On August 2nd 2011, Dutch philosopher, editor in chief and journalist-commentator of NRCNext Rob Wijnberg published a tongue in cheek column entitled “A travel guide to Planet Earth” in the dutch daily: NRC Handelsblad. The same article was entitled “Lonely Planet” on NRCNext. In concordance with his statement on Planet Earth’s Media – i.e. earthlings blogging on whatever they read in newspapers – I hereby ‘blog’ his column (in translation) on ‘a thousand tomorrows’:

Planet Earth is located in one of the most isolated corners of the galaxy. Earthlings are known as hospitable, except to strangers. Please read this guide carefully before departure.

Journey: Between two and four million light years. Consider a jet lag.

Climate: The best time to visit Earth would be between 2011 and 2100. After that the tropical season will start.

Currency: The main currency on Earth is debt, a fictional currency based on which earthlings manage to maintain their non-existing wealth. Debts are the only currency in the universe that are being reproduced in case there are too many of.

Geography: Earthlings have divided their planet randomly into 196 countries. Free travel is permitted, unless you’re poor, hungry, or on the run.

Politics: There are two political movements on Earth: Left and Right. Left hugs terrorists, right breeds terrorists. Terrorists themselves are lonely lunatics who have lost their sense of reality.

Religion: There are two religions on Earth: Islam and anti-Islam. Muslims believe that all people are equal, except gay men, women and non-Muslims. Anti-Muslims believe that all people are equal, which makes them superior.

Points of interest: Earthlings were known for their cultural traditions, until the multiculturalists helped to kill the culture. The last bit was retrenched in order to save banks. The only remaining attraction is the Nationaal Historisch Museum in the Netherlands, which has on show a model of the Nationaal Historisch Museum.

Media: Most earthlings get their information from the so-called ‘Internet’. The Internet is a gathering place for bloggers who write about what they have read in the newspapers that day. In the newspapers of the next day, pieces of what’s been said on the internet are being published. In addition,  on Earth every year a thousand books on how the Internet causes people to read less and less are being published.

Hotspots: Greece is the place to be because of low prices. Expect a high credit card bill after returning home. The United States were supposed to be closed by now, but will remain opened until the end of the season -  (check usdebtclock.org for opening. Who wishes to visit Belgium will need to hurry.

Although Wijnberg mainly reflects on a future inspired by the present and currently ongoing events, he chose a format not unlike that often employed by futurists to shake people out of their perspective and look at the world through the eyes of a timetraveller or someone coming back from a long journey after 20, 30, … years time. The column shows how ‘distancing’ in either space or time is a powerful perspective-changing tool stimulating critical reflection.

“What if you were given a glimpse into what America will be like 20, 30, or even 50 years from now? Would it change the way you live today?” Spurred by these questions the Independent Television Service launches the second season of Futurestates on PBS. Ten short films portray ten visions of the future by ten indie filmmakers. Stories gravitate towards issues concerning environmental and economic challenges, but also revolve around soci-cultural topics.

There appears to be a surge in attention across media towards speculative – what if …? – futures as a genre rather than straight-up scifi, an evolution which is fascinating to say the least. It remains up to the critical eye of the beholder to decide to which extent the Futurestates short-films paint stimulating futures – whether bleak or encouraging – or rather mostly project extrapolations of today’s sentiments and challenges. Moreover, considering shifting geopolitical, geosocial, geoeconomic, geo-everything balances, it would be enriching to see more examples of how people from other countries, other cultures envision their futures. Not only would they bring other types of narratives, they would also pose different questions, paint different solutions to the samen and different challenges.

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

Le Corbusier once described the house as a machine for living in. Designer Eduardo McIntosh designed a whole series of such machines and called them Autonomous Living Units. His work was presented during the Future Cities: Past, Present exhibition at the d3 gallery in New York last month.

“Autonomous Living Units is a somewhat satirical project that stands at the intersection of the current housing crisis, the tendency of people in developed countries to live on their own and the trend of turning architecture into a consumer product. The project poses a scenario in which living units ( homes) have evolved into the most minimal yet visually alluring objects that can still provide for the basic needs of the 21st century human being. Because of the morphing of architecture into furniture, the Living Units could be inserted in derelict areas and ruined housing projects.”

Via Boite-a-outils

The Board of Innovation – an initiative by friends and fellow belgian bloggers Nick De Mey (see mouseover.be) & Philippe De Ridder (see openinnovators.net) – kicks off its 24 hours of innovation today: a non-stop marathon of innovation initiatives.

Organizations big and small, national and international will take part in this unique online event. On the playlist are among others our one-time neighbours of AddictLab & Materio, our friends from FlandersDC, trendwatcher Richard Lamb, the City of Antwerp, Sun Microsystems, VisualDimension, Umicore, IdeaMonopoly, Betavine, Symnetics from Brazil, UAMS, Pfizer, URDT from Uganda, and many others. Keep your thumbs up, as Pantopicon participates as well (see here)!

Update: see our contributions “5 what if teasers” and “10 ways in which exploring & envisioning the future empowers innovation”. Thanks Nick & Philippe, another job well done!

In light of some major challenges the world and humanity as a whole are facing – e.g. climate change, depletion of natural resources, pollution, mobility issues etc. – future threats and opportunities are increasing the sense of urgency for massive change. As such, also many of the world’s bigger companies – especially those threatened by the future and a changing public opinion – are turning to storytelling or more open platforms in order to share with their (and new) audiences the ways in which they see, prepare for and involve others in the creation of/steering towards a better future. 

Hitachi is sharing ‘true stories‘, Shell shows their future/innovation oriented endeavours on RealEnergy, Volkswagen takes us to 2028, Philips Design has its probes, Xerox has its Future of Documents blog etc.

Toyota recently launched an interactive website to show and let people explore the ways in which they see and prepare for the future. 

“Toyota’s vision of future mobility. Minimize the Negative, Maximize the Positive and Humanize Mobility.

To enrich people’s lives and society in the future as well as achieve sustainability, technologies must be developed that have minimal negative impact on people and the environment and bring maximum benefit to people’s lives.

Going even furter, Toyota is also incorporating the hopes and dreams of people from all over the world into research and development to create future technologies that are more attuned to human beings. Toyota-future.com introduces Toyota’s future endeavours in a variety of fields, including:

- the safety, comfort and environmental standards demanded of new vehicles

- new mobility to enable greater freedom of movement

- partner robots to support people and benefit society”

Seen interesting ways in which companies showcase their ‘futures’? Drop us a comment.

When Thomas Friedman talks about radical innovation or systemic change, he often refers to the fact that television was not invented by the people who invented radio, that the internet was not invented by the people who invented television etc. In other words, so called regime players are more often than not not the contexts out of which disruptive systems and thus big change tends to grow. Hindrances caused by legacy infrastructure, systems, business models, mindframes … are all part of this picture. Hence, often a fresh, back-to-the-drawing-table-start or tabula rasa approach – where by definition none of the latter is an issue – is an easier way to jumpstart a truly fresh innovation, a true reinvention. This is not only valid for products, services, media, infrastructures etc. but also for social, political, economic systems etc.

This must have been what the SeaSteading people thought as well when they recently started putting money and effort where their mouth is: why not create a new country if we want to change the rules by which we think society is supposed to work. Problem nr 1: all the land is taken. Well, why not take it to the high seas? The dutch were among the first to gain land from the sea, but that was adding land to an existing country. (The Netherlands lead in terms of exploring sustainable futures of living with water, see EcoBoat & TUDelft’s Floating City Research Programme). Sealand is another well-known example of declared independence at sea, yet through a man-made construction set apart from (although dependent upon the goodwill and tolerance) of a neighbouring country. 

The SeaSteading crew, led by ex-Google software engineer Patri Friedman and ex-Sun Microsystems’ Wayne Gramlich is aiming to create giant floating platforms on which to ‘grow’ new, independent societies. The seasteading people are using a startup,p2p, wisdom of the crowds like approach to mature their idea. 

“Friedman doesn’t just want to create huge floating platforms that people can live on. He’s also hoping to create a platform in the sense that Linux is a platform: a base upon which people can build their own innovative forms of governance. The ultimate goal is to create standards and blueprints that can be easily adapted, allowing small communities to rapidly incubate and test new models of self-rule with the same ease that a programmer in his garage can whip up a Facebook app. “You could roll your own government out of pieces copied from all the societies around you,” Friedman says. “Google set my standards for how fast something should grow. This has potential to exceed those standards—if we make one seastead, there’s room for thousands.” “

Although history shows little to no long-term successes of newly-created, blueprinted ocean cities (e.g. Operation Atlantis, The Republic of Minerva, Oceania city, etc.), this does not scare the SeaSteading crew as they move ahead and recently held their first, widely-attended conference to take their ideas to the next level and prepare for action.

Niemeyers’ Brasilia, Sri Aurobindo’s Auroville, Soleri’s ArcoSanti,  The Freedom ship, Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project, Vincent Callebaut’s Lilypads, … Seen other examples of fascinating utopian experiments in city- and society-building ? Drop us a comment.

Via Wired Magazine

Catching up on some long overdue blogpost drafts …

Ever wondered what a flooded London might look like? Visual powerhouse Squint Opera squeezed out some fascinating images, which were featured as an exhibition during the London Architecture festival this summer.

“The general scenario is set 80 or so years into the future, long after the sea levels have risen. The catastrophic side of the sea coming in has long since past and the five images are snapshots of people going about their lives, having adapted to the city’s new circumstance.”

Click here to view a slideshow of their lovely mattepaintings.

We could have easily called this post the future of money, yet in a more profound sense the current financial climate and the questions it is raising are provoking us to rethink value and the systems we devise to organize processes related to it.

Heather Moore, User Experience Manager at Vodafone, recently launched the lovely public domain initiative KashKlash aimed at an open discussion to co-create our future value systems. The sharing economy, the reputation economy, the gift economy, the free economy, alternative economies, shifting balances between production and consumption, ways to replace money, etc. are all themes up for debate over at the website.

 

“We are envisioning a new world where today’s aging, less useful and even dangerous financial systems

are replaced by or mixed with more disruptive innovations and exchanges. Imagine yourself deprived of all of today’s financial resources. Maybe you’re a refugee or stateless. Yet you still have your handset and laptop and Internet and a broadband cellphone connection….”

 

Bruce Sterling proposes to explore 4 future scenarios, set up around 2 key variables: the degree of stability in exchange systems (ranging from a ‘confusing mess’ to ‘massive change’) & the state of communication technology (ranging from ‘old and broken’ to ‘the new cloud’).

Check out the stories of the scenarios’ main characters Big Mama, Greifswald, Rebel kids and Brixels.

In preparation of the upcoming US presidential elections, now only days away, both WIRED and Monocle did the exercise and laid out the cards of their ‘dream’ cabinet … not necessarily of politicians, of people running for power by choice, but of individuals they see most fit for the job to solve at least some of the most pressing challenges that US society is facing. It would be all too easy to dismiss their move as technocratic dreamery. Times are achanging and systems of governance, leadership and societal problem solving are not immune to that.

It is an interesting thought experiment to ponder over the future of our socio-political systems, yet it is also true that the person who dares to ask ‘what comes next, after democracy?’ can be fairly sure to be looked upon in disbelief, fear or outright insult. We use the term democracy often lightly – and in the meantime do not always do justice to its complexity by dumbing it down to but the folk notions that fill the airwaves – as if the concept has remained the same since it was coined in the stoas and on the agoras of ancient Greece. The term has remained the same throughout the ages but what the complex denotes has changed and continues to change. To remain in sync with the dynamics of contemporaneity and those of times to come, systems (need to) change. Change does not necessarily mean that good characteristics of the current system will disappear (nor bad ones, sic) yet reinvention ought to aim for the best fit not on where we are but also in view of where we wish to go. So what are the images people have of the future of our socio-political and institutional systems? How far can we and do we dare to look ahead?

In times in which big, familiar ideologies are fading or have stopped reinventing themselves and the political landscape looks bleak, covered with visionless or populist rubble, in times in which change is fast, challenges are huge and increasingly exceed election cycles and national borders, imagine a future where perhaps not party-politics but projects to tackle challenges define the team and the dynamics of the game of governance and leadership, where not politicians but a diverse mix of people takes the lead , where management vs. innovation of the nation and its systems are perhaps two different games played by different groups of people, within different timeframes, where … There are many aspects of our current system that could be different in the future. A thousand tomorrows are possible for those who set their mind to it.

For those of you who have not heard yet: Superstruct is live! Our colleagues over at the Institute For The Future have launched the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. 

“By playing the game, you’ll help us chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential.”

Superstruct is developed by the IFTF’s Ten-Year-Forecast team led by Kathi Vian. Jamais (Cascio) is scenario director. Jane McGonigal (cf. iLoveBees) watches over the gaming aspects. Game interaction is a perfect match to the ‘what if?’ question central to futures studies: people are presented with challenges, they make choices which have consequences leading to new challenges. Several have advocated tapping into the opportunities that games offer to explore, learn about, envision and prepare for futures and future-oriented action (e.g. Eliane Alhadeff at Future-Making Serious Games ).

While gaming in general is getting more serious attention, especially so called serious games are on the rise within educational, corporate and policy contexts (e.g., see here). As such, the timing of Superstruct probably could not be better. In a recent blogpost Jamais notes how once again we are ‘flirting with the boundaries of the participatory decepticon’, as also Superstruct uses the fakes-as-real strategy (e.g. news items, commercials, blog posts, etc.) to bring the future to life. Yet again, these ‘alternative realities’, even infused in real reality (e.g. ARG‘s), are exactly what attracts people as well. Considering its massive size as well as its develop-as-we-go approach, as a learning tool – not only for the IFTF – but also for their player audience, Superstruct offers lots of potential.

Stay tuned for more reflections …

For about two years already we have been a core partner in setting up “Plan C”, a transition management experiment in Flanders, aimed at catalyzing the societal shift to a world in which materials are managed in a sustainable way.

In a long term oriented participatory process seeded by OVAM (the Flemish Public Waste Agency) and guided by Pantopicon, Resource Analysis & the Center for Organizational and Personnel Psychology a possible future for sustainable materials management in Flanders was envisioned. Smart, creative, entrepreneurial minds from knowledge institutions, business and industry, ngo’s, government agencies etc. formed new alliances and have been smashing heads and hands together to come up with opportunities for radical innovation and structural change. 5 transition teams self-organized into 5 themes:

• closing the loop: cradle2cradle & beyond
• waking up society: towards a behavioral change
• at your service: from products to services
• tailored materials: making ‘making’ different
• sustainable plastics: towards a new basis

Each of these teams has defined a series of experiments they wish to set up and conduct in view of catalyzing structural change in the way deal with materials.

On October 15th, the current Plan C network members (60-80 heads strong) launches its vision, presents its experiments and invites fellow smart, creative and daring heads and hands to join in at a network-mindsstorm event in Mechelen (Belgium) (note: meeting will be in Dutch).

Spread the word and do join in!

Honda already came up with its Puyo, begging to be touched, featuring soft curves & soft materials. BMW’s design guru Chris Bangle takes it a step further and developed Gina (Light Visionary Model), a smooth concept car covered in stretchable fabric (on top of a metal wireframe) able to shapeshift on demand. Headlights appear in a smooth motion when needed, doors open like curtains being pulled back/draped, …

“the Gina consists of a flexible ‘skin’ stretched over a metal wire structure enforced with carbon fibre. It allows the driver to change the shape of the car ‘on the fly’ – the rear spoiler can be raised, for example, while the rocker panels can effectively be bodykitted out.

It’s a similar story on the inside, where the steering wheel and instrumentation sit within the centre console and slide into position when the driver pushes the start button.”

The blob meets the car. Seamlessness, smooth morphing/shapeshifting … imagine being able to decide not only the shape of your car and change it yourself, but also its shapeshifting behavior or the characteristics (e.g. stiffness, colour, ) of the material itself. Could smart cars – as body and skin become ever more flexible in design – anticipate upon impact when a collision becomes unavoidable and shapeshift into a form optimized to minimize damage? Fascinating.

Via TopGear & Dezeen

Think about it … We use the notion of time to classify events in the world around us according to whether they have already occurred (the past), are occuring (the present) or still need to occur (the future). Does time really exist or is it but a construction of our mind to help us deal with the world? Does time exist beyond of what we make of it through our perception?

Quantum physics is ‘timeless’. Professor of physics at the University of Marseille, France, extends the understanding of ‘no time’ (reminds me of my Uchronian friends) to our everyday experience suggesting, it is but a construct we use to simplify the world. He uses the following example:

“Take the example of a teacup, sitting on a table, which then falls and smashes into several pieces on the floor. There is nothing surprising about this sequence of events for us. But the idea that the pieces could fly back together and become a whole teacup again seems entirely impossible.
But it’s not actually impossible. There is nothing in the laws of physics that would make such an event impossible–it is only very improbable. It is only because of our limited view of the world, Rovelli argues, that we reject highly improbable future propositions and turn them into impossibilities.”

His colleague, Robin Le Poidevin, professor of philosophy at Leeds University, UK, sees it slightly different.

“He believes that there is a flow of time, although it is not one that moves independently from past to future. Instead, it is made up of a causal chain, with each cause having an effect that leads to another, and so on.
In other words, we cannot see a future where the teacup gets back together if there is no obvious cause for it. “

To both however, human perception is the key factor in how we interpret time.

Fascinating thought experiment. So maybe the future already happened …

Read the full article published by Forbes here as well as their other articles concerning the topic “What is time?”.

Guy Pieters Gallery in the coastal town of Knokke-Heist, Belgium, is currently (May 11th until June 2nd) host to a fascinating exhibition by the artist Jacques Charlier, entitled ‘Art in Another Way’.

Charlier, born in Liège (B) in 1939, masters a wide range of media, yet turned to good ol’ painting for this specific exhibition, which projects developments in current day culture and society into the future. Scenes in vivid colours against the night’s sky and with stars and planets as main actors, picture worlds many years ahead. The present and the future meet in clever ways on Charlier’s canvas, in what some might dub a retrofuturistic style.

Gene therapy, RFID, human cloning, climate change, teleportation, space travel, the year 4958, black holes, Planck’s wall, android love affairs, … they all play a part in Charlier’s artistic future(s) explorations.

For those of you in the neighbourhood, go check it out, it’s worth it!

PS. Don’t be fooled by the fact that all works are signed 2007. The artist envisioned and has been working on the exhibition as a whole for many years. He added the final touch to all the works in 2007, hence the signature date.