I recently had the pleasure of co-teaching a one week scenario planning course to a group of students at the University Scholars Programme (USP) of the National University of Singapore.

I co-taught the course with three of my favourite friends and foresight practitioners; Aaron Maniam, Stuart Candy and Teddy Zmrhal.  These are some of the most talented practitioners I know, each in their own domain, and it was a real joy to be together.  We also met a large slice of Singapore’s talented foresight community, ranging from my peers in the PM’s Office and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, to academics at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS and the Civil Service College.

The video above summarizes the whole week (click through to Vimeo to view it in HD).  One of the best parts was the student presentations at the end.  Instead of a traditional scenario report, we asked them to present their thinking in the form of an experiential exercise.  Students chose a variety of topics, but in the end focused on the following four themes:

• The Future of Intimacy
• The Future of Education
• The Future of Spiritual Experience
• The Future of South East Asian Cities

Although they had less than 48 hours to prepare their presentations, the students surprised us with their inventiveness and creativity. The Future of Spiritual Experience group, for example, created a scenario in which neurochemical technology could act as a plausible mimic for the spiritual experience, but where the  government outlawed such practices.  The result was a criminal underground of “Pilgrimage Pill” takers clustered around a spiritual leader / mob-boss responsible for the production and import of the pills.

Instead of telling us about this in PowerPoint, the group presented their research in the form a courtroom trial.  We, the audience, were the jury and bore the responsibility of deciding the fate of the captured “Pope Father”; the leader of the criminal insurgency of chemical spiritualists.

The group presented details of their scenario in the form of evidence against him.  It was fascinating and, just as we were about to cast our vote of guilty or not, his followers burst into the room to liberate him in a running gunfight.  It was a brilliant and thoroughly immersive.

Other groups had equally compelling presentations, ranging from a visit to a new government-sponsored school, to a dialogue between the residents and staff of a gated community in the Philippines, and a visit to the Museum of Intimacy Past; which traced the evolution of intimacy in a highly regulated state environment.

The course covered:

• Systemic change and the history of scenario planning
• The role of social and cognitive bias in decision-making
• Horizon scanning and trend analysis
• Interpretation and synthesis of emerging issues
• Basics of scenario creation and analysis
• Implications assessment and stakeholder analysis
• Experiential futures to communicate scenario products
• Introduction to service, product and policy design in a futures context

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching with Aaron, Stuart and Teddy.  I think we learned as much from each other as I hope the students did from us.

Although we didn’t get the chance to cover some of the more advanced aspects I had hoped for (such as systems thinking, crowdsourcing and other things), we all look forward to teaching together again soon.

Thank you to all the students and guests who helped to make this happen.

I’m honored to have two chapters included in the recent new book, “The Future of Futures“, published by the Association of Professional Futurists.

The book explores emerging issues in scenario planning and foresight. My first chapter, reproduced below, is about the effect of crowdsourcing, big data and the web on scenario planning and foresight.   You can also download a formatted PDF of the chapter.

The second chapter is about design fiction, experiential futures and the role of visual media.  You can read that chapter here.

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Crowdsourced Futures

by Noah Raford, PhD

Jeff Howe defined crowdsourcing as, “the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call.” Under this definition, many parts of the futures process could be “outsourced to the crowd,” at least in theory.

In practice, however, most crowdsourcing efforts related to futures and scenario work address only the earliest stages of the process, those related to environmental scanning and the collection of drivers. While there are exceptions, the bulk of futures’ examples that have engaged crowdsourcing techniques focus on this early stage. There are excellent examples ranging from trend databases such as Shaping Tomorrow to weak signal databases such as TrendWiki. Many advertising and creative services agencies practice similar forms of environmental scanning as well, more commonly known as ‘cool hunting.’

This kind of approach is an important one. Evidence suggests that the Web can enhance both the breadth and depth of our horizon scanning activities by, for example, providing ‘always-on’ monitoring and ‘at your fingertips’ evidence for almost any weak signal or emerging trend.

Pitfalls of Crowdsourcing

My own experience testing these approaches, however, suggests that the use of the Web in this way has several pitfalls. On the upside, crowdsourcing the ‘drivers’ process can provide an order of magnitude increase in speed, depth and breadth over a traditional scanning exercise. It also allows more people to be involved, over a shorter period of time, with demonstrably more disciplines, groups and geographies represented. On the other hand, as any first year statistics student will tell you, “data does not equal meaning.”

Unfortunately, more participation does not necessarily mean better participation, enhanced learning or increased understanding. The paradoxical effect of more and faster data collection can also, as Jaron Lanier suggests, be less understanding and a greater analytical burden on the practitioner. Whereas past processes may have been slow and cumbersome by today’s standards, the difficult process of discovery often allowed time for inductive synthesis and integration of opposing viewpoints, creating meaning even as the trends and drivers are still being uncovered and understood. From a social perspective, many crowdsourcing contributions are essentially one–way, in which the contributor invites the futurist to pay attention to something they have found interesting. Whereas participation in a workshop or scanning exercise often meant engagement in a dialogue, with the potential for pedagogical outcomes, simply adding data to a system through a series of clicks does not offer the same potential.

Participation Problems

Next generation futures systems will therefore have to address the synthesis and interpretation of results in a way that is more substantial and useful than most crowdsourcing solutions today. At the same time, they will also need to engage the social dynamics of participation more directly; why people contribute, what they get out of it, and how it factors into the final product (which will most likely be for a very different, paying, audience).

Many interesting experiments are currently under way that point towards promising opportunities. Yet while it is fairly certain that the use of Web-based participation and content creation in futures work is here to stay, the form it will take is still open. In the meantime, the promise of speed and efficiency gains is likely to produce continued demand for the development of such systems, especially as ‘big data’ and algorithmic clustering of content becomes more common.

Speeding Up and Dumbing Down

The result will be, at least in the short-term, both a speeding up and a dumbing down of the process, with certain kinds of analytical exercises yielding to the pressures of commodification and automation before others. This can be seen already in the field, where many ‘non-futurist’ companies provide similar trend tracking and monitoring services, delivered by non-specialists, far more cheaply, with reasonably good results. Similar things have happened right across the service sector, from graphic design to accountancy. Specialists have responded by becoming more adept at more complex projects and more difficult problems. It seems naïve to imagine that futures will somehow escape such a powerful driver of change.

Both Simpler and Richer

If the futures field does follow the same path as other service sectors, we can expect simpler tasks to become quicker, cheaper, and less profitable, while futurists need to demonstrate greater capability to earn the trust of clients. Parts of the product will be less ‘original’ or ‘insightful’ by today’s handmade standards, but this should free resources for richer analysis of depth and complexity. It is therefore possible that the ‘future of futures’ may resemble something akin to modern day psychotherapy; anyone will be able to get free (and possibly even accurate) advice from their horoscopes at the back of the newspaper. But professional, personalized service will still come from a cadre of expensive, highly trained, personally trusted advisors; even if the empirical validity of both may still be open to question.

***

UPDATE: There is an excellent summary of the entire book by Andrew Curry, the main editor of the book, on his website.  You can also buy the complete book here.

This is the second chapter I wrote for the book, “The Future of Futures“. It explores the role design fiction, experiential futures and visual media in foresight work.  It also includes several examples of good design fiction, which are formatted nicely in the original publication.  Download this chapter as a formatted PDF, here.

I have another chapter in the book, which is about the effect of crowdsourcing, big data and the web on scenario planning and foresight.   You can read it here.

 ***

From Design Fiction to Experiential Futures

by Noah Raford, PhD

Experiential futures, design fiction, artifacts from the future or speculative fiction.  Regardless of its name, there has been a surge in this kind of futures work in the last 24 months. Advocates such as Stuart Candy, Bruce Sterling, Anab Jain, Justin Pickard, Nicolas Nova and Julian Bleeker argue that design-based futures are not just a shiny form of communication, but are a distinct way of practicing futures research itself. Highly visual, often emotional, and ethnographically infused, their approach brings the future alive through videos, objects, and print media. The result, they argue, is a profoundly engaging experience that goes beyond technical reports and PowerPoint presentations towards a new level of engagement.

Of course, “experiential” and immersive activities have always played an important role in certain kinds of futures work, particularly in the early days of scenario practice at GBN. The very notion of a “learning journey”, for example, is perhaps the most immersive, experiential activity possible. But a new generation of practitioners are tackling some core issues of foresight with a fresh eye, bringing a liberal dose of creativity that is both powerful and engaging. Straddling the worlds of visual media, theater, film making, industrial design, and management consulting, design futures may be coming into its own as a distinct sub-discipline.

There are important differences between experiential futures, design futures, and speculative fiction, but for the purposes of this essay, I would like instead to emphasize their similarities. Most design futures strive to create a rich, textured, often-first person immersion in a credible alternate world through the use of multiple media and storytelling techniques. The best examples also seek to evoke the everyday richness of life in a “thick” way, going beyond the obvious layers to explore more subtle “scents and sounds” of an alternative future in more emotional, evocative ways. In doing so, design futures uses the familiar and everyday to help achieve the futurist’s goal of “making the familiar strange and the strange, familiar” (in the words of Stewart Brand). The attention to detail in many such projects, whether physical, visual or textual, helps to immerse the viewer in a direct narrative relationship with the material. This can produce profound insight into the kinds of products, services and stakeholders who may inhabit this scenario.

These approaches come with certain risks, however. Because they can so powerfully create a compelling, self-contained experience for the viewer, design futures are often at risk of producing visually rich, but analytically impoverished, outputs. Corning, the industrial glass manufacturer responsible for the wildly successful “A Day Made of Glass” videos, is a case in point. Although it is a beautifully made video and a masterpiece of public relations, critics point out that it lacks the most basic considerations of causal relationships and interactive effects. As a piece of film-making, it is engaging. As a piece of scenarios work, however, it falls below the mark.

While many argue that it is not Corning’s job to produce rigorous scenarios of the future (and they are right), this example illustrates how easy it can be to produce a visually rich design that is “all sizzle and no sausage”. It is therefore of particular importance for practicing futurists to use these approaches in combination with other forms of research and analysis. Even better, practicing futurists should work closely with new entrants to the field to help improve everyone’s practice. Such a synthesis would reinvigorate futures practice while bringing new rigor and insight to the design process.

Experiential futures is a powerful addition to the foresight toolbox.  It is doubly important because many of its leading practitioners are from outside the self-defined futures community. This include artists, designers, science fiction authors, video game creators and film-makers. The varied interests and agendas of these groups suggests that design futures will be an important source of continued inspiration, negotiation and creative tension for the foresight community in the coming years. While it may not be a generational shift of Kuhnian proportion, it does represent a turn in futures work that is both vital and important to the future of the field. It is for this reason that we present the following examples of interesting design futures in this volume.

Examples

Superflux, Song of the Machine

‘Song of The Machine takes real-world science and imaginatively pushes it to its limits. [It's] a great example of how science and engineering illuminate what’s possible while design helps zero in on what’s preferable.’ — John Pavlus, Co.Design, June 2011”

“What if we could change our view of the world with the flick of a switch?” This is the question posed by the design futures consultancy, Superflux Studios based in London.  In the short video, “Song of the Machine”,  they track the everyday life of a single person as he goes about his business; totally blind, were it not for the help of a retinal prostheses which can see infrared, ultraviolet and visible spectrums.

Funded by Science Dublin and with support of real-world optogenetic scientists, the video is so powerful because it is so quotidian.  One young man’s day is tracked in intimate detail – riding on the train, meeting a friend – except augmented with a fantastic technology rendered normal through every day use.

Fly Me to the Moon

“Fly Me to the Moon” is a short video developed by APF member Heather Schlegel for the financial transaction company, SWIFT.  On the surface, it explores the future for electronic payments. Beyond that, it explores how concepts of trust, identity, ease, convenience and technology will interact with money in the future.  It is told with realistic characters, emotion and social meaning, embedded in an everyday world of remarkable richness and depth.

Four friends sit around a restaurant table, chatting about old stories.  One, a pilot, discusses how fun it is flying into space for her job.  The friends discuss space tourism with the kind of casual amazement that one would an experience backstage at a concert.  It is amazing, but not earth shattering.  Why?  Because like all things, it has already become part of the fabric of everyday life.

This project is subtle and compelling.  Like the best kinds of design future hybrids, it is also well researched and rich with strategic insight.  It thus works as an excellent piece of futures research and as an engaging piece of media and entertainment. Even more interesting, it does so with practically no special effects or high technology.

Auction of the Future

Ethnographic design futurist Scott Smith suggests that one of the most compelling aspects of design fiction is the use of physical objects as entry points into a conversation about the future (as opposed to just the end-product).  The “Auction from the Future”, from artist Hollington & Kyprianou, does just this.  A fictitious auction house, dubbed Adams & Smith (founded in 2034) hosts an auction in the year 2059 of early 21^st century collectable products.  It includes a gallery exhibit of the objects, a printed and online catalogue, and a live auction event with theatrics, staging and full production.

Some of the items on auction include the Double Buggy Perambulator, a “used, but well conserved double buggy perambulator [that] is a wonderful reminder of the folly of unrestricted growth of the human population before the Last Depression.” A pack of cigarettes was included with the curatorial observation that, “one of the most interesting aspects of late capitalist culture – and one that should be remembered whenever comrades may feel our current struggles and problems overwhelming – was the self-destructive nature of so many of the desperate people who had the misfortune of populating it.”

Lot Number 8, a “genuine example of late capitalist water contained in an original, scientifically-verified as sealed plastic container,” is included as an example of the commodification of public goods, and a box of Paracetemol prompts the reflection that, “one of the many curiosities of the late capitalist period was the way in which populations were controlled via medication and health policies. This was carried out by governments on behalf of major pharmaceutical companies

The project’s fictional world represents one where global consumer capitalism has eaten itself, consumed by the pace of hyperconsumption, giving way to an anarch-communalist kind of local resilient economy.  “Each lot reveals a curious aspect of that bygone age, shedding light on the odd and dangerously contradictory practices of the time,” they write.

Although not a ‘futures’ project, it is an excellent demonstration of how everyday objects can be used to spark a conversation about what may seem absurd or unthinkable in the past, or indeed, in the future.

Ark, Inc.

“Despite repeated warnings that we are fast approaching a point of no return, the world’s governments (and ourselves) pay these issues little more than lip service.”

ARK-INC is a fictional company and set of products created by designer Jon Ardern (also of Superflux fame).  The company, “offers products and services as investments in the creation of a ‘post-crash’ portfolio that will hold or gain value as the world of traditional economics crumbles.”

In addition to a compelling, post-disaster shop front which customers can visit, ARK-INC developed a series of “Second Life” products, such as the ARK RADIO; a high design radio that would look at home on any stylish, cotemporary table. After the collapse, however, the product can be converted to run on solar power and operate as an encrypted two-way audio and data transmission device, thereby granting the user a communications network after social or economic collapse.

The products, publication, installation, website and accompanying videos demonstrate the power of cross-platform “transmedia” approaches.  It was so convincing, in fact, that despite clear notices on the website, Ardern continues to receive inquiries by concerned collapsitarians seeking to purchase his devices.

Calling such an approach “superfiction”, ARK-INC demonstrates yet other way that design can be used to create not only compelling visions of tomorrow, but also powerful lenses to re-interpret today.

Our Plastic Century

“Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.” – Leon Kass

Futurists Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagan sought to create an installation that would trigger “the wisdom of repugnance” in their project, Our Plastic Century; an attempt to visualize and extrapolate trends in ocean pollution debuted at the California Academy of Sciences in 2010.

The projectPlastic Century consists of four large water coolers filled with plastic debris representing the total amount of plastic produced and existing on Earth at four different points in time: the birth of Jacques Cousteau (1910), at 1960, at the present, and forecast out to 2030.

“Our goals for the project were three-fold.  First, we wanted to show, in a compelling way, the exponential growth of plastic production over the last 100 years, and project the levels into the future if no interventions are taken. Second, we wanted to demonstrate that water, pollution, and humans are intimately connected; plastic doesn’t go “away.” And third, we sought to trigger the “wisdom of repugnance” and install a level of disgust that will stick with people beyond the initial experience.”

The project uses an intensely visual and intuitive approach, provoking a powerful reaction from its viewers. Although not a scenario project, the projection of plastic accumulation evoked the futurist’s goal of “making the familiar strange and the strange, familiar”. “We are trying to recalibrate people’s reality,” write Candy and Dunagan.  In its simplicity and museum exhibition formatting, the installation successful transports the viewer into a future world, grabs them emotionally, and then suggests new ways of seeing their behavior today with renewed clarity.

***

UPDATE: There is an excellent summary of the entire book by Andrew Curry, the main editor of the book, on his website.  You can also buy the complete book here.

It all began a year ago, when I first visited DragonMart.

DragonMart is a building in Dubai, shaped like a 1.2 kilometer long dragon.  It houses about 4,000 shops the size of small closets and is the biggest reseller of Chinese goods outside of China.

You can buy everything at DragonMart, from “iPads” running Android to industrial-sized chicken hatcheries. It is like the source code for global material culture and you can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the weird and wonderful things on display.  Take, for example, this t-shirt, which I picked up for about $4 USD.  Is that even a real language?

The thing that captured my imagination most was the remote-control helicopters. With cameras. Yes, remote-control helicopters with cameras; aka, a DIY drone.

You can see where this is going… Who hasn’t dreamed of owning a drone? It’s like catnip for futurists. The bragging rights alone would be worth it.

“Yeah, I built my own drone. Check it out on YouTube.”  

Becoming a Droner

This weekend, in honor of Father’s Day, I decided to act on my fancy.  My son and I went back to DragonMart and, after digging around in a few shops, found a helicopter with an HD video camera for about $75 USD.

“Don’t you have anything that broadcasts live footage,” I asked.  No, apparently those are illegal in the UAE.

As we were paying, I could hear early an early Bruce Sterling/Gibsonian voice-over in my head…

He slipped on his mirrorshades, jacked into the local blacknet and checked out the going rate for ‘copter drones.  The Chinese expat living in the shop (a neon slit the size of a closet filled with mostly legal tele-robotics fresh off the fabs) couldn’t have been older than 16.  But the kid haggled well and looked like he hadn’t slept in days, so there was no point in fighting over a few extra creds.  Besides, once this gig was over, he’d certainly be able to afford it.

Afterwards, I noticed a TV playing live CCTV footage from the Chinese space mission.

I was buying a DIY surveillance drone in a Chinese outlet shop in Dubai.  And a Chinese space craft was docking with the space station high above me.

I was sure that, at that moment, I was the the coolest futurist alive.

The Unboxing

I was so excited that the disappointment of how flimsy the thing was, and how not HD the camera was, barely even registered once I got home and opened the box.  Heck, if I only got one good shot of the neighbor’s yard for YouTube, that would be cool enough.

So laughing with glee, my four year-old son and I snuck outside, dropped it in the driveway, and powered it up.

At which point it shot straight up 50 feet, got caught in a crosswind, flew over the garden wall and out of sight.

“OH NO!!!!” I yelled. “What is happening?!?!”

My son started crying.

It All Goes Wrong

Visions of the helicopter dropping out of the sky and smashing into a passing car began running through my head.

I did the only thing I could do; jammed it to maximum altitude, tried to keep it pointed towards the wind, and jumped into my car to chase it down.

Of course the bloody thing’s motors weren’t strong enough to contend with the breeze! What did I expect for $75 dollars?  I bought it at DragonMart!

“FUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!”

My son started laughing again.

The Chase

What transpired next what a comedy of errors.

By now, the drone had drifted out of sight and, by my reckoning, was right above the four lane highway nearby.

I tore out of my driveway, RC controller waving, craning my neck out of the window to catch sight of it. What I saw took my fear of vehicular manslaughter and turned it to Level 10. Coming around the corner, I saw two police-cars already on the scene, driving slowly past where I imagined the drone to have crashed.

It was at this point I realized my son hadn’t put his seat belt on, nor had he decided to wear trousers out of the house.  How was I going to explain that to the cops?

“STAY DOWN!”, I yelled, jamming the RC controller in his lap and hiding him as if he were a wanted criminal.

He stopped laughing and started to cry.  Again.

The Search

Thankfully, the drone hadn’t smashed into the highway and killed anyway, at least as far as I could tell. And the cops weren’t looking for me.

But unfortunately, neither had it drifted quietly to a stop in a nearby vacant lot.

In fact, it had totally disappeared!

After racing around the block a few times, peaking over my neighbors’ walls, and checking Google Maps, I decided that I was going to have to take extreme action; knock on the neighbor’s doors.

In America or the UK, this would have been no big deal.  But in Dubai, you never know what you’ll find.  Many people consider the privacy of their home to be sacrosanct; especially when it comes to their wives and daughters.  Some people just don’t take kindly to strange, sweaty white men ringing their bell at odd hours on a Sunday afternoon.

Thankfully, no one called the police on me and, in fact, I found out that I have some pretty nice neighbors.  But no drone. I had to conclude the my first DIY drone experiment was a failure.

I fought the drones, and the drones won.

Epilogue

By now, my son was laughing again and was as happy as could be with our crazy adventure.  I hadn’t killed anyone with the thing (that I know of), so at least that counted as a win, too.

But what was the lesson?  Should I give up my drone fantasies?

No, my friend.  Quite the opposite.

Next time, I just have to buy a bigger helicopter.

Here is an interesting early arrival in the coming boom of 3D printing.

The Dubai-based company Precise Concepts is offering a service called This Is Me, which sells 3D scanned and 3D printed copies of yourself.

A 6-inch, full color statue costs about $300 – $400 USD, which they scan and print off-site. The statues are made of a plastic resin with full-color print, relatively realistic phototexturing.

What is interesting about this is that they offer the service from a kiosk in the mall.  I found this one at the Mall of the Emirates, in Dubai, which sells the typical range of other tourist items, such as crystal buildings, custom printed mobile phone covers, your face in a crystal cube, etc.  Although the process isn’t instant, it is presented just like any other retail item you would buy in the mall.  In other words, the relatively strange and unusual technology of 3D printing is already leaking into mainstream life with total fluidity.

Here is how it works.  First, they take you to their studio facility just across the street from the Mall.  Then, they scan you in a process which takes about 15 to 20 minutes to take several shots.  Then the technician cleans the data in front of you, and the model is sent to the printer next door.  According to the website, printing “takes 4 to 6 hours to complete… followed by an additional 1.5 hours of curing.”  It is then “dipped in a special glue solution to harden the surface” in a process which, start to finish, takes about 8 to 10 days.

The site doesn’t mention what kind of printer they are using, but the promotion video looks like they are using a ZCorp 650, which costs about $60,000 USD.  This is one of the standard machines used by Shapeways, for example.  Material costs are about 20 cents (USD) per cubic centimeter, so the TIM service is clearly a money maker.

Quite an impressive demonstration of 3D printing in the consumer market.  The resolution of the prints is not fantastic, but the marketing and targeting is.  This press release indicates that Precise Concepts has also partnered with a toy manufacturer in the region, although it isn’t clear if they are actually manufacturing toys with their printers.  In any case, the TIM service makes them one of the leaders in 3D printing in the region, in my opinion, and an exciting indicator of bigger things to come.

More photos and the company’s promotional video can be found below.

Several people also asked me for good examples of futures videos done right (that aren’t about mud). You should check out the comments in “On Glass & Mud” for a deeper  discussion of ethics and responsibility in design futures.

In the mean time, here are three examples of what I think are excellent examples of design futures.

Children of Men

One of the best examples of design fiction that I have ever seen is “Children of Men“. As a feature-length film, it does more to represent the fine textures of everyday life in a well-researched future better than almost any other project (even if you don’t agree with the world it paints).

Check out Slavoj Zizek’s praise for the movie on YouTube (embed disabled for some annoying reason), in which he draws the crucial distinction between the foreground of the story and the background of the meaning.  This is an important theme which differentiates overly narrow, autistic design fiction from rich, well-texture design fiction which does not ignore the material realities of change.

Song of the Machine

Outside of the feature film category, Superflux Studio’s “Song of the Machine”, winner of the Postscapes 2011 Prize for the Best Design Fiction, is an excellent example of how short videos about the future should be done.

I love “Song of the Machine” because it is grounded in serious research (optogenetics and augmented reality), but doesn’t make too big a big deal out of it. Instead, it focuses on the emotional, social and human aspects of how such technology might integrate with real life. The actor, Justin Pickard, still lives in a regular flat, the weather in London is still awful, and he still takes the Tube to work. Yes, you have AR overlays in the city-scape around you, but they aren’t so in your face as to or world-shaping as to be incredulous. And everyone is not rich, white, and perfectly psychologically balanced, either.

“Song of the Machine” does what any good futures project should do; it draws you in, challenges you, teaches you something new and leaves you looking at the world in a slightly different, hopefully better, way. Will AR-enabled optogenetics change the world? No, probably not for most of us. But they could allow a certain segment of society (the blind) to participate in regular, everyday life in a way that they currently can’t.  And this video is pitch-perfect representation of how that might work and what life might be like as a result.

Fly Me to the Moon

Another excellent example is Heather Schlegel’s, “Fly Me to the Moon”.  This short video was developed on the back of a serious futures project for the financial transaction company, SWIFT (and was a finalist for the “Most Important Futures Work” by the Association of Professional Futurists).  It explores a future for electronic payment, but it is so much more than just that.  It also explores issues of trust, identity, ease, convenience and technology, embedded in a real world of characters, emotion and social meaning.

Four friends sit around a restaurant table, chatting about old stories.  One, a pilot (for commercial space tourism, it is revealed) discusses how fun it is flying into space.  They have this discussion with the same kind of casual amazement that we would discuss a friend’s experience backstage at a concert for their favorite band.  It is amazing, but not earth shattering.  Why?  Because like all things, it has already become part of the fabric of everyday life.

When the time comes to split the bill (a common, everyday activity), their banter reveals different perspectives about the cashless economy. One expresses concern over whether or not his data is really anonymous.  Another dismisses his concerns as trivial.  A third uses a key fob to pay the tip in the equivalent of frequent flyer miles.

All of this is subtle, nuanced and evocative, but also well researched and rich.  It is also packed with strategic insight into consumer behavior.  It works both as an excellent piece of futures research, and as an engaging piece of media and entertainment. And it does this with practically no special effects or high technology what-so-ever.

Towards Better Design Fiction

All of these examples are both measured and moving in equal parts.  One is from the world of entertainment, another from academia and serious research, and the last from commercial foresight and corporate communications.  And yet they they all have meaning and breadth far beyond their topic.  Like Zizek said of Children of Men, their power is in their background detail. They address, even if just in passing, a wide range of other issues that reflect a rich investment in thinking about how the complex, messy future might be.

If these videos were selling a product, I’d buy it. If they were asking me to participate in a project, I’d participate. If they were highlighting a brand, I’d like it even more. If Corning has Asperger’s Syndrome, than designer futurists like Superflux and Heather Schlegel are the emotional geniuses on the block. Their videos appeal directly to the viewer in a clear, authentic way. You feel connected to the characters and their issues, and by implication, to the subject of the video and its sponsors.

The more design fiction can engage a broad, robust set of trends and emotions, the more effective it well be; whether corporate or otherwise. So stay positive and lets aim for more examples like these. “Thick” futures, ethical honesty and wonderful visual design.  It couldn’t get any better than this.

Socially awkward futures videos

Asperger’s Design Fiction

I’m a fan of design-based futures work (a.k.a. “design fiction“). Videos, in particular, can be a very effective way of engaging people in complex, subtle and nuanced explorations of the future.

I always applaud companies that give it a shot, especially when it represents a big step away from “business as usual” for them. That is why it is too bad that a lot of corporate design fiction suffers from the commercial equivalent of Asperger’s Syndrome.

Take the enormously popular “A Day Made of Glass“.  This slick, high-gloss, promotional video from glass manufacturer Corning received over 17 million views on YouTube and garnered widespread media coverage.  So much so, in fact, that Corning made a second one, soon to be released at its own stylish launch party somewhere in New York (*See Update, below).  Marketing Daily called it, “the most watched corporate video of all time.”

Reactions to the video varied.  Most were positive; design and architecture students in particular (not to mention glass manufacturers and those in the CPG business) gushed over it. One typical comment was:

Love this! … It would be awesome to see this level of technological, lifestyle integration… the idealist in me gets really excited about it.

But not everyone was so positive.  YouTube user (apocalex13) commented:

Remember those “house of the future” videos from the 60′s, 70′s, etc. and how stupid they look now either because the ideas were eclipsed by modern technology… or just because fashions simply changed?  I’m wondering what the reactions to this video 20-30 years down the line would be like…

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait 20 or 30 years to see their reactions.  Take the following comments from Corning’s official YouTube channel, for example:

If the future looks like this I’m going to kill myself… (laksmann)

I wonder how much Congolians are going to have to be killed for one house, with all the precious metals needed (eethry)

Am I the only one who doesn’t want to be connected to every single person every second of every day? (smitty5ca)

Well apparently the economy is good again in the near future looking forward to that! (judefox2010)

A Thin View of the Future…

Are these users (and this post) just being mean-spirited?  Short-sighted? Pessimistic?  ”It is just a video, for crying out loud”, you say.

Therein lies the challenge of consumer-oriented design fiction (and futures work in general).  These kinds of videos take no consideration of the social, political and economic changes going on around us; changes so profound and fundamental that they make touch-screen glass look like a 2-bit side act to the real drama of the coming decade.  Widespread unemployment, a climate crisis, resource shortages, political re-allignment, labor unrest, and both more outrageous and more mundane scientific advances such as anti-biotic immunity, cheap cell phones and the end of privacy will have far more industry-shattering impact than anything so simple and narrow-minded as ubiquitous information displays.

On the other hand, the production value of the Corning video is extraordinary.  Like those Microsoft “Visions of the Future“, they are well-produced, accessible, and beautiful.  And they should be; Corning paid a small fortune to ad agency Doremus to make their video.

For perspective, Doremus is owned by The Omnicom Group, one of the world’s largest ad agencies.  Omnicom has nearly 70,000 employees worldwide and $12 billion in revenue.  Their behind the scenes blog post lists a huge team involved in its creation; a creative director, film maker, camera lead and executive producer (each with their own staff, I am sure), not to mention a full production house (Rough House) and a dedicated special effects agency (Westernized Productions).  The design, planning and execution of such a task must have taken months, so you can guess how much such high-end production would cost.

Compared to the big budget, big-bang output of teams like Doremus, most futurists don’t have a chance.  Who cares about those pesky details of what the future might really look like when you’ve got over 17 million page views!  ”Stop whining,” I hear the ad agents among you saying. “Haven’t you read Zero History? Bigend wins in the end!”

…That No One Buys

Fortunately, it isn’t just us futures nerds and science-fiction authors that see right through the worst examples of shallow futurism.  It only takes a second to realize that most such efforts are just glossy advertisement, with about as much consideration for how things might really turn out as the average Budweiser commercial.  The parody of Microsoft’s Vision of the Future, below, is a perfect example of the kind of response any sane, reasonably intelligent person should have.

Sophisticated clients such as Corning and others who commission this work should take note: despite the widespread attention given to videos like this, consumers see right through the special effects and glitzy production to the substance beneath. If there is no real substance beneath, it will come back to haunt you.

When it comes to futures work, high-gloss production is no substitute for real ideas and considered implications.  Your message may be widely publicized and you might get tons of page views.  The more you spend, the more likely you will also be to receive awards from your industry buddies.  But you will look silly and naive to the savvy consumers you so desire to attract.  Opinion-shapers like these will not only ignore your message, but most likely ridicule you in public to their friends and colleagues.

By ignoring the careful and considered analysis of real futures practitioners – practitioners who provide industry-critical strategy advice every day to mainstream corporations and governments around the world – you make yourself look foolish and inauthentic to those who you are most desperate to impress.

In the end, Doremus’ behind the scenes blog post has over 20 pages of spam selling Viagra, sunglasses and university degrees.  This is the real future we are living into and this is the ultimate fate of Asperger’s Design Fiction.

Counterpoint: A Future Made of Mud

See the video above for a good counterpoint. This is actually a documentary exploring the tradition of mud architecture in Mali, called “The Future of Mud“.  It is “thick” in all the ways that the Corning video is “thin”.  It evokes personality, emotion, generational struggles, changing social conditions, economic progress and structural change.  It highlights individual people’s relationship and reaction to these changes.  How do they reconcile the tensions of tradition and comfort versus novelty and uncertainty? Do they embrace them?  Do they reject them?

Nothing in this video is clean, and not just because of the subject matter (mud).  Although not explicitly a “futurist” video, it speaks more profoundly and authentically to the kinds of change the vast majority of the world is experiencing now and will likely experience in the future.

We are unlikely to see this level of sophisticated thinking emerge from most design fiction, but it tackles exactly the kinds of issues that many will be struggling with in the future.  As Bruce Sterling said, “Corning doesn’t sell mud.”

That said, we still need more video in futures work and more futures work in product design.  So instead of discouraging the use of video to engage and communicate, designers and futurists working on these projects should consider the follow criteria for making high-quality futures videos that are also profound and thoughtfully reflective of future change.

1. Don’t stare at your navel: Yes, you may be a glass company (or soda company or whatever), but that doesn’t mean the world revolves around glass.  Futures and scenario planning is about exploring how larger, external factors will impact your market segment over time.  Many changes internal to your market are likely to influence the future (technology, etc.), but the more important ones will likely have to do with forces outside of your control (the economy, attitudes towards consumption, political disposition, etc.).  Consider how a broader array of forces will impact who your customers are, what they care about and how this might affect your product.
2. Don’t extrapolate to infinity: It is a natural human tendency to look at today’s trends and extrapolate them into the future forever.  Don’t.  Instead, look at the system of forces which drive or hinder change in your industry, then play those out in a systematic way.
3. Don’t fetishize technology: In short, social change matters more than technological change.  See Andrew Curry’s excellent “The 1910 Time Traveller” for more detail.
4. Don’t ignore what people care about: What is really important to the segment you are trying to reach?  Often, it is themselves and the people around them. If you sell a product targeted at young, technology savvy people, consider what makes them tick.  Do they care about IP?  Do they like to share or horde?  Are they private or public?  Consider how (and why) people will interact differently relative to these issues in the future.  Who will be in charge?  Where will they work?  How will they feel about each other?  The emotional, social aspects of the future are far more important to most people than the technological and material ones.  The more you connect with issues that people care about, but in a new or surprising way, the more people will care about your production and the more effective your videos will be.
5. Don’t dumb it down: You don’t have to write a thesis on identity politics in the 21st century in order to do a good futures video.  But don’t ignore the things that are likely to effect your subject in the future, either.  Most people, especially those viewing your work on the web, will be relatively savvy and sophisticated viewers; doubly so if they actually care about the subject at hand.  The more layers and sophistication you can add, the more they’ll appreciate and enjoy the money you spent thinking about it.

In the end, it is all about layers and depth.  If you are going to spend a fortune on a design fiction video, at least listen to your futures consultants.  It is their job to consider these elements in the same way it is your job to consider the camera, lighting and pacing of a video.

The take-away message is not, “Don’t take a risk on design fiction”.  Quite the opposite.  The message is, “Take a risk on design fiction, but be sure to do it right so that you get the maximum impact and reward for your time.”  Hire (and listen to) what your futures consultants have to say. Working together, you will be able to make just as slick and high-gloss a production as before, except this time it will actually be rich and meaningful, as well.

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UPDATE: This just in; reader Jim Spohrer sent word that the official Corning “Day Made of Glass, Version 2” is out.  It is more of the same.  Check out the glass wall in the Redwoods at 4:18, or have a look at the saccharine “Behind the Scenes” video starring Keanu Reeves’ and Russell Brand’s love child.  I shudder to think…

*******

UPDATE 2:  See my follow-up post “Good Examples of Design Fiction”, based on the comments and discussion below.

PS – Their bio is a bit outdated and I’ve corrected a few links to people I mention in the article.  The following interview differs slightly in this respect, but is otherwise exactly the same.

Interview

Which futurists past and present inspire you and why?

Some of the best futurists out there today are the oldest and the youngest. Guys like Napier Collyns and Kees van der Heijden are seminal. Their generation are the ones who introduced and popularized scenario studies over the last 30 years, and many of them are still around. Most have long since retired, so are far more free with their wisdom, insight and attitudes. They’re like the grand wizards and some groups like the International Futures Forum or the folks at Oxford have really been able to provide an amazing platform for them. Wherever you are, go find a grand wizard of futures work and prostate yourself before them, now. You won’t regret it.

Next, you have the mainstream commercial service firms; most of whom were brought up under the Shell / GBN regime (for better or worse). GBN dominated the futures field for the last 20 years, which produced some amazing results and positive steps forward. They did the hard work of making futures relevant and saleable to the mainstream world. While this brought legitimacy, it also locked out a lot of young players and kind of stifled innovation for an entire generation. There are notable exceptions, of course (Andrew Curry at The Futures Company, sole traders like Wendy Schultz, Hardin Tibbs or Barbara Heinzen, or firms like NormannPartners). But most of the commercial service firms are selling recycled pablum these days, especially the big management consultancies.

Finally, you’ve got all these amazing new, young thinkers pushing far beyond this restraint. They benefited from all the groundwork that GBN and others have laid, but are also able to incorporate new tools, new cultures and new attitudes in an amazingly sophisticated way. Folks like Aaron Maniam in the Government of Singapore, the Superflux crew in London, Stuart Candy at ARUP, Scott Smith at Changeist, the guys and gals at IFTF in Palo Alto (and their alums, like Alex Soojun-Kim Pang), etc. All of those guys are incredibly design savvy, doing incredible work, and have a remarkable sensitivity to the enthographics of power. It is just a joy to see them in action as well, since they’re all so eager and capable of pushing beyond mainstream design work in truly innovative ways.

What are the most challenging aspects of your work as a futurist?

The hardest part about working in future-facing policy or strategy is that, at the end of the day, no one really wants to hear what you have to say. D.H. Lawrence once wrote that Mankind uses belief to put “an umbrella between himself and the everlasting chaos [of the world].”

“Gradually,” he wrote, “[Man] goes bleached and stifled under his parasol. Then comes a poet, enemy of convention, and makes a slit in the umbrella; and lo! the glimpse of chaos is a vision, a window to the sun.”

Clients invite us in to breach their umbrella, yet work assiduously and unconsciously against us doing so. And even when they do want to hear what you have to say (that their industry is doomed, etc.), they rarely listen. It isn’t because people are cowardly or stupid, it is because almost anyone in a hiring position is themselves severely constrained by what is discussable within the cultural confines of their organization. Organizational inertia and the pull towards short-term political acceptability is so powerful that even a perfectly reliable crystal ball would be held dubious. Put another way, most clients only want to hear what they want to hear, but what they are willing to hear is often not what they hired you to discuss. And thus, the futurists dilemma (a.k.a. the Cassandra Complex).

In the end, futures work is rarely about accurate prediction. It is almost always about staging a useful intervention which encourages discussion of the most challenging aspects of the present. Skilful futurists know this, and that is why the best experiential techniques and design-based approaches can be so useful. The best futures projects take on difficult subjects of today, cast them forward, then reflect them back upon the present in order to make them discussable, now. Done well, this can play a powerful educational role. Done very well, it can be transformational.

Which recent developments in science, engineering and design do you consider the most significant to the future?

In his essay, “The Future Isn’t What it Used to Be“, Jamais Cascio argues that most futures practitioners focus too much on technological trends and changes. I totally agree, a point well illustrated by Andrew Curry’s wonderful thought experiment, “The 1910 Time Traveller”. So aside from a few major possible techno-industrial or ecosystemic shifts, the most significant developments will be social. This includes who is in power, how we distribute resources, how we govern ourselves and organize our economies, and what we consider normal, profitable and desirable. Lessons from complexity science, social phase transitions, and history give us some idea about the mechanics of these transitions, but shed relatively light onto their content.

What expertise and tools are critical to your trade?

People, people, people. In so far as this work is almost entirely about understanding and working with human perception, basic human intelligence collection is the single most important tool of the trade. This includes a powerful emotional and social component. You need to know who are the actors, how they feel, what they think and how they might respond in concert to various events and situations. Good futures work is far more emotional and social than it is analytical, although of course social analysis is by far the most difficult kind.

Of your present and past futurology works, which do you consider the most significant?

Most of my work is not public domain, so unfortunately there isn’t much I can share. I am proud of the Oxford Future of Cities Scenarios, because the knit together so many social, political and ecological strands into, what I think, are a fairly compelling set of issues for urban centers in the future. What I like most about these is, contrary to the majority of “urban futures” projects you see, technology plays a relatively small role. The real seismic shifts occur in the social and economic dimensions, which as we all know are rarely so cut and dry as many scenario axes suggest. The other great think about them is that all three scenarios already exist around the world, now (sometimes even in the same city!). So the future of cities is going to be more about what mixture and mash-up of these archetypes you are likely to find; another fact which I think makes them more useful for designers and policy-makers.

I am also proud of my PhD research on crowdsourced scenario platforms. Adding scalable, web-based social intelligence to the scenario planning process is one of the major the next steps in futures methods. How that will look is still an open game, so my research on what I call “large scale participatory futures systems” is among the first steps to document and make sense of these innovations.

The future – dystopian or utopian?

Both. It’s passe, but Gibson was right; “The future is already here, its just unevenly distributed.” There will be no eschatology, not totality (and most likely, no Singularity). It will be as it has always been; a messy, muddy mix of ecstasy and agony. That said, the next decade or two will likely offer far more extreme examples of both than we have seen in our lifetimes. Maintaining the emotional and psychological ability to function in these extremes is becoming an increasingly important skill (see Graham Leicester and the work of the International Futures Forum for some of the best work on this).

Of the futurists using Twitter, which do you recommend following?

Justin Pickard @justinpickard
Jamais Cascio @cascio
Bruce Sterling @bruces
Anab Jain @superflux
Andrew Curry @nextwavefutures
Wendy Schultz @wendyinfutures
Stuart Candy @futuryst
Zhan Li @thezhanly
IFTF @iftf
Chris Nelder @nelderini
Nils Gilman @nils_gilman

Scott Smith @changeist
Deviant Global @deviantglobal
Vinay Gupta @hexayurt

Anthony Townsend @anthonyiftf

Jake Dunagan @dunagan23

Emile Hooge @ehooge

I recently moved to Dubai, where I snapped this shot this morning.

Rolling fog in Dubai this morning looking beautiful #SciFi http://yfrog.com/h7ql5kqj

Soon Chris Nelder and Alexis Madrigal picked it up, which led to over 60 RT’s and coverage in The Atlantic and Gizmodo.  Alexis said,

Wow. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a city look more like “the future” than this one at this moment.

The guys at Curbed even asked, “Is this the coolest shot of Dubai ever taken?”  (The answer must surely be “no”; a quick Google search yields some amazing results, there is a Flickr set dedicated to Dubai in the Fog and these videos have got to be more impressive)

Things got fun when the conversation took a turn for the Star Wars (thanks in part to Justin Pickard‘s Coruscant reference).  Sam Biddle even entitled his Gizmodo post, “Dubai is Star Wars“, which immediately reminded me of the Dark Lens series by Cedric Delsaux.  Rahel Aima from Brownbook and Ahmad Makia tipped me off to these amazing prints through a gallery exhibition they helped put together in London, called Dubai Futures.

The Dubai / Star Wars comparison is a good one, especially at night.  There is an entire stretch of partially completed skyscrapers along the main highway, which loom, menacingly, at night.  They are not lit, but yet their dark bulk and strange shapes blot out the light from surrounding cranes and more fortunate construction projects.  These dead hulks reminded me of ancient starships, long dormant, just waiting to topple or be reactivated.  It is an amazing experience, which I don’t think I’ll be able to do justice with a photograph.

Below are a few more images from the Dark Lens series, which I highly recommended.

ADDENDUM

The fog was less intense this morning, but I got a few equally sci-fi shots, but from the ground this time.  That is the Metro in the foreground, not a particle accelerator, BTW.

I’ll write more soon, but here is the full PDF (11.4 megabytes) and the slides from my defense, below.

From the abstract:

This dissertation explores the role that participatory online collective intelligence systems might play in urban planning research. Specifically, it examines methodological and practical issues raised by the design and use of such systems in long-term policy formulation, with a focus on their potential as data collection instruments and analytical platforms for qualitative scenario planning.

The research questions addressed herein examine how the use of collective intelligence platforms can inform the process of scenario planning in urban public policy. Specifically, how (if at all) does the design and deployment of such platforms influence the number and type of participants involved, people’s reasons for participation, the kinds of activities they perform, and the speed and timeline of the scenario creation process? Finally, what methodological considerations does the use of such instruments raise for urban planning research in the future?

Two prototypical online platforms were developed to explore these issues. In-depth interviews with experts in the fields of urban planning, public participation, crowdsourcing, and scenarios were conducted, combined with secondary analysis of comparable approaches in other fields.  The results were used to create an analytical framework for comparing systems across a common set of measurement constructs.  This framework was used to analyze the case studies relative to a base case and three additional comparative examples.  The dissertation closes with a reflection on how the use of such online approaches might impact the role and process of qualitative scenario research in public policy formulation in the future, and what this suggests for subsequent scholarly inquiry.

As you can see, this was a community affair, to which I owe everything to my many friends and collaborators. Thanks to all of you who helped make this happen.