a thousand tomorrows » explore

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

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!

resilience economics

Nik — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:51:05 +0000

Triggered by the crisis-discourse on designing a systemic overhaul of our financial and economic world, our futurist colleague Jamais Cascio, over at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, recently wrote an interesting blogpost on resilience economics. Undoubtedly inspired by biological/ecological systems, he imagines a world which is driven by our search for resilience. It counters the current logic of systems deemed “too big to fail” and features decentralized diversity, flexibility, collaboration, openness and tranparency (the many-eyes effect) etc. as core values. Even horizon-scanning, the consideration of possible alternative futures ahead is standard practice.

“The focus is on something entirely new: decentralized diversity as a way of managing the unexpected. [...] This comes at a cost to efficiency, but efficiency only works when there are no bumps in the road. Redundancy works out better in times of chaos and uncertainty — backups and alternatives and slack in the system able to counter momentary failures.”

The draft scenario is set in a post 2020 world.

2019 according to Microsoft

Nik — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:24:26 +0000

Continuing our stroll through the growing landscape of corporate future visions, we re-stumbled upon Microsoft. Microsoft Office Labs put out a series of videos glimpsing ahead into the future of banking, retail, manufacturing and healthcare during the past few years, each time keeping a time horizon of 5-10 years in mind. Although the viewing experience is somewhat hindered by the low quality of the videos, check out some of their mixed-reality futures …

Health (2007) – Imagine a future where you can monitor your own health with smart, connected devices, your health team can share data seamlessly, and doctors are empowered with a view of health records across multiple sources – all leading to better, faster, safer, more personalized care.

Manufacturing (2006) – Imagine a manufacturing environment of the future where workers collaborate seamlessly across time-zones, predictive technologies automate processes, and sense and respond systems are connected across organizations, leading to better innovation, improved efficiencies, and more flexibility for customized products.

Banking (2005) – Imagine a banking experience where you’re always connected to your finances, banks are empowered to anticipate your needs, and transactions are seamless through predictive technologies – whether you’re in the branch, at home, or on the go.

Retail (2004) – Imagine a store of the future where you can quickly find and purchase everything you need; you have instant access to the product information you want; and the store can anticipate your needs and provide price and product offers in tune with your shopping history.

For those of you only out to get a quick glimpse, check out the montage.

Via Customer Experience Labs

future of money

Nik — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:57:53 +0000

It might be considered old news in these twittery times, yet somehow it rises to foreground in today’s economic climate with a sense of lasting freshness and value. Students at the RCA’s Design Interactions department led by Anthony Dunne, carried out a fascinating design research project in collaboration with Intel’s People & Practices Research Group entitled ‘the future of money’. They explored new types of value and value interaction from a variety of perspectives, which led to some pretty thoughtprovoking and even poetic future views .

Imagine sensing how much e-money you’re spending. Or imagine a world in which interpersonal relationships and human interaction time are the new value-basis, or energy is currency. What if the favour bank would be our main way of exchanging products and services, hence value? Think about new relationships to money, virtual piggy banks, ethics/ethical trading, a liquid economy, live tissue for value, listening to your good and bad side as purchase advisors, gesture-based payment or counting rituals (a, b), 1 bankcard per personal value, consciousness enhancing money traces, miser pathologies in an e-money world, new controlling behaviors, complementary responsible-behaviour-currencies, mitigation management, identities as currency, new e-money rituals, a national fiscal health service, physical money as a luxury product, future money paradoxes, domestic economy, country-company mergers,

The world could use (a lot) more debate-stimulating ‘design massages’ like these, which assess topics from multiple angles in a tangible way, which ask questions, which dare to envision a world based upon different standards. Pantopical in nature, keep up the good work Tony, Fiona et al.!

future food

Nik — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:58:54 +0000

Philip Design probed into the future of food, a design probe which

“involved tracking and interpreting issues like the shift in emphasis from curative to preventative medicine, the growth in popularity of organic produce, implications of genetic modification, land use patterns in growing what we eat, the threat of serious shortages, and rising food prices.”

The latest probe led to three design concepts/concept families:

Diagnostic Kitchen : [...] using the nutrition monitor, consisting of a scanning ‘wand’ and swallowable sensor, you could determine exactly what and how much you should eat to match your digestive health and nutritional requirements at that moment in time
Food Creation aka the food printer, which would essentially accept various edible ingredients and then combine and ‘print’ them in the desired shape and consistency, in much the same way as stereolithographic printers create 3-D representations of product concepts.
Home Farming [...] the biosphere home farm has been designed to occupy a minimum of floor space and instead to stack the various mini-ecosystems on top of each other. It contains fish, crustaceans, algae and edible plants, all interdependent and in balance with each other. Water filtration, recycling of nutrients and optimum use of sunlight are all central to its appeal.

Check them out here. What if … these products would be a reality in a few years? How would our patterns and processes of food production, consumption, etc. change? What would the consequences be for our daily habits, for the world economy, for food culture, for health, for politics … Food for thought …

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.

pimp your embassy

Nik — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:18:37 +0000

In a post-9/11 world, the November issue of Monocle looks at the future of diplomacy and proposes a new design pattern for building embassies. Some of the key suggestions proposed:

super secure: embrace advances in materials and technology to improve security – but don’t build a bunker

do like the Danes: an embassy should be a showroom for a nation’s best brands and design

better living: use your compound to sell a complete way of life

100% branded: the new embassy isn’t just competing with other countries but also the entire consumer landscape. Think H&M of foreign affairs

get out there: the modern mission should re-engage with consumers, not just civil-servants

signature branding: be unmistakable with your vernacular and choice of architect

What if indeed one would reassess the role of diplomatic presence in a country and have the physical presence reflect that role?

Also check out Monocle’s video here.

six shocks

Nik — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:35:26 +0000

… or rather major challenges for the years to come, of which we can already see weak (and even strong) signals. Geert Noels, chief economist at the financial intelligence group Petercam, recently published a book entitled “Econoshock: how six economic shocks will fundamentally change your life”.

In an insightful wake-up call, he describes 6 megatrends to take into account as we move ahead. We highlight them in a few words:

demoshock: demographically speaking, ageing is not the only challenge society faces, also population increase, megacities & their consequences for food, infrastructure, resources, lifestyles etc. pose tremendous challenges

Chinashock: shifting economic & geopolitical balances, the East moves & shakes, poses threats and opportunities …

ict-shock: developments in ICT are about to play a central role in the makeover of the new generations of the world’s energy infrastructures

oilshock: the search for alternative sources of energy goes on and puts pressure on our systems & societies in general …

financeshock: greed, irresponsible behaviour, no precautionary measures, no checks … just a few of the causes behind the financial collapse we are living these days. The solution lies in a reversal of these causes. hebzucht, onverantwoordelijkheid, géén voorzorgsmaatregelen, géén controles. De remedies liggen voor de hand: het omgekeerde.

ecoshock: ecological challenges such as climate change push for major societal changes. do we need an IMF for climate? the financial crisis already cost an estimated 250bn$ (and counting), the climate shock will require at least 600bn$

future of sustainability

Nik — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:12:42 +0000

Across the Atlantic, the Ten Year Forecast Team of the IFTF recently published a future map laying out the various developments related to sustainability in view of the coming decade, for their client, the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI). Think: slums as centres of innovation, rogue eco-states, collaborative eco-mapping, bioteaming, biohacking, biocommons, environmental defense forces, deep localism, distributed energy, etc.

Get the map and dive right in. There’s a wealth of information up for inspiration, interpretation and innovation for all.