In times when losses caused by excesses become evident, the thirst for increased sobriety (as in: simple, no frills) peaks.

As such, references to ‘the new normal’ have appeared ubiquitously and with increasing frequency during peaks of the ongoing economic and financial crisis. Gradually the term has been picked up by many ‘leaders’ across the globe as the embodiment of the need for business (and politics) to adapt to new times, with new systemic laws, new equilibria, new codes of conduct, etc.

‘Outwageous‘ golden handshakes, boardroom benefits, management bonuses, etc. are under public attack. Yet not only monetary instances of inflation increasingly attract criticism, also the widening gap between consumption value and meaningfulness for example, as well as boundless branding without proof of substance. The ‘new normal’ and the whole notion of what is ‘normal’ and how we value it, shows itself in a myriad of ways.

Nerds become rockstars, rockstars ‘show off’ with their lack of eccentricities and prime ministers travel economy class. Fashionistas celebrate craftsmanship, timeless quality without the glitter, a single color sweater of top-of-the-line pure wool is the ultimate cool. Boring to some, enviably stylish to others. In fact, some have already started calling boring the new cool. Two years ago, James Ward even organized a packed conference entitled “Boring 2010″. The tranquility of boredom creates time … time to discover things anew as well as new things. Yet again, sobriety can mean more than ‘boring’. It may just as well refer to a profound craving for substance, for meaning or simplicity lost.

According to various branding agencies, in the next few years we are likely to witness a strong increase in the amount of plain products (e.g. Muji, ±0 etc.) and packaging, (near)logo-less brand building; products and services speaking for themselves, their qualities as well as their weaknesses without layers of deceiptful make-up.

Products, services, behaviors … Already we see bike design gaining more attention and attract a more loyal following than that of many cars. Along similar lines of this quest for meaningfulness and qualities of life, slow lifestyle alternatives – related but not limited to slow food – are making headway as they remind people to question assumptions about life in the fast lane.

In a way ‘sobriety’ also implies the reappreciation of the small big valuable things in life, all of which can be ‘created’ and experienced, few of which can be bought, since their value often escapes the narrow definition of value as celebrated by consumption society as we (used to) know it. Not the reset of value to a forgotten baseline but a transformation of the systems of value and the meanings they deal with, is what characterizes and propels the thirst for sobriety to new heights.

Image: painting by Giorgio Morandi

Designer and University of Dundee graduate, Patrick Stevenson-Keating became inspired “by the pioneering work of Professor David Deutsch of Oxford University, and the earlier work of Professor Hugh Everett, who argue for infinite copies of ourselves existing within multiple universes”.

As such he developed the quantum parallelograph, a device enabling users to explore the lives of their parallel selves in parallel versions of the universe. At the turn of a knob and the touch of a button, the device spits out a cash-register like receipt of your life in another parallel world. Hence, through a glimpse at their alternative selves and the world they live in, people are implicitly provoked to question their uniqueness and ponder about physics in general. Another subtle example of critical design or design for debate, a field we are particularly fond of and like to experiment with over here at Pantopicon.

The direct link with alternative worlds links this particular example even more closely with the realm of foresight and scenario analysis. Imagine a few extra knobs or levers to set parameters on future developments and you’d have a tangible future scenario-generator, yourself as persona included!

Keep up the good work, Patrick!

Look at any megatrend overview and ‘migration‘ will be mentioned somewhere, somehow as a significant driver of change. The recent events in Northern Africa have made it clear once again that events of major socio-political and socio-economic change catalyze the push and pull dynamics of migration. The recurring images of sinking boats of African immigrants as they try to make it across the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa in the past few weeks are a painful example of the challenges posed.

Félix de Montesquiou and Hugo Kaici – architecture students at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris – decided to give architectural shape to the migration debate and a world  in which illegal trafficking of people across the channel is cast in stone. In a neat piece of design fiction, they envisioned N.E.M.O. – the Northern Europe Migrants Organisation – an organization with headquarters disguised as a WWII bunker near the port of Calais in France.  N.E.M.O. would help customers migrate illegally from Europe to the UK.

Via Dezeen

High-end glass (and ceramics) producer Corning recently created a nice video showing a day in the life of a family in a world of … glass. The video basically shows the world as one big touch screen (without greasy fingers). Obviously, from today’s perspective, the success of touchscreens are one big pointer to a future of ‘more’. Yet, there are also various elements equally present in today’s world that point in other directions.

One the one hand, while there is plenty of room for innovative and more natural interaction patterns – touch definitely being one of them, but also gesture of course – there are also plenty of worries abound that the increasing amounts of information, presented visually in our daily environments, are leading to situations of sensorial and cognitive overload on the user end. On the other hand, glass is not the only material able to render surfaces and the world around us interactive. Just think about all the advances in smart textiles (check out also Ryan and Francesca’s inspiring work over at CuteCircuit as well as that of Marina over at by-wire) or the skin as an interface (see also CMU’s Chris Harrison’s Skinput and a previous blogpost on “skinterfaces“).

The future of touch also goes beyond the ‘one-way’ touch that we are currently used to. Bayer Material Science and its subsidiary Artificial Muscle for example, developed electroactive polymers that enable devices and screens to provide tactile feedback. In other words, the surface might be smooth, but you feel texture.

On a sidenote … While many still associate the advent of touch screens with the launch of the iPhone and derivatives or Jeff Han‘s large-format interactive screens, the history of many of the interaction patterns involved goes back to the nineties. In 1999, for example, the former GMD-IPSI’s (now Frauenhofer-IPSI) Ambiente Lab – active in CSCW and other areas – presented their vision of workplaces of the future entitled i-LAND. Already, one could tap, swipe, even push documents from an interactive table to an interactive wall.

Image is still from the Corning video

“What happens to technological visions when they do not come true? Do they just disappear or is there a place where they live on until they eventually may be materialized? Or are there phantom futures that might forever stay at a certain distance from us and can we even feel nostalgia for them?”

Meet Robert Walker, a fictitious character created by designer Sascha Pohflepp. Robert saw many of his past visions of the future of space travel remain unrealized. So Robert created a ‘spaceship’ of his own. “He collects technological predictions that had been made for the present year and conserves the ones that didn’t come true. In an annual ritual, he visits a storage facility in which he keeps his ‘ship’, a semi-autonomous archive that will fly through time until it gets recovered and the mission ends. [...] What underlies his imaginary space ship, however, is the realization that narratives of the future in every form are an integral part of what writer Norman M. Klein calls ‘Fantastic Infrastructure’ and therefore as important as every other resource.”

In a way, Robert’s story and the phantom futures link up with the whole idea of technological Darwinism in the sense of technological development following a certain path with some technologies surviving and evolving and others fading away into oblivion. 

Forever Future (be sure also to check out the video) was created by Sascha Pohflepp with assistance from Hae Jin Lee as part of the Made Up research residency at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In a subtle and poetic way, the project places visions of the future in the past, tapping into our collective memory of the future that never was. It nudges us to put our current visions about the future in perspective. It reminds us of the power of that grand question ‘What if … things turn out different from what we expect or we can now foresee?’.

Digging into past visions of the future can be nostalgic, it can be humbling, it can be discouraging, yet it can also be inspiring and unlock new understandings of the dynamics and drivers of change. Well done, Sascha!

Image by Sascha Pohlepp

“Let us imagine it is 2100 and you want to go and pick a 100 objects that sum up human history from 2011 to 2100. What are they going to be?” This is the question Adrian Hon posed – inspired by BBC Radio 4′s A history of the world in 100 objects – and around which plans to write a blog, publish a book, produce podcasts and publish a newspaper of the future. To fund his initiative, he turned towards Kickstarter – the famous crowdfunding platform for creative projects.

Some will know Adrian – co-founder and chief creative officer of nextgen games company Six to Start, as one of the people behind Perplexcity, the award-winning alternate reality game that imagined a parallel world set in the future.

Rendering the future tangible is an important element in lowering the level of abstraction and creating common ground when discussing the future. Crafting ideas and giving physical shape to them are powerful, debate-stimulating tools when exploring which changes the future might bring and what they might mean to one’s organization.

Looking forward to your project Adrian!

Image courtesy Adrian Hon

Aesthetics are about more than ‘spicing things up’, rendering them ‘more beautiful’. In information design, meaning is core. As the world becomes more layered, as data becomes ever more important, we increasingly need innovative ways to bring insight and calm to complexity. Check out Visual Complexity and InfoSthetics for example. But the art and science of this matter is not limited to paper or screen, as the following example shows.

Danish architecture firm Bjarne Ingels Group (aka BIG) and our friends over at realities:united won an international competition to design a new waste-to-energy plant for Copenhagen (DK). The Amagerforbraending will not only burn waste and convert it to energy, its 31.000m2 rooftop will also feature skiing slopes of varying degrees of difficulty for Copenhagen’s citizens, turning the building into a pole of attraction in its own right, thereby changing the relationship between people and waste, energy, etc. While doing its job, the building will blow smoke rings into the air.

Each smoke ring, approximately 30 meters in diameter and 3 meter in height, constitutes exactly one ton of fossil carbon dioxide, which is added to the atmosphere. [...] “Exploiting the so called Bernoulli effect these rings will remain stable for up to several minutes, serving as a gentle reminder of the impact of consumption and a measuring stick that will allow the common Copenhagener to grasp the CO2 emission in a straightforward way – turning the smokestack – traditionally the symbol of the industrial era – into a communicator for the future”, [says] Jan Edler, Artist, realities:united [...] At night, heat tracking lights will be used to position lasers onto the smoke rings turning them into glowing, communicative artworks. As proposed pie chart will be projected onto the smoke, where the actual quota of fossil CO2 can be read.

In designing for behavioral change, rendering the invisible visible, the complex insightful and understandable are an important first step.

Via realities:united
Image courtesy of realities:united

The 2010 German Future Prize – aka the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, a true prize with 250.000 euros for the winner(s) – went to Festo and Fraunhofer IPA for their Bionic Handling Assistant. Festo has a long history in biomimetic systems and also this time nature provides inspiration for their innovative design: the elephant’s trunk. Robust yet gentle, flexible yet precise.

“The plastic trunk is made of bellows structures arrayed in series, a movable hand axis and a grabber with three fingers,” explains Dr. Post, who heads up the research and development project at Festo. The structural elements are flexible and can be manipulated using compressed air. If air is pumped into the trunk, the bellows structures extend as an accordion would. This is how the high-tech trunk can be extended from 70 to 110 centimeters in length.

“The plastic trunk is made of bellows structures arrayed in series, a movable hand axis and a grabber with three fingers,” explains Dr. Post, who heads up the research and development project at Festo. The structural elements are flexible and can be manipulated using compressed air. If air is pumped into the trunk, the bellows structures extend as an accordion would. This is how the high-tech trunk can be extended from 70 to 110 centimeters in length.

The three fingers fitted to the trunk are also designed with a biological model in mind – the tail fin of a trout. The special feature: if you press these “FinGrippers” lightly with your finger, rather than retract in the direction of the pressure, they respond by moving toward the source of pressure.

The individual structural elements of the flexible arm are produced in additive manufacturing.

Via Research in Germany

Future scenarios serve various purposes, one of which is to provide a contextual source of inspiration for new concepts for products/services/experiences. Throughout the years, working with scenarios as such in our participatory workshops brought to the surface many interesting insights.

For example, lately there appears to be an increasing tendency among people to stay away from the design of new physical objects as carriers of solutions for existing and possible future challenges. A few years ago, this still used to be different. Novelty, innovation, creativity used to be correlated rather unilaterally with new stuff. Now, the attempts of a growing number of participants in for example idea-generation or lo-fi prototyping/thinking-with-your-hands sessions that we organize, appear to be oriented towards trying to un-think ‘stuff’, to build further upon already existing ‘infrastructure’ or platforms for solutions, e.g. smartphones, social networks, etc.

A preliminary closer look at this phenomenon leads us to a series of possible explanations, which are most likely interrelated.

First, sustainability has become a top future challenge to most people, leading to a more critical stance when it comes to conceptualizing yet another physical object/product. Second, a paradigmatic shift has taken place in the way many of our technological tools have evolved: from mono-use type of objects, over multi-use, many of our tools have become platforms of/for solutions. Hence one can extend them, build upon them without the need for something completely new. Think apps, think modular hardware bodies combined with upgradeable software, open standards, etc. Third, thinking of solutions in terms of services is becoming more common. In many cases the services are the solutions without a new tangible product. Fourth, many of the major challenges identified when it comes to the future are increasingly complex and deal with designing for behavioural change, shifting focus to a people-based how? rather than an objects-based what?.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Social, cultural and economic context obviously also plays a role in whether people tend to focus on designing things vs. designing solutions.  Nevertheless these observations lead to interesting questions when it comes to a changing attitude of innovation, of design, and also of the  kind of skills and insights we would like tomorrow’s problem solvers and solution providers to have. Perhaps it is but a mere rediscovery of the notion of a solution, a broadening of its scope, beyond its most physical embodiment. A shift worth exploring further …

We were delighted to take notice of another project which shares our passion for positive, optimistic futures! Our friend and much admired fellow design fiction future-storyteller Anab ‘Superflux‘ Jain was one of eight people (others included a biotechnologist, a policy advisor, a permaculturalist, an educator, a retired civil servant, an urban designer and an architect ) involved in a unique project which ran from June 1st 2009 to October 11th 2009 to imagine ‘optimistic futures’. Funded by the Arts Council England and Watermans Gallery, the Power of 8 was part of the London Design Festival 2009.  The magnificent 8 welcome you to Acres Green …

“Rolling orchards stretched beyond us as we wandered through the edible gardens of Acres Green. Spots of colour peppered the greenery and branches hung low with the weight of ripening produce. As we looked closer we saw that each tree was actually growing different varieties of fruit. What we originally understood as a tangle of different trunks was actually an intricate technological graft. On parting the leaves we found strange flesh-like prosthesis that seemed to bind limbs from different species together. We realised that to maximise harvests the communities of Acres Green were experimenting with augmented orchards and designing strange new natures.”

Check out the Power of 8 website to feed on more, nifty futurefood incl. pan-city feral cidre businesses, Beamer Signum Apis Melifera aka beamer bees, living hills, flocking clouds, etc. Well done, 8!

Image courtesy of The Power of 8

Which better way to jumpstart the year than to have another look at personal aviation initiatives (see also earlier posts here and here). The online buzz seems to prove that not even a crisis can silence those dreaming about personal aviation vehicles (PAV’s): e.g. Mirror Image Aerospace’s Skywalker VTOL, the PAL-V. Urban Aeronautics‘ X-Hawk does away with the external propellors, after all a much lamented nuisance for VTOL PAV’s in crowded urban environments.

A lot of effort seems to go into VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) configurations, as can be seen in for example the video of this Buzz Lightyear-like low-noise electric VTOL PAV. Yet, there is also the Spiral Duct ESTOL Concept. NASA apparently also took inspiration from Transformers and shows how a car can be turned into a personal air vehicle (see video).  For more PAV-videos, check out NASAPav.

Although a few years old,  the article entitled “These legs are made for walking” (Discover Magazine) presents a concise overview of five visionaries and how they see beyond vehicles as we know them, first of all by questioning the assumptions underlying them today. James Kuffner (Head of Planning and Autonomy Lab at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University) for example asks “why wheels?”, his lab colleague Chris Urmson asks “why a driver?”. Brian Seeley (eye surgeon and founder of the CAFE (Comparative Aircraft Flying Efficiency) Foundation, check out their blog here) shares thoughts on flying cars, while Robert Thompson (director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University) questions the US’ infatuation with gas-guzzling cars and conjures ecochic pint-size autos with moss roofs. Peter ‘X-Prize‘ Diamandis thinks about truly personalized cars, i.e. shape your own carbon-nanotube impregnated composite bodies.

Image: still from NASAPav’s video

In the past months newspapers have been full of high profile people declaring how the automobile industries in Europe and the US have missed their window of opportunity to transform themselves. Critical voices are bemoaning lead positions lost to automobile companies in booming markets such as China and India, where the focus on hybrids and electric vehicles appears stronger.

So much emphasis is being place on not having the right new car line up to face the future that one wonders why so little attention goes to ‘mobility‘ as a system that needs fixing instead of merely ‘the car‘. Joel Makover - author of Strategies for the Green Economy - illustrated this beautifully a while ago in his blogpost entitled: Reinventing Mobility: It’s Not Just the Cars, Stupid! One could even assert that radical innovation efforts in this respect are hindered by government subsidies ‘to save the industry’ (cf. the argument: ‘too big to fail’).

We have seen cars running on electricity, on air, on algae, on acid, … yet they are still cars as we know them (no, we are not fishing forflying cars). And cars, no matter how nifty, pose certain problems … e.g. idle time storage (aka parking), they rely on heavy, expensive infrastructure subject to wear and tear (cf. roads), they tend to clog rather than swarm intelligently, they are driven by people – like it or not, we are a mitigating factor in terms of safety, efficiency, etc. etc.

Friedman already reminded us that historically speaking truly radical innovation is most unlikely to come from the regime players, the dinosaurs. So imagine IKEA building cars … is what design student Robert Larsson set out to explore in his concept vehicle. How about looking at the automobile industry as a major smart grid player. Or imagine a carmaker shifting to become a smart grid energy player. MeetSchwarmStrom or an ambitious network of mini gas-fired power plants for the home (goal: producing as much as two nuclear reactors within a year). Lichtblick and Volkswagen team up to … perhaps become a major future energy player on the smart grid market? With cars charging at home and charging or providing peak balancing to homes, offices, etc. (after all they spend the majority of their lifetime parked, +90% according to some).

Most of you will be aware of MIT’s Smart Cities project featuring stackable cars (like shopping carts indeed), roboscooters and mobility on demand services. Also Carlo Ratti’s Senseable City Lab at the same MIT looks into ways in which are cities and its users could become smarter, something of which also mobility could benefit in myriad ways. Check out the beautiful EyeStop (up for testing in Turin, Italy). In this respect, of course there are the major IT players looking into the role ICT could play in untying the knot we have gotten ourselves into, e.g. IBM’s intelligent transport. Yet mobility is not only about cars and their infrastructure, we tend to forget about walking. Take a step back and think about it: how much space in a city goes to car-related mobility – which means standing still most of the time and hindering human traffic – and how much is actually still people-space?

If you do wanna see a far-out car concept that could tackle some of mobility’s challenges, check out designer Ahmad Filiz‘s fascinating globule concept design for Peugot.

Most of us know about the water treatment capabilities of plants such as bamboo. Some might even already be using it to treat wastewater in their backyard. We were also taught in school that trees and plants breathe in CO2 and breathe out oxygen, in other words they allow us to breathe. We also know that too much CO2 is not good for us: headache, shortness of breath, loss of concentration/focus, etc.

Radiator company Jaga (yes, the funky Belgians who built the Belgian waffle at Burning Man 2006) developed Oxygen radiators to keep CO2 levels in classrooms, offices, hospital & living rooms under control by pumping in fresh air. Turns out that opening up a window does not really do the same trick as air circulation needs a serious boost in order to pump up oxygen levels in a decent way.

Yet there is more in the air that we breathe than CO2 that we ought to worry about. People suffering from health anxiety might actually want to ‘link out’ before reading the next sentence.  Some indoor environments turn out to be 5 to 10 times more polluted with all kinds of toxic chemical compounds than the heavy traffic outdoors.

Kamal Meattle already gave us a few options in terms of plants to keep around our houses and offices in order to provide us with cleaner air to breathe. Now, meet Andrea. Some of you might have met her at Paola Antonelli‘s amazing Design and the elastic mind exhibit last year at MOMA NY. Andrea is a nifty little system designed to maximize the potential of using plants (take your pick: Spathiphyllum (spath or peace lily), Dracaena marginata (red-edged dragon tree), Chlorophytum comosum (spider plant) or Aloe vera) around your living quarters to help purify the air. It has been developed by Mathieu Lehanneur and Dave Edwards (Le Laboratoire) and has now been prepped for commercial release (October 8th, 2009).

How about a car version of Andrea? No, not for inside the car, maybe a plant-based skin with the same properties. Purify while you drive …

You must have noticed as well. The signals have been there for at least a few years, yet they are sounding ever louder. People are increasingly hungry for the real thing, the meaningful, to reaffirm not merely their uniqueness or personal identity, but also their humanity, their grounding, to deepen their experiences, to contribute to something beyond mere consumerism.

Urban farming is on the rise, DIY stores are buzzing with activity, eco-tourism is hot, slow food gains ever more adepts, homegrown fruit and home-baked bread taste for more … Is the economic downturn pulling our feet back to the ground? No, it might amplify things, but things started way earlier. Does the increasingly virtualization of our experiences, of our relationships with both stuff and people, make us nostalgic for more ‘human’, more ‘tangible’ times of direct interaction? Is the superficiality, the airiness of consumer culture making us feel lost? Are we longing to beat negative talk & hear-say with positive action? Trendwatchers say that – in large numbers – we are looking for authenticity, others call it ‘back to basics’, although there seems to be more to it than just another label. Some sociologists fear we are sitting on a timebomb, and refer to a growing gap between those able and willing to follow the ever increasing pace and demands of contemporary post-industrial society and those unable or unwilling to do so.

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