N.E.M.O. project

A Thousand Tomorrows 26/04/2011 11:50

Look at any megatrend overview and ‘migration‘ will be mentioned somewhere, somehow as a significant driver of change. The recent events in Northern Africa have made it clear once again that events of major socio-political and socio-economic change catalyze the push and pull dynamics of migration. The recurring images of sinking boats of African immigrants as they try to make it across the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa in the past few weeks are a painful example of the challenges posed.

Félix de Montesquiou and Hugo Kaici – architecture students at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris – decided to give architectural shape to the migration debate and a world in which illegal trafficking of people across the channel is cast in stone. In a neat piece of design fiction, they envisioned N.E.M.O. – the Northern Europe Migrants Organisation – an organization with headquarters disguised as a WWII bunker near the port of Calais in France. N.E.M.O. would help customers migrate illegally from Europe to the UK.

Via Dezeen

futurestates

A Thousand Tomorrows 18/04/2011 15:38

“What if you were given a glimpse into what America will be like 20, 30, or even 50 years from now? Would it change the way you live today?” Spurred by these questions the Independent Television Service launches the second season of Futurestates on PBS. Ten short films portray ten visions of the future by ten indie filmmakers. Stories gravitate towards issues concerning environmental and economic challenges, but also revolve around soci-cultural topics.

There appears to be a surge in attention across media towards speculative – what if …? – futures as a genre rather than straight-up scifi, an evolution which is fascinating to say the least. It remains up to the critical eye of the beholder to decide to which extent the Futurestates short-films paint stimulating futures – whether bleak or encouraging – or rather mostly project extrapolations of today’s sentiments and challenges. Moreover, considering shifting geopolitical, geosocial, geoeconomic, geo-everything balances, it would be enriching to see more examples of how people from other countries, other cultures envision their futures. Not only would they bring other types of narratives, they would also pose different questions, paint different solutions to the samen and different challenges.

america 2049

A Thousand Tomorrows 14/04/2011 20:28

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 populations 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

play for change

A Thousand Tomorrows 08/04/2011 11:56

In his bestseller The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki elaborates on the belief that given a certain problem or challenge, large groups of people will come up with better ideas and solutions than a small group of specialists.

Combining this principle with Bill Joys Law – “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else – companies are increasingly starting to mobilize crowds in order to come to innovative ideas. According to futurist consultancy Toffler Associates (40 for the next 40) “Technologies will not be developed in-house. Successful organizations will become adept at integrating large problem-solver networks, linking answer seekers with problem solvers across the globe to rapidly harness the brainpower of international experts.” InnoCentive is good example here.

Many multinationals recently developed platforms in order to collect ideas in the field of social and environmental innovation. See for example Toyota’s Ideas for Good, Sony’s Open Planet Ideas and Pepsi’s Refresh Everything. Undoubtedly contributors will come up with many fascinating ideas, but the real challenge in solving social and environmental issues might not be to come up with a set of innovative ideas itself, but to find ways oto motivate people to act upon them. As Richard Ashcroft puts it:

Usually what drives me is circumstance, habit and short term reward. So the trick is to find ways to rewire my habits, change my circumstances, and make the rewards pull me in ways I want to go, and not in ways that are harmful to me. “

So its not only about understanding a situation, but just as well about being provided with incentives to solve a problem, to overcome a bad habit, let go of a temptation or do something about one’s laziness. In order to support ones willpower and to increase ones karma FrogDesign developed the temptd. This app, specifically designed in order to improve personal health, aims to build a community of supporters, as well as professional coaches and trainers, to support youth at moments when they need it the most: Temptd makes even the smallest decisions meaningful as part of a game in which ‘players’ benefit from helping each other and themselves.

So in the future we might not need (just) the wisdom of crowds, but rather the social pressure and the competition of crowds (Bills Law of Joy ;-)) in order to make the world a better place?

We might, according to Jane McGonigal, need to find a way to motivate gamers – which seem to be perfectly able to effectively collaborate in order to achieve personal and communal goals – to apply their skills in the real world instead of in the virtual world. Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR foresees that in the next decade the framework in which the motivations and how we actually influence peoples behavior is being decided upon. Im curious what external forces might drive me in the future…

Image by MrToledano

a touch of glass

A Thousand Tomorrows 08/04/2011 11:44

High-end glass (and ceramics) producer Corning recently created a nice video showing a day in the life of a family in a world of … glass. The video basically shows the world as one big touch screen (without greasy fingers). Obviously, from today’s perspective, the success of touchscreens are one big pointer to a future of ‘more’. Yet, there are also various elements equally present in today’s world that point in other directions.

One the one hand, while there is plenty of room for innovative and more natural interaction patterns – touch definitely being one of them, but also gesture of course – there are also plenty of worries abound that the increasing amounts of information, presented visually in our daily environments, are leading to situations of sensorial and cognitive overload on the user end. On the other hand, glass is not the only material able to render surfaces and the world around us interactive. Just think about all the advances in smart textiles (check out also Ryan and Francesca’s inspiring work over at CuteCircuit as well as that of Marina over at by-wire) or the skin as an interface (see also CMU’s Chris Harrison’s Skinput and a previous blogpost on “skinterfaces“).

The future of touch also goes beyond the ‘one-way’ touch that we are currently used to. Bayer Material Science and its subsidiary Artificial Muscle for example, developed electroactive polymers that enable devices and screens to provide tactile feedback. In other words, the surface might be smooth, but you feel texture.

On a sidenote … While many still associate the advent of touch screens with the launch of the iPhone and derivatives or Jeff Han‘s large-format interactive screens, the history of many of the interaction patterns involved goes back to the nineties. In 1999, for example, the former GMD-IPSI’s (now Frauenhofer-IPSI) Ambiente Lab – active in CSCW and other areas – presented their vision of workplaces of the future entitled i-LAND. Already, one could tap, swipe, even push documents from an interactive table to an interactive wall.

Image is still from the Corning video

phantom futures

A Thousand Tomorrows 07/04/2011 18:33

“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

open competition

A Thousand Tomorrows 07/04/2011 17:32

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

a history of the future in 100 objects

A Thousand Tomorrows 13/02/2011 20:11

“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

politics & the long term

A Thousand Tomorrows 12/02/2011 18:21

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?

smoke signals

A Thousand Tomorrows 09/02/2011 21:39

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

Showing page 2 of 4
<< Previous 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next >>

Direct Feed