and international school of design whose charismatic and encompassing vision has had a tremendous impact on design, architecture and art over the past century. As <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=dHmZw7GdgjEC&pg=PA8" target="_blank">Tom Wolfe wrote</a>, "“It was more than a school; it was a commune, a spiritual movement, a radical approach to art in all its forms, a philosophical center comparable to the Garden of Epicurus."<br />
<br />
This new book's point of departure is a provocation, "What would keep the Bauhaus up at night if it were practising today?"<br />
<br />
With my longtime <a href="http://situationlab.org/" target="_blank">Situation Lab</a> collaborator <a href="https://remotedevice.net/" target="_blank">Jeff Watson</a> (USC School of Cinematic Arts), the point of departure for our own contribution is a kind of playfully manifesto-ish contemporisation of the Bauhaus, whereby "the school of building" becomes "the school of worldbuilding" and the motto "Art Into Industry" becomes "Art Into Reality", tying the ambitious reach of the original to emerging imagination-ramifying practices in transmedia storytelling, cinema and media production, game design (alternate reality games, larp, etc), activism, and experiential futures. A sample:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
The School of Worldbuilding responds to the question, “how might we design a better world?” by turning it on its head: “how might we world a better design?”<br />
. . .<br />
The School of Worldbuilding is not as interested in what we can do in imaginary worlds as it is in what we might do with or through or occasionally in spite of them, in this world.<br />
<br />
The School of Worldbuilding sees the role of the educator not as a purveyor of content, but as a certain kind of game master. It sees the role of the student not as a receptacle, but as a certain kind of player.<br />
. . .<br />
The School of Worldbuilding is political because the imagination itself is political. Power and authority contour and transform social imaginaries just as those imaginaries contour and transform power and authority. Indeed, domination and liberation alike depend on the imagination. What revolution ever started anywhere but in the imagining of a different world? And what tyranny ever lasted without mastery over imaginal resources?<br />
. . .<br />
The School of Worldbuilding confers no degree. To be a student of worldbuilding is to commit to exploration and experimentation as a way of life. Graduation is not only impossible: it is undesirable. To graduate from the School is to fail out of it.</blockquote>
<br />
(<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327235291_The_School_of_Worldbuilding" target="_blank">And so on</a>.)<br />
<br />
Edited by <a href="https://id.iit.edu/people/laura-forlano/" target="_blank">Laura Forlano</a> (IIT Institute of Design), <a href="https://design.cmu.edu/people/faculty/molly-steenson" target="_blank">Molly Wright Steenson</a> (just down the hall at CMU School of Design), and <a href="https://annenberg.usc.edu/faculty/communication-journalism/mike-ananny" target="_blank">Mike Ananny</a> (USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism), the book <i>Bauhaus Futures</i> includes contributions in a wide variety of formats from a fantastic lineup of writers.<br />
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The full text of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327235291_The_School_of_Worldbuilding" target="_blank">The School of Worldbuilding</a> can be found here.<br />
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The book is <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bauhaus-futures" target="_blank">now available</a> for order and is set to ship within the next couple of weeks!<br />
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Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/i-design-worlds.html" target="_blank">I Design Worlds</a> (Interview with Liam Young)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/02/build-your-own-time-machine.html" target="_blank">Reverse Archaeology / The Time Machine</a> (Assignment)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is Storytelling</a><br />
> <a href="https://vimeo.com/21098132" target="_blank">How to Build a World</a> (Video)<br />> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-thing-from-future.html" target="_blank">The Thing From The Future</a></div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-76230955834608821492019-07-08T01:16:00.000-04:002019-07-08T01:16:14.224-04:00The music of a community emerging<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Volume II of the <i>Journal of Futures Studies</i> special issue on Design and Futures has been published!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0J4SJBknRrDbKDyrqAAMYU7bBBwZHpFVRHqIxOBh3cxJeJyH3F6z1WY05j7e3mOjxE3VcMyw0kyzMEHy7aWaYgKiNff7ufXOhNgNTtdE_lO7mOxE6KIHAVqLKf-apjYPThfZAzw/s1600/JFS_DF_01_ATFI_17screens-26908.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0J4SJBknRrDbKDyrqAAMYU7bBBwZHpFVRHqIxOBh3cxJeJyH3F6z1WY05j7e3mOjxE3VcMyw0kyzMEHy7aWaYgKiNff7ufXOhNgNTtdE_lO7mOxE6KIHAVqLKf-apjYPThfZAzw/s640/JFS_DF_01_ATFI_17screens-26908.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 78%;"><i>A Conversation Piece</i> <a href="https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/vol-23-no-4-june-2019/destinations-for-polyamorous-futures-and-their-mad-lovers/" target="_blank">installation by Agence Future in Belgium</a> (02017) | Photo by Bram Goots</span></div>
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Co-edited over the past several years with <a href="https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/ual-staff-researchers/cher-potter" target="_blank">Cher Potter</a> from the V&A Museum and University of the Arts London, the first half of this major project came out a couple of months ago.<br />
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The second half is now out too: another dozen and a half contributions exploring futures and design's intersections. About fifty writers appear in this special issue overall, voices from around the world; Mexico to Portugal, Australia to Taiwan, Kenya to Kazakhstan.<br />
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We recognise this as just the start of a vibrant and fast-moving hybrid field of activity that barely existed a decade ago. We were sadly unable to incorporate every piece that we would have liked, but glad to offer a platform taking the design/futures conversation forward that includes some of the key figures in the field, alongside others brand new to it.<br />
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Below is our intro to Volume II (with contributor links added). In case you haven't looked at <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">Volume I</a> yet, you might like to start there, but the two halves of this collection can also be read independent of each other and in either order.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGJJUJkpcInO7h07E150JY6_rcmi7bN7VAqoIXMDhph7ZVtAN3sDJVxvKW-mYYRt9qeRGrCQ7eFs-YGFTsNG1C2LlkQ4NkPmPtoHvDHq_d0214A3CO3tRniaOln8Q_Avd5KaMrGA/s1600/XW01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGJJUJkpcInO7h07E150JY6_rcmi7bN7VAqoIXMDhph7ZVtAN3sDJVxvKW-mYYRt9qeRGrCQ7eFs-YGFTsNG1C2LlkQ4NkPmPtoHvDHq_d0214A3CO3tRniaOln8Q_Avd5KaMrGA/s640/XW01.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 78%;"><i style="font-size: 12.48px; text-align: left;">SPACECRAFT</i>, <a href="https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/vol-23-no-4-june-2019/spacecraft-a-southern-interventionist-art-project/">a South African interventionist art and discursive design project</a> (02018) | Courtesy of <a href="http://ralphborland.net/" target="_blank">Ralph Borland</a></span></div>
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<b>Introduction to the Special Issue: Design and Futures (Vol. II)</b><br />
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Volume I of this special double issue of the <i>Journal of Futures Studies</i> ‘Design and Futures’ – the largest themed project in the history of the journal – began by noting something that is increasingly self-evident to anyone paying attention: the fields of futures and design are merging in a process of dialogue, experimentation, and mutual discovery. Obvious perhaps, and yet this process and the practices and perspectives it engenders are nonetheless remarkable. They show no sign of abating.<br />
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The dialogue continues (note we do not say ‘concludes’) here in Volume II, with scholars and practitioners from across the two fields, and beyond, delving more deeply into the practical and philosophical issues at various intersections. Both established and emerging voices share generously of their case studies, lessons learned, and methodological questions. They traverse the worlds of media, design, curation, and strategic foresight; they propose research strategies that cross community perspectives and shift our geographical (and political) focus to different sites for design and futures. To adapt an observation from cultural geographer Denis Cosgrove, “position and context are centrally and inescapably implicated in all constructions of [design and futures] knowledge” (Cosgrove, 1999, p. 7).<br />
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This second volume of ‘Design and Futures’ opens with seven peer-reviewed articles from a constellation of contexts, spanning five continents: <a href="http://www.agencefuture.org/?q=about" target="_blank">Maya van Leemput</a> (Belgium) distils lessons from many years of relational work and play where futures meets media, art and design [upper image]. <a href="https://www.leahzaidi.com/about-me" target="_blank">Leah Zaidi</a> (Canada) illuminates the importance of worldbuilding as an emerging practice that intersects science fiction with real-life applications of design and foresight. <a href="http://ralphborland.net/" target="_blank">Ralph Borland</a> (South Africa) outlines a case study of interventionist art from the streets of Cape Town as an instance of guerrilla futures activism [lower image]. <a href="https://centro.academia.edu/KPaniagua" target="_blank">Karla Paniagua</a> (Mexico) describes the first four years of running a postgraduate design/futures program in the highly energetic and fast-changing context of Latin American foresight practice (<i>la prospectiva</i>). <a href="https://www.s-ollenburg.de/index.html" target="_blank">Stefanie A. Ollenburg</a> (Germany) offers a generic ‘research through design’ framework, inviting researchers to hybridise futures and design in participatory projects, early and often. And finally, a pair of case studies from Taiwan: <a href="http://mq.academia.edu/JeanneHoffman" target="_blank">Jeanne Hoffman</a> investigates preferred future images about the environment in 2060 as held by a cross-cultural cohort of undergraduate students; and <a href="http://tku.academia.edu/Kuohuachen" target="_blank">Kuo-Hua Chen</a> considers the possibility of designing for increased environmental awareness among young Taiwanese through a suite of futures interventions in curriculum.<br />
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These are followed by a potent collection of shorter essays and interviews from philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Morton" target="_blank">Timothy Morton</a>; Museum of Modern Art curator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paola_Antonelli" target="_blank">Paola Antonelli</a>; transdisciplinary artists <a href="https://fo.am/people/maja/" target="_blank">Maja Kuzmanovic</a>, <a href="https://timesup.org/content/about" target="_blank">Tina Auer</a>, <a href="https://timesup.org/content/about" target="_blank">Tim Boykett</a> and <a href="https://fo.am/people/nik/" target="_blank">Nik Gaffney</a>; designers <a href="http://pantopicon.be/" target="_blank">Nik Baerten</a>, <a href="http://pantopicon.be/" target="_blank">Dan Hill</a>, and <a href="http://www.lucykimbell.com/LucyKimbell/Biog.html" target="_blank">Lucy Kimbell</a>; futurists <a href="https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/en/competence-center/foresight/mitarbeiter/rosa.html" target="_blank">Aaron Rosa</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Sweeney9" target="_blank">John Sweeney</a>; NASA visual strategist <a href="http://www.davidjdelgado.com/" target="_blank">David Delgado</a>; architect <a href="https://cargocollective.com/lizzieyarina" target="_blank">Lizzie Yarina</a>, and design theorist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Fry" target="_blank">Tony Fry</a>.<br />
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Taken in singularity, these voices are strikingly diverse, but when hearing them together, they begin to harmonise. It is the music of a community emerging.<br />
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Through this issue, we encounter contemporary questions around design and futures in the twenty-first century, as well as ageless questions about what it means to be human, and the nature of time itself. We’re excited to see what these may do to help deepen, enrich and catalyse further activity and exchange.<br />
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It seems fitting that this second volume starts and ends with articles about journeys. This project has been a remarkable journey for us as guest editors – with several years of work spanning multiple job changes, international relocations, and children being born – as well as tremendous changes in the context of design and futures themselves. In spite of expanding this themed publication to two volumes, the interest and contributions have far exceeded our expectations. It is gratifying that the relevance of this undertaking continues to grow apace.<br />
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We wish to express our gratitude to all authors who submitted proposals; our wonderful peer reviewers; our incredibly understanding partners on the home front; and not least <a href="https://actionforesight.net/ourteam/" target="_blank">José Ramos</a> of the <i>Journal of Futures Studies</i>, without whose tireless support this project would not have been possible.<br />
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Stuart Candy and Cher Potter, Guest Editors<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">
References:<br />
Cosgrove, D. E. (1999). Mappings. London: Reaktion Books.</span>
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The whole of <a href="https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/vol-23-no-4-june-2019/" target="_blank">Design and Futures, Volume II</a> is available in open access via <i>JFS –</i> please enjoy, share, and build on what you find.<br />
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Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures, Volume I</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/killer-imps.html" target="_blank">From killer apps to killer imps</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/02/design-is-storytelling.html" target="_blank">Design is Storytelling</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/06/critical-activism.html" target="_blank">Critical activism</a> (Anab Jain in JFS)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/i-design-worlds.html" target="_blank">I Design Worlds</a> (Liam Young in JFS)<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">Ghosts of futures past</a></div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27290920.post-35666970652080224942019-06-17T14:11:00.000-04:002020-10-07T11:41:02.683-04:00Critical activism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Anab Jain is a leading light of experiential futures practice. She is cofounder with Jon Ardern of the London-based "vanguard foresight and design organisation" <a href="http://superflux.in/" target="_blank">Superflux</a>, whose work has rightly earned attention and admiration far and wide, with projects like <a href="http://superflux.in/index.php/work/mitigation-of-shock/" target="_blank"><i>Mitigation of Shock</i></a> (an installation), <a href="http://superflux.in/index.php/and-now-for-something-completely-different/" target="_blank"><i>Instant Archetypes</i></a> (a tarot deck), and <a href="http://superflux.in/index.php/work/drones/" target="_blank"><i>Drone Aviary</i></a> (a film, and more).<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;"><a href="http://superflux.in/index.php/studio-news/" target="_blank">Image</a> from <i>Mitigation of Shock</i> by Superflux, an installation at CCCB portraying a small London apartment adapted for climate change in 02050 (02017)</span></div>
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We first met in 02009, just a few years into our own <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">first</a> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/05/found-futures.html" target="_blank">experiments</a> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/09/more-found-futures.html" target="_blank">with</a> experiential futures, following a talk I gave on that topic at the Long Now meetup in London one evening during my time <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/killer-imps.html">visiting 'Design Interactions' at the Royal College of Art</a>. This was the highly influential MA program led for a decade by the wonderful<a href="http://dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/354/0" target="_blank"> Fiona Raby and Tony Dunne</a> from which Anab had graduated back when it was still a degree in 'Interaction Design' –– prior to the 02008 landmark MoMA exhibition <a href="https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/58" target="_blank">Design and the Elastic Mind</a>, which contributed much to the visibility of the work of not only Dunne and Raby but also their mentees, in what they called at the time <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=u1kxPGb2hrQC&pg=PA22" target="_blank">'design for debate' and 'critical design'</a>, and well <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-experiential-futures-interview.html" target="_blank">before 'speculative design' framing coalesced</a> (as mentioned by Anab below), a development of the past five years or so.<br />
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Superflux got underway in 02009, a few months after we'd met in London, and Anab and Jon were among the first designers to set up shop in a way that engaged the tradition and practices of the futures field not just explicitly (using the language) but substantively too (really using the tools). For instance we recently collaborated on introducing foresight to International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40525207/beyond-survival-kits-humanitarian-aid-is-going-wireless-communal-and-autonomous" target="_blank">via experiential scenarios</a> deployed at IFRC's biennial strategy meetings.<br />
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This post is an abridged version of a conversation appearing in the recently published Journal of Futures Studies special issue <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures, Volume I</a>.<br />
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Anab's sense of the work as "slow critical activism" really resonates with me, and her candour here, talking about the behind-the-scenes challenges of maintaining a design/futures business that is both viable and principled, is super generous and helpful, I think, for the many newcomers eager to figure out how they can practically make this sort of thing a part of their work lives.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> How do you situate your practice in relation to futures and design?<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> I think we are situated somewhere in the middle. We have a two-pronged approach. We do foresight and horizon scanning – that big, meta-level stuff – but we simultaneously ground it with material explorations, ethnography, research, prototyping.<br />
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Obviously we come from a design/art background more than futures. Our schooling was often about what the implications of a certain technology on society might be. And over the years, we’ve studied the more traditional futures methods a bit, not quite as much as a futurist would.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> What are some projects or initiatives that you’ve been involved in that you consider exemplary of your approach?<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> Our approach has changed a lot. We often used to work around a technology, so we would pick something like quantum computing or optogenetics, and try and understand what its potential is, but also poetic implications that the scientists or the technologists might not have explored.<br />
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And we’ve moved from that to thinking more socially, politically. We’re very interested in the implications of living with climate change, so for a recent project, <i>Mitigation of Shock</i>, we really wanted to understand how to bring that future that is so abstract around climate change - especially in the Western part of the world - making it real and conceptually visceral, but also not dystopian.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> So you’ve been at it...<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> Nine years.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> I’m interested in how you imagine the work that you’re doing against the backdrop of an increasing number of people operating at this intersection. If there is a “you are here” point on a map of bigger activities going on, where do you locate yourself?<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> Oh, that’s a good question. We keep asking that ourselves.<br />
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'Speculative design' has become popular, the term; although we have never actively used that term so far. We are afraid of labelling the work we do within a specific discipline, because for us it’s changing all the time, and we want to have the freedom to change. So we just call ourselves designers, or artists even.<br />
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Where people are interested in our work, or want to commission us or hire us, they are not thinking about us as speculative designers or critical designers either. They’re thinking: "We need to think about the future, but we don’t know quite how to make it visceral enough to get people to understand the consequences."<br />
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Outside of the world of design, not so many people care whether we call what we do speculative design or not. Some people call us a think tank, some people call us a research unit, some people call us artists.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> What are you grappling with in relation to these practices at the moment?<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> Lots! We’ve gone from being tiny to growing quite a bit, and then, recently decided to consider more carefully where we go next, and stop just producing project after project after project. I think we are trying to understand what meaningful change looks like for us.<br />
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We keep getting emails from people, and we know that the work affects people and gets them to think differently, but how can we materialise it without using this language of evaluation and impact and measuring? Because these are not things that can be instantly measured. Something that you’ve done to provoke people could affect them and get them to think differently after years –– but how do we begin to surface that?<br />
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I see it as a form of slow critical activism. If our work becomes a catalysing force for people to imagine things they would not have been able to imagine otherwise, that’s powerful. But then what? We are at that stage right now.<br />
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Currently I think our work is moving in two directions: one, with people whose idea of the future we may not agree with personally, but who have a lot of power and influence to affect change at a large scale. Our work with them focuses on helping them consider broader, unintended consequences by enabling them to think differently and more broadly. Secondly, we work in the public sphere, triggering public imagination.<br />
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Organisations who have power and influence and can actually affect decisions around climate change or education, are so outcome driven, that their key question around any futures always seem to zoom in on: What are the outcomes we get, and what’s the impact, how will this affect our strategy?<br />
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<b>SC:</b> And what do you tell them?<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> We don’t really have a clear answer. We can say, okay, we did this with the UNDP, and that led to the opening of this completely new department where they’re thinking about alternative financing. Or we did this, where it affected a decision or policy change. Examples are few and far between where there is a clear, linear, obvious trajectory of 'impact'.<br />
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People want concrete stuff, and the thing is, there isn’t a concrete answer. There isn’t a concrete outcome, to be honest. The outcome is the process by which you will start shifting your thinking.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> What do you think are the most important things for people who are interested in this area of work to be aware of?<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> One of the questions I always get is, "How do you actually make money, and who are your clients?" and it’s like, it doesn’t seem plausible that we could even be doing work and be paid. We’re not set up to be making profit, but we are alright!<br />
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We could earlier this year have gone easily from eight to twenty people. But we realised that scaling in numbers is perhaps the wrong way of thinking about 'growth' for our studio, and the scale lies in the nature and ambition of each project, and the way it can influence a decision or change perception. The bespoke nature of our work means we cannot adopt a cookie cutter approach to our services. No brief is ever the same. And having a flexibility of staff and overheads to support such work is very important. We might have big ambitions, but it’s not dependent on the scale of our practice.<br />
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For a designer, it’s so tempting to have 20, 30, 40 employees, to become 'the office'. It is in the model. I am often asked: "How big are you? How many employees do you have?" And they will actually decide whether to give us work or not based on my answer. So yes, sometimes it’s tempting to scale because scale is a seen as a visible sign of success.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> I really like this unwillingness to settle for an inherited definition of success. Instead it’s striving for a certain quality of impact, or a certain kind of cultural presence.<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> We tried it, and we’re both not managers. Well, we do have to now, but we really enjoy the actual craft of storytelling, making, building, designing and all of that. So we want to find a way we can continue our practice.<br />
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<b>SC:</b> Have you ever done a futures process for your own organisation?<br />
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<b>AJ:</b> No! We should, shouldn’t we?
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The full version of the conversation as published in JFS can be found <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332831663">here</a>.<br />
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Thanks again Anab!<br />
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Related:<br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/design-and-futures-volume-i.html" target="_blank">Design and Futures, Volume I</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2019/05/i-design-worlds.html" target="_blank">I Design Worlds (Liam Young in JFS)</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/10/experiential-futures-brief-outline.html" target="_blank">Experiential Futures: A brief outline</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-getting-started-in-experiential.html" target="_blank">On getting started in Experiential Futures</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-experiential-futures-interview.html" target="_blank">An Experiential Futures interview</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html" target="_blank">Ghosts of futures past</a><br />
> <a href="https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/killer-imps.html" target="_blank">Killer imps (RCA Design Interactions)</a></div>
Stuart Candyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11847397597090443677noreply@blogger.com0