Gazing ahead into the future, nearly automatically makes us think about the future past, the present as history.

As species of all kinds are disappearing at worrisome rates, several initiatives are trying to protect, document, collect and preserve. The Norwegian government has, for example, taken the initiative to install at Svalbard, an island near the North Pole, the Global Seed Vault. Compared by many to Noah’s Ark, the initiative will use an old mine to preserve an estimated 1.5 billion samples of the Earth’s seeds in permafrost. The aim is to preserve as many of the Earth’s (diversity of) seeds as possible, especially those of species important to the food chain. Countries around the world are expected to send in samples.

As such the seed bank moves beyond cataloguing life to safeguarding it. Scandinavian ancestor Carolus Linnaeus will be happy. Craig Venter‘s Sorcerer expeditions (cataloguing the genes of oceanic micro-organisms) on the other hand try to map out the Earth’s ‘small life’ that has largely remained under the radar of catalogues and categories.

Few subjects stimulate the imagination like nanotechnology, so much even that one tends to forget about the many amazing things being developed within labs right now. Like the very large, the very small stretches the mind (cf. Eric Drexler‘s envisionings).
The EU Nanologue project – one of many projects focussing on public debate concerning new technologies – recently published its report titled ‘The future of nanotechnology – we need to talk’. The project stands for a Europe-wide dialogue on the social, ethical and legal impacts of nanotechnology, and also included a scenario-study resulting in three scenarios (time horizon 2015), i.e.:

“Scenario 1: Disaster recovery

A lack of regulation resulted in a major accident. Public concern about nanotechnology is high and technology development is slow and catious.

Scenario 2: Now we´re talking

Strong regulation and accountability systems are in place. The technology has been shaped by societal needs and strong health and safety concerns.

Scenario 3: Powering ahead

Scientific progress has been faster than expected and nanotechnology is making a real impact, particularly in energy conversion and storage.”

Bruno Giussani, journalist and the man who kept us posted on the happenings at the European Futurists Conference in Lucerne via his blog, picked up on the recent wave of endeavours into applying the open source model to the design of physical products, more specifically cars (read his fascinating article here). OSCar is the brainchild of Markus Merz who, together with a group of friends and worldwide volunteers decided to reinvent car design and production according to the principles of the open source community. Their common goal is “Building a car without an engineering center, without a boss, without money, and without borders. But with the help of the collective creativity of the Internet community…”.

The materialization of the open source, p2p and (creative) commons models may prove to be among the most disruptive of trends shaping our world today and tomorrow (check out our interview with Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation).

Efforts and experiments in the areas of open hardware, open design etc. are showing a serious potential to shift powers and drivers, or rather values, of business, innovation, welfare, well-being etc. In ever-increasing numbers, people are posting detailed guidelines complete with videotutorials on how to create ‘low(er)-cost’ alternatives to marketplace products such as home HD projectors, graphic tablets, camera stabilizers, beer etc. Along with magazines such as MAKE this is taking the DIY phenomenon to a whole other level. Knowledge, abundance and access open up many models we are currently taking for granted.

Via Businessweek

Canadian artist Max Dean, Matt Donovan and Cornell University’s robotics engineer Raffaello D’Andrea (also known for his involvement in the RoboCup Soccer Championships) and his former student Steve Lowe have developed an artistic project featuring a robotic chair, which falls apart and then autonomously reassembles itself. The movie has become an online hit.

While interesting in itself, a bit of mindstretching on the theme of self-repair and self-assembly reveals a manifold of opportunities, some of which have technological developments underway. At a more abstract level, it all boils down to moving from a crippled state back to a normal state, via autonomous, intelligent and pro-active problemsolving. Various scenarios can be envisaged in which such an ability (intentionally designed) might be of practical use. Let’s shift contexts and think about what it could mean:

think virtual: information that rearranges itself depending on the needs of the situation, self-healing hard- & software (link),

think small: remember Eric Drexler’s nanovisions including self-assembly (see also his website)

think practical: imagine driving through your carwash after an accident and watching your car un-(c)ripple, self-cleaning tissues and other materials (cf. self-cleaning windows)

think health: self-healing skin/organs, self-repairing protheses, …

think politics: …

Image courtesy of Cornell University.

The horizon is a grateful metaphor within the context of foresight and future studies. It is a dynamic concept, it refers to something which is never fully attainable, which is always shifting, which is not always very crisp or clear, yet gives us a sense of time and distance, of what is yet to come, what we can expect. In a sense, it gives us a head-start.

Horizon scanning – the systematic search for opportunities and threats the future might bring – is used increasingly by countries and goverments to initiate timely foresight exercises and research.

As such, the dutch COS (cross-sectoral discussion platform), together with the Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek (foundation for technology foresight) has launched the Horizonscan project (see website, in dutch) ‘to explore future problems and opportunities and signal ways in which science could deliver strategic knowledge and solutions on a timely basis. Furthermore, it is aimed at enabling and encouraging policymakers and politicians to take strategic decisions for the long term in stead of merely focussing on today’s challenges and tackling problems using ad-hoc solutions.’

The initiative follows in the footsteps of and links up with several other projects of its kind elsewhere in Europe (e.g. British horizonscanning centre).

Among other things, the website features a list of problems and opportunities the future might bring, to which everyone can add and respond as well as cast their vote in terms of importance and plausibility. This knowledge base can then be used by companies, researchers and policymakers to assess their developments from a broader, more integral/integrative perspective on the future.

Image via Wikipedia.

Most of you will know EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference) by now. At least one paper presented at this year’s event discusses an ethnographic approach within a foresight context. Andrew Greenman and Scott Smith talked about “Embed: Mapping the Future of Work and Play: A Case for ‘Embedding’ Non-Ethnographers in the Field”.

The abstract to their paper reads as follows:

This paper reflects on an experiment to combine an “ethnographic walking tour” with futures and foresight methods, as a means of enhancing and validating foresight exercises through the addition of valuable first-hand observation. The project, entitled Embed, was created to familiarize senior strategists, product developers, foresight specialists and marketers with the potential of ethnographic research to inform decision making. We introduce the concept of “embedding” to describe the process of placing non-ethnographers into fieldwork situations.

There is no doubt about the added value of observation, real life context, ‘embedding’ oneself in the world … within foresight and beyond.

Via: Pasta & Vinegar

Visionary leaders are scarce. Jan Kriekels of Jaga, the radiator factory, however, fits the description once put forward so eloquently in Apple’s Think Different campaign. He belongs to “the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently [...] they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire.”

A while ago, Jan & Co. launched Uchronians.org, which is, more than a mere meeting place, a benevolent virus set out to infect as many creative minds as possible, people daring to colour beyond traditional lines, to think of and work on alternative futures together … See it as an experiential time machine.
The term ‘uchronian’ is a time-variant of ‘utopian’, where place makes room for time, pointing at a state of ‘no time’. Uchronians was named after Uchronia, an installation made out of 150 km of timber with a floor span of 60 by 30 metres, and a height of 15 metres, built and burnt to the ground in Black Rock City, Nevada, at the Burning Man 2006 festival. It was a mindchild of Jan Kriekels and Arne Quinze.

PS. Jan Kriekels of Jaga was among the speakers at the enchanting C-mine site in Genk, Belgium on 29/09/2006 for the launching event of the Media & Design Academy’s Experience Design Lab, an initiative in which Pantopicon was involved as well.

For various reasons, lately I often need to think of the fascinating trilogy written by Dutch writer Thea Beckman, starting with a book titled Children of Mother Earth. It is a futuristic novel, set some time after World War III, which describes the struggle between a utopian country named Thule (Greenland after a global climate change) ruled by women and Baden (a militaristic European nation). The book is a beautiful example of the engaging effect of an alternative future turned into an experience.
The reasons I had to think of it now, are the many projects that keep popping up – and not only in so called developing countries – to educate and empower women to climb the ladder and take up a wider range of roles in society, to be entrepreneurial, to be dreambuilders, to be leaders of change etc. They build upon the powerful notion that large scale, bottom up societal change follows a female line. Future societies as such might hence look a whole lot different.

Roberta Cocco is Director of Marketing for Microsoft Italy. At the same time she is also the driving force behind a non-profit project (suppported by Microsoft, HP and Accenture) called Futuro@lfemminile (female future). Its aim: to teach women about technology and empower them via technology. Palfemminile is specifically aimed at women in public administration.