a thousand tomorrows » experience

america 2049

Nik — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:28:52 +0000

April 4, 2011, was the launchdate of a new ARG (alternate reality game) entitled America 2049. The game is a 12-week episodic experience blending today’s world with a possible future world. The game fuels the debate on human rights issues linked to the thin line between the enabling aspect of certain identity-related technologies and the way in which they expose civil rights to abuse from both private and government sectors.

“In America 2049, the former land of the free has degenerated into the Divided States of America, where sexuality, religion, speech and culture are all controlled and restricted. On the upside: the entire population is on a drug that inhibits aggressive behavior called SerennAide, administered automatically through the water supply. This has led to a decrease in crime rates, an increase in the population’s happiness, and has purportedly helped people to rise above their worst impulses.

Depending on where you stand, this is either a Utopian dream or an Orwellian nightmare. And it is up to you to decide where you stand: alongside the Council for American Heritage (CAH), or with Divided We Fall (DWF).”

Behind the game stands Fuel | We power change , a creative agency focussing on the non-profit sector.

A great way to render the future tangible and use an immersive experience to explore and trigger debate on certain societal issues. Fascinating also that different cultural perspectives are embedded in the devised storylines.

Via ARGN.com

phantom futures

Nik — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:33:19 +0000

“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

sensing sentiments

Nik — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:56:45 +0000

Social media, location-based services, anywhere-anytime internet access etc. offer major opportunities for mass-sampling people’s moods, sentiments and emotions.

In October of last year, Facebook started correlating status updates of their (US) users with the Gross National Happiness Index. Later, results from the UK, Canada and Australia were added to the mix. According to a recent article in Fastcompany:

“Facebook demonstrated that the vast historic record of status updates is a potential goldmine of information that could easily be raked through by sociology analysts keen to work out when it’s best to deliver an advert for particular products, or perhaps even to promote a particular political message.”

Indeed, sentiment analysis as the game is called (see also here), is not only interesting for artists and gadgeteers, but also for businesses and public institutions.

The concept is not new, in 2001, webdesign meeting point k10k.net launched Moodstats, a webbased effort to enable people to share their moods. Yet, now that our physical and virtual action patterns are becoming increasingly intertwined, applications like iPhone app Glow enable anywhere, anytime, sentiment sampling.

In most current applications, people are still required to express their mood, emotional state etc. Language processing algorithms can help to analyze this data. The next step is obviously to have emotion sensing technologies (e.g. Philips Design’s VIBE) reading, interpreting and allowing us to communicate our emotions directly. Imagine your t-shirt changing color depending on how you feel, for example.

Image by Glow

the power of 8

Nik — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:17:06 +0000

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

future languages

Nik — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:23:28 +0000

When talking about making the future tangible, many people expect visual information, projections aimed at the mind’s and the physical eye that ‘show’ how the world around us might look different physically. Yet of course the future has many less physically tangible, yet nevertheless experience related aspects that render it a whole new world. Subtlety in bringing those to life is an art.

One such element is language. Although the dynamics of linguistic evolution differ per language as well as geographically, it only takes a brief look back in history to realize that language evolves over time, influenced by accelerating societal change – also spurred by new media and communication technologies. What will language be like in 50 years time? There are many ways in which language can be futurized: neologisms (futurespeak), subtle references to societal changes (e.g. mass migration leading to mixing of words and sounds, new technologies leading to different behaviours), different rythm or length of sentences, new typographical signs, new ways of naming old things, etc.

Director Michael Winterbottom did a great job in turning language into a core ingredient of his subtle way to bring the future to life in Code 46. Now, Dutch National Poet (dichter des vaderlands) Ramsey Nasr wrote ‘Mi have een droom’ (I have a dream), a poem set in Rotterdam in the year 2059, written in a future language, with elements of urban rap and melting pot slang.

Thanks to Emiel for pointing it out. Image courtesy of NRC.tv

feeling Earth’s heart beat

Nik — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:10:14 +0000

The Apollo mission gave us pictures of our planet from space. Finally we could behold our planet from a distance. We could look at it as an object on the table in front of us, within reach, and as we did our planetary awareness grew. Confronted with several planetary challenges now, our planetary conscience is now gradually shaping up as well. Aside from looking at our planet, NASA‘s Earth Observation System (EOS) reads our planet through satellite data. Access to this information is a prerequisite for learning to understand our planet better. Now we can not only look at our planet, Prof. Shin-ichi Takemura’s amazing Tangible Earth project allows us to interact with our planet and the data emerging from it by touch.

In view of coming up with solutions to the challenges we are facing, sensing our planet has become sheer necessity. We increasingly do so in real time as well: within mouseclick reach we check webcams on the other side of the planet, we can download data from weatherstations around the world, etc.
Until recently, the sensing world was pretty much the playing field of NASA and the likes. The future promises to be more open in this respect (see also open source efforts such as GSN) and consequently much larger – and since we’re talking data: more powerful. Years ago, in describing his wish of an Earth Witness Project, our fellow future explorer Jamais Cascio already pointed to opportunities opened up by the convergence between labs on chips, mobile phones and sharing networks to create an open global sensor network.

Now several companies and grassroots initiatives are preparing to put technology in the hands of citizens. Already we can deduce a lot of information from information we leak by the mere usage of our communication technology, as Carlo Ratti‘s Senseable cities team at MIT shows us. Nokia’s Eco Sensor Concept plans to make us more active participants in the game. Imagine millions of always-on, networked tricorder-like devices sensing our planet : local data + networks + sensemaking = global intelligence. Hewlett-Packard is developing the equivalent of a globally distributed stethoscope (CeNSE) to monitor our planet’s health, and look to nanotechnology as an enabling technology. “The motivation for this work is realising and understanding the planet is sick and the disease is us.”, says Dr Stan Williams of HP’s Information & Quantum Systems Laboratory.

An often forgotten challenge is how to use tech already out there to turn them into sensors for our health and that of our planet. Think about the tech equivalent of using ‘useless’ bath-tub ducks which fell off a ship, to study ocean currents.

back to reality

Nik — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:38:41 +0000

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.

On several occasions, the past year, the ever lovely and inspiring Monocle magazine focused our attention on the revaluation of craftsmanship in the designworld. Yes, I hear you say, people pay for exclusivity. Indeed they do, yet there also seems to be a material and a human connection we are looking for: who touched it, whose hands made it, who/what inspired it, who breathe life into it, which story does the object tell, who fixed it, does it become nicer as it ages, what makes it mine, … A world of abundance, of anywhere-anything-anytime seems to be raising questions faster than answers. On several fronts, a sense of poverty of meaning is becoming ever more apparent.

One response to this appears to be to ‘bring back touch‘, to bring us back ‘in touch’ with ourselves, the people, things and environments around us. No, there is nothing esoteric to it, on the contrary, it appears to be hard work in the material world. Check out MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects which organizes Ghost lab, “an education initiative designed to promote the transfer of architectural knowledge through direct experience – project-based learning taught in the master-builder tradition – with emphasis on issues of landscape, material culture, and community”. One week to design a building, one week to build it with local materials and the group’s own hands, all on the coast of Nova Scotia; because architecture is more than computer-aided-design and books, databases and deskwork cannot account for the majority of tacit knowledge and know-how that leads to excellence.

Not only summerschools or craft schools, but also universities are gradually rediscovering the benefits of master-apprenticeship models of learning. A one-to-one relationship as a context for deeper learning, a stimulus to multigenerational dialogue and knowledge management, a celebration of the unicity of skills and approaches, personal attention and responsibility etc. Each and every one of these elements appears to fit remarkably well within the contemporary context of educational needs and solutions, even (or perhaps especially) in times of teamwork and participatory design.

An increasing number of universities, such as Harvard, is actively encouraging students to take a gap-year before entering university: to strike out on their own, to set or sync their priorities, to feed their personal interests, to invest in their personal development, to give back to their community and the world at large, to take the time to grow into fuller, more complete crewmembers of Spaceship Earth …

Scanning for other signals, one could say that there is an element of nostalgia involved. Vintage design is hot, steampunk makes the futuristic seam less otherworldly, the wear and tear of materials having lived a life of meaning, having a history, makes us feel alive, it reaffirms our being human in a context in which the new is leading to fatigue. Is it a style, a fashion, a mere craze? Elements of it yes, yet it feels like there’s a deeper ground to it as well. Looking forward to hear a sociologist, anthropologist, psychologist on this instead of yet another marketeer.

What does it mean for the future people dream of? To be continued, no doubt …

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!

les boîtes de l’avenir

Nik — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:10:19 +0000

Archeology fascinates people, especially children. As they dig up stuff in the garden, their imagination runs wild as they fantasize about all kinds of stories from times past. As we walk the streets, as we use everyday object and live contemporaneity, most of us will have wondered at some point: will this still exist in a few centuries? or: what will future generations dig up from our times? which stories will they reconstruct around them?

Some craft special devices to survive the times. Timecapsules are popular among scientists, amateurs, children … More than merely preserving the past, they are used to send a message to the future.

So-called future archeology works the other way around: we imagine a world of tomorrow’s making and imagine to dig up some of its artifacts. What might they look like? In which kind of world did they originate? Wired’s Found series is a good example of this approach, one we often indulge in as well at Pantopicon. We either create such artifacts together with people as a participatory design exercise during our workshops to render the future tangible or we craft some of our own as triggers to shake people out of today’s constraint based reasoning patterns and plunge them into possible tomorrows.

As I was preparing some designs for a set of looking boxes to allow people to gaze into future scenarios, I somehow stumbled upon the fascinating work of the Swiss designer collective Postfossil. They describe the deeper ground of their work as follows :

“In an age of increased reliance on carbon emitting technology and a rapidly depleting natural resource pool, POSTFOSSIL address the question– How will we live in a post-fossil fuel age?”

As such they made a whole series of boxes – dubbed boîtes de l’avenir - to raise awareness about our age of fossil fuels as we move into a postfossil era. Click through and meet the beautifully crafted and inspiring Actioreactio, A Kiss Good Bye, Ten Matches, Postfossilien, To teeter on the brick of collapse, Pandora’s Box, The Speaking Sun, Historical Landscape.

The boxes somehow reminded me of Joseph Cornell‘s artworks. Well done, Postfossil!

pantopicon is hiring

Nik — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:55:46 +0000

Do you dream about flying hydrogen cars – even though they are so yesterday?! – sustainable cities, social cohesion services, gracefully degrading packaging etc. at least once a day? Are you fascinated by the many opportunities and challenges that tomorrow’s world(s) might bring? Do you have strong design(er) DNA which makes you think with both head and hands: analytically, conceptually, visually and tangibly?

Then you might be the futures designer we at Pantopicon are looking for to join us in our mission to help public and private organizations explore and envision successful futures, to inspire, guide and transform them, propel them forward towards greater strategies, products, services etc. …

Help us shape the future, join our team. Check out our careers page.

PS. Looking for a traineeship? Click through as well.