a thousand tomorrows » envision

autonomous living unit

Nik — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:47:09 +0000

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

24 hours of innovation

Nik — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:33:48 +0000

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!

Toyota’s future

Nik — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:55:40 +0000

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.

floating futures

Nik — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:41:03 +0000

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

flooded london

Nik — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:33:42 +0000

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.

kashklash or the future of value

Nik — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:50:37 +0000

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.

future of our socio-political systems

Nik — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:44:53 +0000

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.

superstruct

Nik — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:48:23 +0000

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 …

Plan C launches!

Nik — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:16:03 +0000

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!

meet Gina & her magnificent curves

Nik — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:17:57 +0000

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