“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

Developments in information and communication technologies are often depicted as providing opportunities for a more transparent, open, free and democratic world:

“This new freedom holds great practical promise: as a dimension of individual freedom; as a platform for better democratic participation; as a medium to foster a more critical and self-reflective culture; and, in an increasingly information dependent global economy, as a mechanism to achieve improvements in human development everywhere.” (Benkler 2006)

As Benkler (see The Wealth of Networks) sees it, the former financial and institutional restrictions in the production of knowledge, information and culture – essential to human freedom and human development -  are steadily vanishing. This would increase the role of nonmarket and nonproprietary production, both by individuals and by a wide range of loosely or tightly woven collaborations.

During their lectures at the Future of News and Civic Media Conference at MIT, Gabriella Coleman (NYU) & Karim Lakhani (Harvard) argue that open and collaborative networks somehow behave according to ‘market rules’. Those who for example wish to contribute to the development of Debian Linux will have to pass an extensive technical admission project, they will need to prove their skills and commitment in a discussion on knowledge, policies and ethical issues and will have to learn the language (jargon) of the ‘community’. In this respect, Lakhani notes that “Openness breeds bureaucracy” .

In the end, as Clay Shirky – author of “Here comes everybody” – argues, open and collaborative movements face the same challenges as more traditional, bounded, commercial organizations. Referring to the phenomenon of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ he concludes that both find themselves in such a competitive environment, that both need to find ways to attract attention and to actively recruit skilled contributors in order tot survive.

Although Benkler foresees a society in which non-market actors play an essential role, one needs to keep in mind that this is likely to be a highly competitive society still.

In both loosely coupled networks and traditional organizations alike self-promotion based on skills and contacts as well as personal branding, is already on the rise.  How might branding and advertising evolve in the era of open collaboration? How might HR management change ?

Image via IndependentMail

“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

I guess we all often wonder why most political decision-making still seems to be informed by relatively short term thinking, 4 years ahead (end of term) or in many cases even shorter. In August 2010, Long Now member Rony Kubat, wondered the same thing. His question led to Penn Schoen Berland Research organizing a survey, polling +1000 people in the US, and +200 Washington DC ‘elites’. As could be expected, most people noted that they believe it’s necessary to look further ahead (4-24y). Yet, when asked how far ahead politicians are thinking according to them, an overwhelming amount considers them stuck in their 4y term. As one reader noticed, 4 years was the minimum they could select and probably to high a threshold even.

Yet the poll also shows something else, i.e. that in general, people don’t seem to think that it’s worthwhile to think a 100 years ahead.  We know however, that certain big, complex problems or challenges such as climate change, geopolitical/-economic powershifts, etc. affect future generations decades down the line. All too often and all too easily, one hears: “by the time effects become visible or unpleasant, technology will have evolved sufficiently to deal with it” or “people will have adapted to it” … One only needs to look back in history to see a different pattern. When the sense of urgency is not there or long term thinking is not part of one’s most basic, most grounded perspective on the world, it is hard to convince people.

When Jane Goodall said “The indigenous people used to ask ‘how does this decision affect our people seven generations ahead?’”, although she referred to the past, she reminds us of a principle lightyears ahead of most of today’s ‘leaders’. The subtle difference between knowledge and wisdom …

The thought experience of “seven generations thinking” applied to politics, policymaking and societal leadership would be worthwhile however. How would it alter political priorities, decision making in general, the very notion of leadership? How would it affect the dynamics of our society?

Aesthetics are about more than ‘spicing things up’, rendering them ‘more beautiful’. In information design, meaning is core. As the world becomes more layered, as data becomes ever more important, we increasingly need innovative ways to bring insight and calm to complexity. Check out Visual Complexity and InfoSthetics for example. But the art and science of this matter is not limited to paper or screen, as the following example shows.

Danish architecture firm Bjarne Ingels Group (aka BIG) and our friends over at realities:united won an international competition to design a new waste-to-energy plant for Copenhagen (DK). The Amagerforbraending will not only burn waste and convert it to energy, its 31.000m2 rooftop will also feature skiing slopes of varying degrees of difficulty for Copenhagen’s citizens, turning the building into a pole of attraction in its own right, thereby changing the relationship between people and waste, energy, etc. While doing its job, the building will blow smoke rings into the air.

Each smoke ring, approximately 30 meters in diameter and 3 meter in height, constitutes exactly one ton of fossil carbon dioxide, which is added to the atmosphere. [...] “Exploiting the so called Bernoulli effect these rings will remain stable for up to several minutes, serving as a gentle reminder of the impact of consumption and a measuring stick that will allow the common Copenhagener to grasp the CO2 emission in a straightforward way – turning the smokestack – traditionally the symbol of the industrial era – into a communicator for the future”, [says] Jan Edler, Artist, realities:united [...] At night, heat tracking lights will be used to position lasers onto the smoke rings turning them into glowing, communicative artworks. As proposed pie chart will be projected onto the smoke, where the actual quota of fossil CO2 can be read.

In designing for behavioral change, rendering the invisible visible, the complex insightful and understandable are an important first step.

Via realities:united
Image courtesy of realities:united

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

BMW has a history with film on the web. Remember The Hire ? Now – like Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota and many other automobile companies – they have turned to look at “the future of mobility”. The initiative is entitled Activate the future and features four installments (to be launched one by one this February 2011) : The new city, The future just isn’t what it used to be, Reinventing mobility and How we’ll learn to stop worrying and love the future. Each episode contains bits of interviews with well-known scientists, travellers, authors, entrepreneurs, etc. intended to provoke thoughts and discussion.

As the website mentions, the initiative

[...] is not meant to provide definitive answers, but rather, to ask the right questions from the right people in an attempt to generate discussion, provoke thought and stir the imagination. [... It] was created to get users actively involved in the ever-evolving conversation on the future of mobility. Over the coming months, this site will continue to explore new ways to shape the future of mobility and will encourage users’ opinions and participation along the way.

Those of you who follow up on our blog, know that we like to emphasize the importance of exploring and envisioning ‘positive, optimistic futures’ (read here or here for example), to remind people to look forward through the lense of opportunity. Although optimism is a moral duty, as Sir Karl Popper reminds us, people often tend to end up all too easily assessing doom-scenarios, thereby confining their mindspace to the dark angle of threat rather than the open window of opportunity. No one said thinking in terms of opportunities is easy, but boy is it worthwhile when you do! Imagination clearly plays a central role in this. It is reflected in one’s ability to leave the present behind for a while and dream up answers to the ‘what if ?’ question.

In “The imagination challenge”, a video produced as part of Eastman Innovation Lab’s Design Insights series, designer Richard Seymour, looks into the future and notes: “We are dealing with a world where what we can do extends beyond what we can imagine. The future is actually inhibited and retarded by a lack of imagination.” Furthermore, he notes: “We are now at a stage in the 21st century where we don’t need to talk about what we can do; we need to think about what we should do.”

See also Optimistic futurism and The new order.

Image from Design Insights video, Eastman Innovation Lab

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 2010 German Future Prize – aka the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, a true prize with 250.000 euros for the winner(s) – went to Festo and Fraunhofer IPA for their Bionic Handling Assistant. Festo has a long history in biomimetic systems and also this time nature provides inspiration for their innovative design: the elephant’s trunk. Robust yet gentle, flexible yet precise.

“The plastic trunk is made of bellows structures arrayed in series, a movable hand axis and a grabber with three fingers,” explains Dr. Post, who heads up the research and development project at Festo. The structural elements are flexible and can be manipulated using compressed air. If air is pumped into the trunk, the bellows structures extend as an accordion would. This is how the high-tech trunk can be extended from 70 to 110 centimeters in length.

“The plastic trunk is made of bellows structures arrayed in series, a movable hand axis and a grabber with three fingers,” explains Dr. Post, who heads up the research and development project at Festo. The structural elements are flexible and can be manipulated using compressed air. If air is pumped into the trunk, the bellows structures extend as an accordion would. This is how the high-tech trunk can be extended from 70 to 110 centimeters in length.

The three fingers fitted to the trunk are also designed with a biological model in mind – the tail fin of a trout. The special feature: if you press these “FinGrippers” lightly with your finger, rather than retract in the direction of the pressure, they respond by moving toward the source of pressure.

The individual structural elements of the flexible arm are produced in additive manufacturing.

Via Research in Germany

Most of us see gender as either male or female. Nevertheless for years, people have argumented for and against the introduction of a third option for people biologically or socially belonging neither to the male nor female group. Years ago, Prof. dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling  conducted a provocative thought-experiment distinguishing between as much as five gender categories: male, female, merm, ferm, herm.

In Nepal’s latest national census, people will have three options when compiling their form (see article).

The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) said this is the first time census forms would grant the option for transgendered people to list themselves as something other than male or female.”In the past, we only had two sections under gender, as male and female,” said Bikash Bista, director of the department.”With the new provision, the third gender will also be able to acquire citizenship.”

Sexual minorities moving beyond the traditional gender duality are often wrongfully portrayed as ‘recent phenomena’. In the fashion world, which has a history of androgynous models, Marc Jacobs’ latest shoots (by photographer Juergen Teller) for example, feature Andrej Pejic, a highly androgynous male model featuring in both male and female shootings. In many cultures ‘third gender’ history goes back for centuries, millennia even (see Wikipedia).

Thinking in terms of possible futures, one might ask oneself: how would the future look different in a world with multiple recognized gender classes? How would social relationships change? Which products and services might cater to the needs of people belonging to the different groups?

Photo of Andrej Pejic via models.com

Nicolas Nassim-Taleb, author of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” and professor of risk engineering at New York University, wrote a brief but throught-provoking piece envisioning a future scenario for The Economist. Taleb looks at the world in 2036 and envisions “what will break, and what won’t”. Among other things, he sees top-down nation-states withering away in favor of city-states and statelings. The world will see waves of biological and electronic pandemics, a revival of religious thought etc. Rightfully, Taleb foresees many technologies we know today – at least the robust solutions – to still be around, while others will have been superseded by ‘better’ successors.

Enjoy your read.

Image via this blog.

BaR2D2 serves drinks, Asimo walks the planet as man’s new best friend, NASA’s Robonaut 2 takes to space and loves to twitter. Robots continue to inspire. Several exhibitions currently on show give a glimpse of some highly creative – even poetic – robotic tinkering by artists.

Hangar311 in Mechelen (B), puts the inspiring work of Stéphane Halleux on show. Tinguely meets ToyStory in a steampunk version.

Our friends over at the Maison d’Ailleurs in Yverdon-les-Bains (CH) focus on the work of new media artist, author and theorist Ken Rinaldo in their exhibition entitled “Do robots dream of spring?”.

Ken Rinaldo’s art promotes communication between species. By creating immersive environments, the artist presents works to be experienced. He puts human beings in our rightful place, one that is integrated into vast systems, of which we are simultaneously the architects, the prisoners and the custodians. He shows us that our environment is an immense meeting place where worlds collide, a place of shifting borders, which he encourages us to explore.

The Tinguely Museum (in cooperation with Kunsthaus Graz) takes a closer look at artificial intelligence and robotics in their 1000m2 exhibition Robot Dreams.

Enjoy!

Future scenarios serve various purposes, one of which is to provide a contextual source of inspiration for new concepts for products/services/experiences. Throughout the years, working with scenarios as such in our participatory workshops brought to the surface many interesting insights.

For example, lately there appears to be an increasing tendency among people to stay away from the design of new physical objects as carriers of solutions for existing and possible future challenges. A few years ago, this still used to be different. Novelty, innovation, creativity used to be correlated rather unilaterally with new stuff. Now, the attempts of a growing number of participants in for example idea-generation or lo-fi prototyping/thinking-with-your-hands sessions that we organize, appear to be oriented towards trying to un-think ‘stuff’, to build further upon already existing ‘infrastructure’ or platforms for solutions, e.g. smartphones, social networks, etc.

A preliminary closer look at this phenomenon leads us to a series of possible explanations, which are most likely interrelated.

First, sustainability has become a top future challenge to most people, leading to a more critical stance when it comes to conceptualizing yet another physical object/product. Second, a paradigmatic shift has taken place in the way many of our technological tools have evolved: from mono-use type of objects, over multi-use, many of our tools have become platforms of/for solutions. Hence one can extend them, build upon them without the need for something completely new. Think apps, think modular hardware bodies combined with upgradeable software, open standards, etc. Third, thinking of solutions in terms of services is becoming more common. In many cases the services are the solutions without a new tangible product. Fourth, many of the major challenges identified when it comes to the future are increasingly complex and deal with designing for behavioural change, shifting focus to a people-based how? rather than an objects-based what?.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Social, cultural and economic context obviously also plays a role in whether people tend to focus on designing things vs. designing solutions.  Nevertheless these observations lead to interesting questions when it comes to a changing attitude of innovation, of design, and also of the  kind of skills and insights we would like tomorrow’s problem solvers and solution providers to have. Perhaps it is but a mere rediscovery of the notion of a solution, a broadening of its scope, beyond its most physical embodiment. A shift worth exploring further …