a thousand tomorrows » scenarios

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!

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

metropolitan agriculture

Nik — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:08:23 +0000

Growing vegetables in your rooftop garden, soil+crop-leasing contracts with local farmers, vertical gardens, school gardens, … urban farming takes many forms. Amsterdam, Chennai, Detroit/Flint, Johannesburg, London, São Paolo … six cities exchanging ideas and experiences in the area of metropolitan agriculture. From 28-30 September 2010 the first Global Summit on Metropolitan Agriculture was held in Rotterdam (NL).

The event, and the MetropolitanAgriculture.com learning network as such, are an initiative of TransForum (& Reos Partners), a project-cluster partially funded by BSIK money which concluded its 5 year long series of activities at the end of 2010. TransForum focussed on the sustainable development of dutch agriculture in relationship to its urbanizing context.

The MetroAg Innoversity set out with joint scenarioplanning workshops “explore the opportunities for Metropolitan Agriculture based on contextual characteristics, assets and challenges in each city”, inspired by input from stakeholder interviews within participating cities. Later on, groups were formed to incubate ideas and draft prototypes. The summit gathered experiences and insights gained and looked ahead as how to scale and create enduring projects and processes.

At the occasion of the Summit, Jan Kees Vis, programme director of Unilever’s division of Sustainable Agriculture, used three words to sketch the pillars of his image of the future: “The right to food, ethics, metropolitan agriculture”. In the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, the company commits “to source 100% of [their] agricultural raw materials sustainably by 2020.”

Via Ventiquattro

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

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.

interactive city futures

Nik — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:00:26 +0000

Games, simulations, … have long entered the arena of what-if In fact they have always been in the position of luring our minds into the mode of unfocussing and thinking in terms of multiple possible outcomes, alternative scenarios, strategies etc. Ecofootprint calculators allow us to play what-if with our own (un)sustainable behaviours, GIS-enabled knowledge and simulation systems serve as decision support tools for everyone from urban planners to policymakers, etc.

In true W3 (weird-ways-of-the-web) style, we recently stumbled upon MetroQuest … an interactive scenario planning tool allowing stakeholders (e.g. in the future of a city) to experiment with the future, the outcomes of policy choices, external drivers of change etc. According to their website, MetroQuest can help:

   Communicate complex planning concepts easily to lay people.

   Generate excitement and public awareness for your initiatives.

   Increase public and stakeholder participation in your planning initiatives.

   Help the community develop an understanding and acceptance for policy decisions.

   Create broad-based consensus for your community’s future vision.

The tool appears to be mostly focussed on quantifiable and quantitative change. Besides a process-embedded version of MetroQuest using handheld keypads in stakeholder workshops, the system also has been deployed online (see the Yellowknife and Niagara cases).

three horizons

Nik — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:53:35 +0000

Futurewheels, scenario planning axes and several other methods & techniques in the land of futures studies all have in common that they bring structure to the process of thinking about the long term in an insightful manner. They lower the threshold for futures thinking beyond the academic context. Exploring and analyzing possible futures is one thing, the step towards visioning, strategy-development and action for change another.

In this respect, Andrew Curry of the UK’s Henley Center HeadlightVision (now aka The Futures Company) and Anthony Hodgson from Decision Integrity recently published an insightful article in the Journal of Futures Studies (August 2008) entitled “Seeing in Multiple Horizons: Connecting Futures to Strategy”. Their paper describes …

“[...] a futures method called the ‘Three Horizons’ which enables different futures and strategic methods to be integrated as and when appropriate. [...] It can relate drivers and trends-based futures analysis to emerging issues. It enables policy or strategy implications of futures to be identified. And it links futures work to processes of change. The paper connects this latter aspect to models of change developed within the ‘social shaping’ school of technology.”

The initial work on the Three Horizons method – in its present form and scope, a systems thinking-based approach looking at the strategic fit between a system and its context over time – was done by Anthony Hodgson and Bill Sharpe when they used it to think about long-term technology change for the UK government’s foresight project on Intelligent Infrastructure Systems. The method is now being further developed under the umbrella of The International Futures Forum.

Taking a closer look at the fitness-landscape- or phase-like curves, the fade-out S-curve of the first horizon points reminds one of the urgency to change with respect to a future scenario. Also worth noting is that the third horizon’s S-curve is also recognized as a core component of the transition management methodology as put forward by Rotmans et al. also pointing towards enabling change in context of high systemic complexity and uncertainty (e.g. societal change in view of sustainability).

The paper argues that the Three Horizons method features several strengths compared to more classic scenario-approaches:

the method brings several perspectives together which help to bridge future exploration, visioning and action: horizon 1 helps to uncover the values and assumptions underlying current business of usual, horizon 2 helps to assess whether one is focussing on incremental change to keep up or systemic change/radical innovation of its core values, horizon 3 opens up and explores the enabling pathways towards such radical change
emerging issues and weak signals receive more attention
action is incorporated in the assessment, thereby increasing the constructivist notion of the future as something one can – at least partly – design or shape.

seeing, believing, acting

Nik — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:21:25 +0000

At the outbreak of any major crisis, there is always the question of ‘why didn’t we see this coming?’. The financial crisis? Oh, many saw it coming alright … yet few managed to make others believe a meltdown was not only possible, but most likely, and none managed to mobilize believers-decision-makers to act upon their belief to an extent that would have prevented the crisis from happening (or the latter proved insufficiently equipped/organized to do so).

Adam Gordon of FutureStudio reflects upon the relationships between belief & action in foresight contexts in his most recent post over at The Future Savvy Journal. He refers to a letter from Peter Schwartz explaining the added value of scenario thinking in assessing and acting upon future challenges. They help to keep various options open, alternatives about what the future might be like, hence serve as a tool-to-think-through & to learn, and pave the way for action. According to Peter Schwartz:

“The problem is that decision-makers believe that they are forced to pick one right answer: the most likely scenario. Their approach to decision-making does not afford them the opportunity to consider apparently low probability but highly consequential scenarios. The answer, therefore, to the “believe” half of the question is a decision-making process that considers several scenarios: compelling stories about alternative futures that incorporate the analysis of “outliers” and describe three or four plausible paths forward.
Good scenarios force decision-makers to challenge their own assumptions and reconsider what is possible. As a result, they can take seriously those scenarios that seemed less likely at first, but whose plausibility increases over time.”

It is also a people matter in the sense that to make radical, systemic changes happen, various roles or skills are needed (e.g. to understand the complexity of the challenge at hand, to network and form the necessary alliances to tackle it, to draft innovative solutions, to scale and sell these, to monitor progress and motivate etc.). Seldomly these are found in one person or one type of person, even one group of people only. Also because of this aspect, the action part of the equation of systemic change is a complex one and no one, easy recipe can be prescribed to orchestrate massive change as such. Nevertheless, insight in these matters is growing, both academically and practically, which will hopefully serve as well in the many futures and societal challenges ahead of us.

Crossposted on Kashklash.net

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.

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 …