a thousand tomorrows » explore

the quantum parallelograph

Nik — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:25:25 +0000

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!

a history of the future in 100 objects

Nik — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 19:11:05 +0000

“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

a 100 year starship

Nik — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:55:13 +0000

Spotted some time ago … NASA and DARPA have freed up some budget ($1.1 million) to envision what a 100 year starship could be like (see article). According to NASA Ames director Simon P. Worden we could be on the moons of Mars by 2030. Check out his conversation with Peter Schwartz over at the Long Now Foundation.

Considering distance and travel-time, first missions will most likely be one-way only. Transporting first settlers, implies the need to turn our destination into somewhat of an inhabitable context for human and terrestrial life. According to Prof. dr. Dave Wilkinson, we might learn from the way in which Darwin succeeded in ‘terraforming’ Ascension island in the middle of the Atlantic about 160 years ago.

From a ‘what if?’ perspective, a 100 year voyage raises interesting questions, especially when they extend beyond the technological realm: How will ‘grandchildren’ born in space, who have never seen their ‘home planet’, think about ‘their mission’? How will they relate to ‘Mother(planet) Earth’? What would be needed to keep people focussed on a multigenerational mission and live peacefully and in good physical and mental health within a confined space? How could/would their society develop? Which plants, animals and terraforming equipment would be sent along? The challenges are manifold (see ‘Mars is hard’).

Image courtesy of NASA

the future of our end

Nik — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:12:55 +0000

Few aspects of our lives are so diverse yet again so similar across cultures as the way we say goodbye to our beloved ones. No matter how universal or how grounded in tradition, not even this aspect or moment in our lives is immune to the creative forces of reinvention.

A few weeks ago, funeral directors in Flanders (B) asked the legislative powers to allow for resomation , “a water and alkali-based process that turns bodies into a mix of liquid and minerals. Resomation uses less energy than cremation and emits significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions.” (read more)

While environmentally friendly coffins have been around for a while now (see also Citelli & Bretzel’s Capsula Mundi), complete sustainable funeral services are popping up as well (e.g. Groene Uitvaart). Yet sustainability is not the only buzz finding resonance in the way we deal with the ends of our lives. In their “Afterlife” project, designers Jimmy Loizeau and James Auger elaborated upon the idea of a microbial fuelcell powered by the decomposition of the body of the deceased. To what purpose would we want to put life’s last remaining energy of our beloved ones?

Back in 2006, Eindhoven’s Design Academy showcased fascinating student work under the heading ‘post mortem – rituals surrounding death and funerals’ at the Salone del Mobile in Milan. While much attention goes to objects, a more interesting question is as to how rituals might change over time. For example: suppose we do get to the point where people can download their brain to a computing entity – whether hard- or wetware – , what would the ceremony be like? Or how much poetry can be brought to cryonic procedures?

PS: also check out some of Nadine Jarvis‘ inspiring work.

Image courtesy of Nadine Jarvis. Bird feeder is made out of beeswax, ashes of the deceased and birdfood.

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 …