Near Future Laboratory Podcast

Episode N°005, Week Ending Nov 24, 2023 Promotion of Design Fiction for AI Policy Visualization: In this Last Week from the Near Future episode, I emphasize the importance of design fiction as a tool for visualizing and materializing the potential impacts of policies like the AI Bill of Rights. I suggest that design fiction can make complex ideas more tangible and understandable for the general public. Analysis of the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: I have questions about the current form of the AI Bill of Rights. If it had vivid, illustrative content it could make its implications more relatable to everyday people. I would suggest that this document, while essential, needs to be more accessible and engaging to truly resonate with its audience. Reference to NASA’s “Space Settlements” Report as an Inspirational Model: It's worth drawing a parallel between the AI Bill of Rights and NASA's 1973 report on space settlements. The NASA report used vivid illustrations to effectively communicate complex engineering concepts to the public, suggesting a similar approach could be beneficial for the AI Bill of Rights to make it make sense and also assert an implied policy as to what the world looks and feels like, what the experience of it would be, and what the Administration imagines this world to become should it adhere to the AI Bill of Rights. Need for Engaging and Accessible Communication in Technology Policy: I try to highlight the gaps that exist between complex technological policies and public understanding. I argue for the use of more engaging mediums, like design fiction, to bridge these gaps and thereby make policies more accessible and understandable. Call for Collaborative Effort in Translating AI Policies into Tangible Artifacts: Here's the proposal: A collaborative project to translate the AI Bill of Rights into tangible artifacts like, for example, newspapers and magazines. This approach aims to create a more concrete and relatable representation of what a future shaped by AI policies might look like. Thanks for watching, enduring, supporting and subscribing! Please support this work over on Patreon: https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory or pick something up in the shop! https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com Blueprint for an A.I. Bill of Rights: https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/ Space Settlements: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198275204-space-settlements Ezra Klein and Alondra Nelson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFdLxDgFjkk&ab_channel=NewYorkTimesPodcasts More with Rick Guidice, the 'Space Settlements' Illustrator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7UuWRTyx9U&ab_channel=TheWorld%27sFairCo

SuperSeminar 004 is our session on practical uses for Generative AI within the enterprise.

Here's a sneak peek with Drew Wiberg where we hear that he increased efficiency and productivity 40x with Generative AI, and how he used Generative AI to create the actual tooling he needed to bring about those efficiencies.

Do you want to know more?

Sign up to learn more about SuperSeminar at https://superseminar.school

SuperSeminar is our platform for learning from the key individuals who are at the vanguard of the transformational potential of new practices, tools, mindsets and approaches.

Drew Wiberg is a master knowledge navigator, helping Arup, one of the best known design, engineering, and construction services firm with over 18,000 employees — and gigabytes of knowledge data it has to manage.

Gabby Morris has soil questions — and a tarot deck to help think through those questions.

Check out the Grounded Wisdom Tarot Deck on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gabbyamorris/grounded-wisdom-tarot-deck

https://www.gabbymorris.co.uk/

Don't forget to support the Podcast over on https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and pick up your copy of It's Time To Imagine Harder, the book that unlocks ways to create more tangible futures: https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/design-fiction-small-box-set

Scott and Susan's new book, Future Cultures, focuses on integrating futures thinking into existing organizational contexts rather than forcing entirely new practices. They emphasize understanding and mapping current networks, language, and processes first and identifying and cultivating diverse champions at multiple levels to spread ideas. In the book, they recommend starting small with regular gatherings to share signals of change. They also provide tactics like writing future scenarios to envision desired cultures. Their framework layers in complexity to meet an organization's specific readiness.

We had a great conversation, discussing the way Future Cultures reveals a practical approach for integrating strategic futures thinking into organizations. It includes case studies and a layered framework, providing leadership with a methodical guide to adopt prospective practices tailored to their existing culture. By starting small to build demand and embedding foresight into operations, executives can complement planning with futures-oriented capacity vital for innovation and resilience.

Please remember to support the podcast over on https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory, and please share with your colleagues, write a review and rate.

https://a.co/d/9xVgJ2N

https://a.co/d/czEDb8j

This episode is a Digest from General Seminar S04E04 where we went into some Circular Economy Futures and found a bunch of stuff to help us more tangibly imagine what these futures could feel like.

https://generalseminar.com

A conversation with Gemma Jones from School of Critical Design.

Check out the Near Future Laboratory's latest drop - 'Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' - the definitive handbook for understanding the psyche, motivations, desires, fears, and existential quandaries of machine & artificially intelligent intelligences from a slightly adjacent world where AI and their embodiments are about as fearsome, frustrating, and perplexing as a television remote control. Just don't antagonize them, okay? Some of them are well-armed and more than capable of handling themselves if in a rough spot.

Suggestions for folks to come on the podcast? Send me your thoughts.

Want to say thanks? Buy me the equivalent of a coffee and bacon sandwich or just say thanks and give a follow on IG.

https://julianbleecker.com/contact

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemma-jones-93b48742/

https://critical.design

https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/androids-dream-of-electric-sheep

Last Week from the Near Future Laboratory Episode 002 The Show where we look at some highlights from, you know _ Last Week in the Near Future Laboratory Let’s Go! 1.    • Daniel Schmachtenberger l An introduc...   2. https://www.futures-in-maps.com/san-t... 3. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/... 4. https://aw.network/2023 5. https://uxdesign.cc/a-smart-home-is-o... 5.5 https://lamemage.com/microscope/ 6. https://github.com/srspear/scifitropes 7. https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image... 8. https://www.designfictiondaily.com/p/... 9. The Work Kit of Design Fiction Digital Edition Test Session https://lu.ma/8xk3dkql 10. https://daydreambelievers.co.uk/https://vimeo.com/870581365

Episode 076 is a discussion with Jan Rod and Kenta Kondo from IDEO Tokyo sharing their Project Inari in which created a sushi box as Design Fiction artifact. They collectively imagined a future that considers and reflects upon sustainable harvesting and issues of food security. It is a public project that also served to allow IDEO to explore how Design Fiction can be brought to bear to help clients make sense of their possible futures, whether food futures or any other topic.

Chesterbot 🤖 Says 👇🏽

"confidence": 0.9519705766608136

IDEO designers Jan Rod and Kenta Kondo in Tokyo created a fictional sushi box to explore food security. They made an uncanny metal box resembling disposable supermarket packaging. Inside were sushi pieces they crafted. Details like powdered condiments provoked questions about the fictional 2027 world. Through workshops, the box aligned perspectives on food systems. It activated imagination beyond abstract concepts.

"question": "What was the main purpose of this conversation?",

"answer": "The main purpose of this conversation was to discuss how design fiction and props like the fictional sushi box can help organizations explore potential future problems and spark imagination and alignment among diverse stakeholders. The guests spoke about their experience using a fictional sushi box prop in workshops to get participants to think about future challenges around food systems."

"question": How does the topic help people imagine more thoroughly the contingencies and challenges to be faced in the future?

"answer": The topic of using design fiction and props helps people imagine future challenges and contingencies more thoroughly in the following ways:

- The fictional sushi box created a tangible artifact that participants could examine and discuss. This helped ground the speculation in a concrete object.

- The highly detailed prop packaging and labels sparked participants' imaginations about how future food systems might evolve.

- The familiarity of sushi helped participants project their thinking into the future starting from something they knew.

- The prop provided a shared reference point for workshop participants from different backgrounds to discuss future implications.

"question": "What are five key take-aways from this presentation?",

"answer": "Five key take-aways from this presentation are:

1. Design fiction uses props and artifacts to help imagine future scenarios, not propose solutions.

2. Tangible props can align stakeholders by creating a shared object to spark discussion.

3. Design fiction aims to explore future problems worth solving, not just extrapolate the past.

4. Making design fiction practices mainstream involves connecting them to company innovation processes.

5. Detailed props provoke questions about future contingencies and implications."

"question": "What's a good summary of this conversation that can be used to post and share in an email?",

"answer": "The Near Future Laboratory podcast featured IDEO designers discussing how they used a fictional highly detailed sushi box prop in workshops to spark participants' imagination about future food system challenges. The prop packaging and mock sushi helped ground the speculation and align diverse stakeholders in the discussion."

"question": "What's a good summary of this conversation that can be used to as an engaging exciting way to get people excited to listen to the podcast?"

"answer": "Hear how IDEO designers created a fictional sushi box prop to take workshop participants on a imaginative deep dive into future food system contingencies and innovations!"

A new show. Last Week from the Near Future — a summary of some interesting things that came through and around the Near Future Laboratory Discord.

1. The Imagine Harder Summit (Detroit, Sept. 22/23, 2023) 2. Dave Eggers is outraged by AI on the Ingenious Podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Ngt80qNlrtDMH3j5jBf3p?si=1e27914d58544887 3. Donna Harawy & Bruno Latour (RIP) at ZKM's "Critical Zones" exhibition https://zkm.de/en/media/video/storytelling-for-earthly-survival-discussion-on-the-film-with-donna-haraway-bruno-latour-and-peter https://www.icarusfilms.com/if-donna 4. Thomas Euyang drops off Green Pages - our magazine from the future of filmed entertainment / Hollywood 5. Androids? They Dream of Electric Sheep? https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/androids-dream-of-electric-sheep 6. Evan Raskob shared a link to a podcast he was on, the Ludogogy Podcast (good luck pronouncing that into a microphone.) https://ludogogy.co.uk/evan-raskob-on-speculation/ 7. Don't forget — Office Hours is a great way to get some perspective on Design Fiction, Speculative Design, and all that kind of stuff, and learn more about what we're doing in the Discord! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tbqg4S7EDM&list=PLLeCmAPS7v1ll9SxykBfosFGju_IihvEU 8. Go pick up something in The Shop — support all the things on Patreon! Do it now! https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory 9. Ursula K. Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction — a reflection I had while on a walk. https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf

This Episode is a rebroadcast of Episode 030 with Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby, preceded and amended with various explications and questions posed to the Chesterbot container of the conversation's semantics.

**Speculative Design Practice**

Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby's design practice has evolved over time. Initially focused on conceptual models, they now also create prototypes. They find models give more creative freedom. Their work with complex technologies like biotech led them to embrace fiction and modeling. The term 'speculative design' emerged from their critical design work engaging science and tech. They value fiction for its own sake, not just for discussing the future or selling concepts.

**Teaching Speculative Design** Dunne and Raby direct the Design Reality Studio at Parsons, teaching posthumanism, quantum theory and designed realities. They collaborate with faculty and choose their own research. They are writing a book on new ideas and approaches in design.

**Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration** Dunne, Raby and Bleecker value letting disciplines interact in surprising ways while retaining disciplinary roots. Bleecker proposes a 'general seminar' where diverse people make sense of ideas together, as Dunne and Raby have long practiced. They hope design, science, tech and industry collaborate more, though science and tech currently do so more than design. **Representing Imagined Futures** They aim to represent imagined futures expanding beyond the typical narrow range. They explore 'impossible objects' and how constraints limit collective imagination. **Recognition and Validation** Dunne and Raby were delighted to receive the Royal Designers for Industry award, valuing its recognition of their trajectory, not just current work. They appreciate the range of practices recognized. Bleecker sees it as validating their creative practice.

Sascha Poflepp was a German artist, collaborator, and friend. We dedicated The Manual of Design Fiction to him. It's important not to forget his contributions to creative thinking and making. In that spirit, I managed to extract the audio tape from a panel I organized at SxSW back in 2010 on the topic of Design Fiction in which Sascha contributed a remarkably clear and cogent perspective through his own work.

Also contributing to the panel were Stuart Candy, Jake Dunagen, Jennifer Leonard, Bruce Sterling, and myself.

You can see Sasha's slides cued to his presentation here: https://youtu.be/XDp_TsKqk3o

Lila Feldman is a designer based in NYC. She received her BA in 3D Design: Product + Furniture from Northumbria University and her MFA in Design + Technology from Parsons School of Design.

https://lilafeldman.com/

Lila and I discussed finding purpose in creative practice and how creativity, imagination, and a futures-oriented mindset can help reinvigorate the potential for bringing about meaningful change through individual as well as team-based design practices.

If you want to hear more of these types of conversations, become a Patron over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory.

If you want to read more about creative practice and the approach I use here at Near Future Laboratory, check out all the books and artifacts from the future over at https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com, especially "The Manual of Design Fiction" and my follow-on book just released the other day, "It's Time To Imagine Harder: The Reader's Guide To The Manual of Design Fiction". (Plus there's the 10th Anniversary printing of a rejuvinated "TBD Catalog" — the product catalog from the future.

Thanks for listening!

_Julian

If you're curious to hear about what it takes to dream into, create, build, grow, maintain an independent creative studio and practice, you'll want to listen to this conversation with Che-Wei Wang and myself. We talk about the importance of creativity and how it can be used to create meaningful change, and the need for a balance between creativity and structure and how to create an environment that fosters collaboration.

https://cwandt.com

If you want to hear more of these types of conversations, become a Patron over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory.

If you want to read more about creative practice and the approach I use here at Near Future Laboratory, check out all the books and artifacts from the future over at https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com, especially "The Manual of Design Fiction" and my follow-on book just released the other day, "It's Time To Imagine Harder: The Reader's Guide To The Manual of Design Fiction". (Plus there's the 10th Anniversary printing of a rejuvinated "TBD Catalog" — the product catalog from the future.

Thanks for listening!

_Julian

This episode is a conversation with writer and noted architecture critic Geoff Manaugh, who has written for the The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Financial Times Magazine, New Scientist, Cabinet Magazine, The Daily Beast, Wired UK amongst many other publications.

He also co-authored with Nicola Twilley the book ‘Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, and A Burglar’s Guide to the City on the relationship between crime and architecture. And most recently, a ghost story he wrote called ‘Ernest’ back in 2017 was adapted for film and recently released on Netflix under the title ‘We Have A Ghost’, which was beautiful and fun and clever and I recommend you watch it after listening to this episode.

Don't forget to like, write a review and share the podcast amongst your friends and colleagues, and support the podcast on https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

Find all of our artifacts from the future, including 'The Manual of Design Fiction' over at https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com

Thank you for listening!

Juliana Schneider is a trend researcher, futures designer and creative strategist with diverse and extensive experience in the creative industry. She helps people and businesses make sense of the world around them and build stories and strategies that inspire us to engage with the challenges of a rapidly changing world.

https://julianajschneider.com/

Please support the podcast over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and don't forget to pick up your copy of The Manual of Design Fiction, now in its second printing. Published fiercely independently by Near Future Laboratory.

http://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com

Thank you!

Dr Delfina Fantini van Ditmar is a biologist, design researcher and Senior Lecturer. Her practice is concerned with ecological thinking, reflective practices, epistemological paradigms and alternative futures.

https://www.rca.ac.uk/more/staff/dr-delfina-fantini-van-ditmar/

Please support the podcast over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

Thank you!

_ Julian

This is a digest of General Seminar S04E01 where Drew Wiberg, Kempe Scanlan and I took about 30 folks into the Futures of Fashion had a look around, and we brought back some Design Fiction artifacts from that future to share with you!

General Seminar is the platform I created for sense-making against the beautiful confusion of all the new 'futuristic' things we confront seemingly every day. So in General Seminar we take on these topics, with none of the hubris that one puts on to try and 'predict' the future, and wander around to see what we see and reflect on the way the world is becoming. I've boiled down 90 minutes to about 45 to give you a sense of some corners of the conversation.

If you want to find out more about General Seminar and all the other things going on over at the Near Future Laboratory join our email list: https://tinyurl.com/nfl-newsletter.

And don't forget — please support the podcast and all the things over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. Your support would be very much appreciated.

Tucker Viemeister is an American industrial designer, and founder of Viemeister Industries in New York City.

Please consider supporting this podcast and joining us here at Near Future Laboratory by getting behind all of this over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

My special guest Dré Labre, proprietor over at https://www.designfictiondaily.com/ discusses how he has been training for the Imagine Harder marathon later this year, and how he uses the new 2023 Work Kit of Design Fiction, which drops in a limited release on April 20th 2023!

https://www.designfictiondaily.com

https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/the-work-kit-of-design-fiction-2023-mj-edition

Support the podcast over on Patreon: https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — every Patron gets a legit invite to the Near Future Laboratory Discord!

Thank you for your listening!

- Julian

How does Design Fiction do the work of reporting on the future? Most futures reports are heavily analytic, styled to be read analytically and interpreted as data. Very seldom if at all is there any point of entry to create a sense of the future as something the report has come from. And this is important because the artifact itself — the report — provides little opportunity to experience the future as it could possibly be.

This is where Design Fiction provides an opportunity for teams and organizations that are working towards a future to gain a more full spectrum sense of possible futures that can tie directly in to their day-to-day work.

This is how Design Fiction has always functioned. From the seminal TBD Catalog (10th Anniversary Edition coming soon!) to IKEA Catalog and the scores of other Design Fiction projects the Near Future Laboratory has done for commercial clients over the years. Design Fiction brings the future to you, rather than simply projecting into it.

In this episode Patrick Pittman and I discuss a recent client project where we created a Magazine from the Future, in this case we took our client to the autonomous vehicle future, took a look around, found a trade magazine for autonomous vehicle enthusiasts, and brought it back. It's full of context.

Visit https://magazinefromthefuture.com to find out more and schedule a call to get more details.

Also, consider supporting the podcast and the Near Future Laboratory Discord community over at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

Thank you for listening!

- Julian

https://tbdcatalog.com

https://ikea.nearfuturelaboratory.com/

https://magazinefromthefuture.com

https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

This is a Episode 64 of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast, a Design Fiction Debrief with Thomas Euyang, where we breakdown his Design Fiction project 'From Collectors to Creators'.

From Collectors to Creators is a design fiction where our relationship with clothing, especially footwear is fundamentally different. Using found footage from cobblers and sneaker redesigners, a documentary offers a glimpse into an alternative world where the importance of newness is replaced with heritage, disposability with repairability, and mass production with craft.

Please support the podcast over on Patreon. Every patron gets an invitation to the Near Future Laboratory Discord, which is really where all the action is happening!

https://euyang.info/Future-of-Cobbling

https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

Will Richardson is a life-long educator and co-founder along with Homa Tavangar of The Big Questions Institute, was was created to help educators use 'fearless inquiry' to make sense of the complex moment and uncertainty felt around the future. In this episode we focus specifically on the ebook he and his co-founder recently created called 'One Foot In The Future' containing new frameworks, tools, and lenses to help educators imagine what comes next.

https://bigquestions.institute/

https://bigquestions.institute/onefootebook/

Please consider supporting the podcast over on Patreon at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. Your support goes a long way towards keeping these episodes going, largely by signaling to me that you find value in what's being discussed in here. Support is pretty easy, and generally affordable — there are two tiers at the moment: $8/month ($2 per week!) or $25 for those who can afford more. Every patron gets an invitation to the Near Future Laboratory Discord, where the magic seems to happen daily!

Thanks!

Julian

Andy Polaine is a designer, educator, writer and podcast guy. He hosts the wonderful 'Power of Ten' podcast. Andy is known for his work as a service designer, innovation consultant and professional executive coach.

Don't forget — please support the podcast and all the things over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. Your support would be very much appreciated.

Oh, also? Please rate and write a review of the podcast over on Apple Podcasts. That stuff really does help!

Thank you!

Julian

Simone Rebaudengo and Matteo Loglio are founders of the fun, eclectic, speculative design studio OiO. We had a fun chat about their latest conjuring, 'Spawns' where they taught a machine to make spoons, and then manufactured them in one of the oldest silverware factories in Italy.

https://oio.studio/
https://oio.store
http://www.simonerebaudengo.com/
https://matlo.me/

If you want to find out more about the Near Future Laboratory join our email list: https://tinyurl.com/nfl-newsletter.

And don't forget — please support the podcast and all the things over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. Your support would be very much appreciated.

Oh, also? Please rate and write a review of the podcast over on Apple Podcasts. That stuff really does help!

Thank you!

Julian

This is a digest of General Seminar S03 E26 where we traveled into the ChatGPT future, had a look around, and brought back some Design Fiction artifacts. General Seminar is the platform I created for sense-making against the beautiful confusion of all the new 'futuristic' things we confront seemingly every day. So in General Seminar we take on these topics, with none of the hubris that one puts on to try and 'predict' the future, and wander around to see what we see and reflect on the way the world is becoming. I've boiled down 90 minutes to about 35 to give you a sense of some corners of the conversation.

If you want to find out more about General Seminar and all the other things going on over at the Near Future Laboratory join our email list: https://tinyurl.com/nfl-newsletter.

And don't forget — please support the podcast and all the things over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. Your support would be very much appreciated.

Oh, also? Please rate and write a review of the podcast over on Apple Podcasts. That stuff really does help!

Thank you!

Julian

https://www.generalseminar.com/season-03-episode-26
https://tinyurl.com/nfl-newsletter

Got together with Nicolas Nova (who was sitting on his living room sofa in Geneva) and Zach Hyman (who was sitting in a hotel lobby in Singapore) to reflect on what we think of when we think of 2022.

Please support the podcast over on Patreon at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and write a review of the podcast over on Apple Podcasts! It really does help!

Pick up your copy of The Manual of Design Fiction over at http://themanualofdesignfiction.com

And get one of the last remaining Work Kits of Design Fiction over at https://nearfuturelaboratory.myshopify.com/products/the-work-kit-of-design-fiction-2023-product-design-work-kit

Toby Barnes (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobybarnes/) is a design strategist with a range of experiences and interests, including at AKQA, Nike, and now Amazon. Toby and I have been longing for a revival of the kinds of creative community experiences, gatherings, retreats, and workshops that flourished around the turn of the century, and that is what motivates the conversations we've been having over the last several months, including looking at the Near Future Laboratory community as an experiment in Hypercollaboration.

Please support the Podcast by either becoming a Patron (https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory) and rating and writing a review of the podcast over here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/near-future-laboratory-podcast/id1546452193

Want to know more? Have a listen, and get in touch: https://linktr.ee/bleeckerj

-Julian

Thank you to Gabriele Ferri, the staff and students who participated from Domus Academy and Speculative Futures Milan, especially Silvio Cioni for organizing.

You can support this podcast at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — your support is very much appreciated!

Also, you can purchase your copy of the first printing of The Manual of Design Fiction here: http://themanualofdesignfiction.com

Please subscribe, rate the podcast, and write a review! It all really helps!

Thank you!

https://www.domusacademy.com/
https://twitter.com/Futures_Milan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cioni/
https://www.gabrieleferri.com/

A conversation with Patrick Pittman and Chris Frey who are collectively https://no-media.co/who are the folks who shepherded us through the design, writing, editing, production of The Manual of Design Fiction, which is still available for pre-order! http://themanualofdesignfiction.com

Please support the podcast over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory!

And rate and write a review, please!

Want to chat? Let's grab a coffee! https://calendly.com/julian-bleecker/coffee-chat

A short discussion with Nicolas Nova on his take on our recently completed book 'The Manual of Design Fiction'.

You can find more about Nicolas here: http://www.nicolasnova.net/

And order The Manual of Design Fiction here: http://themanualofdesignfiction.com

Please consider supporting the podcast at: https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and writing a review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!

Contact me at https://julianbleecker.com for a chat!

Dave Gray uses visual tools and techniques known as "drawing" in order to unlock the potential of imagining possible worlds. He founded XPLANE in 1993 as a platform to his life-long commitment to the ineluctable fact that analytic thinking on its own cannot solve the challenges most organizations and societies face. Visual imagining and images are the counterpoint to balance an over-reliance on analytics, and allows us to sense into possibilities in a uniquely powerful way.

http://www.xplaner.com/bio/

http://www.xplaner.com/

My guest this episode is Johanna Hoffman, who's book 'Speculative Futures: Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-Create the Cities We Need" is now available. Johanna is an urbanist working in the space between design, planning, fiction and futures. The Co-Founder and Director of Planning at Design for Adaptation. We discuss her introduction to design fiction and speculative futures practices, as well as the topics she covers in the book.

johannahoffman.com

Please support the podcast over at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

And don't forget — The Manual of Design Fiction is now available for pre-order shipping early November! You can pre-order over at http://themanualofdesignfiction.com

This is a lightly edited after action report we did reflecting back on the ASU Applied Science Fiction panel (https://csi.asu.edu/calendar/events/designing-the-future-with-applied-sci-fi/) during the Near Future Laboratory Discord's regular Friday Office Hours. The panel sparked lots of insights, considerations, and ideas that we naturally wanted to discuss. In attendance were Isabella, Dré, Nick M., Nic, Kempe, and myself.

Please support the podcast at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and rate the podcast over on https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/near-future-laboratory-podcast/id1546452193

Thank you for your support!

Joe Lindley runs Design Research Works, a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship which aims to understand, gather evidence about, and promote leadership for Design Research. I'm particularly interested in the role that Design Research plays in understanding rapidly-changing relationships between individuals, society, and technology.
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/security-lancaster/about/all-staff/joseph-lindley
Please support the podcast at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and rate the podcast over on https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/near-future-laboratory-podcast/id1546452193

Thank you!

Paulina Yurman, Ph.D. is a a designer, researcher and lecturer who works in design research, and has a background in engineering and industrial design.

Please support this podcast over on patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and rate on Apple Podcasts, write a review, and share widely! Together, we can reinvigorate design practices and put creativity and curiosity into the service of meaningful, purposeful directions that will make the world a more habitable place.

This is from the Windermere Tapes Box 050 Tape 03 with Alan Hook, a Lecturer in Interactive Media and a Researcher in New Media and Play at Ulster University. Alan teaches Games Studies and New Media Studies within the School of Media Film and Journalism.

Equine Eyes

Alan Hook on Twitter

Please support this podcast over at Patreon. Support comes with access to the bustling design fiction oriented Near Future Laboratory community on Discord.

Also, please rate and write a review on whatever platform you happen to be listening!

Thank you for listening!

Julian

Alt-Academia, Alt-Industry, Alt-R&D with Laura Dudek at the Design Research Works Jamboree, Brathay Hall, Windermere, UK

https://2021.rca.ac.uk/students/laura-dudek

https://laura-dudek.com/

https://jamboree.designresearch.works/

If you feel that this work contributes some meaningful value to your day, please take a moment to support the work over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory, and then write a review, rate, and share it widely so more listeners can feel the same. Thank you!

- Julian

Tobias Revell in conversation with Julian Bleecker at Research Through Design 2022 at Brathay Hall, Windermere UK on or about August 2022.

https://tobiasrevell.com/

https://jamboree.designresearch.works

Tobias' reflections on the Design Research Works Jamboree: https://blog.tobiasrevell.com/2022/08/10/box077-an-hypothesis/

If you feel that this work contributes some meaningful value to your day, please take a moment to support the work over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory, and then write a review, rate, and share it widely so more listeners can feel the same. Thank you!

- Julian

A conversation with Joe Lindley PhD and Paul Coulton PhD about the role of The Generalist and Design Fiction to see the unanticipated and unexpected possibilities of design in shaping future products, strategies, ideas, and worlds.

Please support this podcast by becoming a Near Future Laboratory Patron over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and join the Near Future Laboratory Discord.

You can read Joe's doctoral thesis 'A thesis about design fiction' here: https://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/a-thesis-about-design-fiction(1b771f57-1c78-4bda-9d38-b0f452c983ac).html and the full breadth of his research here: https://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/people/joseph-lindley and his project Design Works here: https://designresearch.works/.

And Paul's work can be found here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lica/about/people/paul-coulton — they have so many collaborative research projects and papers that you'll find a really rich trove of insights and thought-provoking material so beware the beautiful rabbit hole!

Thanks for listening and thank you to all of my awesome patrons.

-Julian

A conversation with Stephen Bennett and his work at the UK's Policy Lab where design fiction, experiential design, speculative design meets the technocratic machine of policy and decision making.

The best way you can become part of the Near Future Laboratory and help out is to support this podcast right now over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory and rate the podcast, write a review, and share through whatever platform on which you are presently listening! Patreon supporters get access to our supporters' only Discord community where all the things happen.

Interested in discussing how Design Fiction can become part of your organizations' strategy and design-based decision making? Want to learn more about Design Fiction? You can find all the links to get in touch here: https://linktr.ee/bleeckerj

https://www.srgbennett.com/

https://openpolicy.blog.gov.uk/

Back in May I had a conversation with Susanne Paech, the wife of pioneering computer artist Herbert W. Franke. Franke passed away on July 16th. He had just turned 96 in May. Franke was a true innovator, exploring with a pioneer's curiosity the ways humans and machines could collaborate to create unexpected work together. Before computer art was "a thing" and before it was at all obvious as to the processes by which one would create or collaborate with a machine, Herbert was pushing ahead. As with most innovators, it wasn't at all clear to those who had a firm grip on what could count as 'aesthetics' or 'art' that this was anything worthy of consideration. Nevertheless he continued to place value on these explorations and collaborations with everything from an oscilloscope to an Apple II and onward.

Please support this podcast over at Patreon! It makes a big difference, and helps me continue to develop and produce this content. And please rate the podcast, write a review on whatever platform you're listening, and share it widely!

🙋🏽‍♂️

This conversation is with Fred Scharmen. Fred teaches architecture and urban design at Morgan State University's School of Architecture and Planning. He is the co-founder of the Working Group on Adaptive Systems, an art and design consultancy based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Fred's recent book 'Space Settlements' is his reflection on a 1975 program in engineering and systems design that was held at Stanford University, which itself resulted in a research report called 'Space Settlements: A Design Study'

Fred and the Near Future Laboratory recently collaborated on installations for the Museum of the Future in Dubai. They recently published a Medium article on the project called 'An Archeology for the Future in Space', which dives into the design fiction approach we undertook.

Please consider supporting the podcast over on the Near Future Laboratory's Patreon page. Your support really does help keep this podcast and the Design Fiction Newsletter going! Thank you to my awesome Patrons!

Elliott and I discuss some meta topics related to speculative design generally speaking and design fiction, the way its practiced, taught, and received in academic as well as commercial contexts. We also discuss the map he created 'Unresolved Map of Speculative Design' which should not be taken as literal rather as a provocation and conversation starter to discuss (not resolve) the role, relationships, situatedness, and purposes of futures thinking and the futures mindset.

This map has been generative some others whose practice operates in the general space of futures design (https://blog.tobiasrevell.com/2020/08/05/box-006-gadget-realism/, https://futurehumanbydesign.com/2019/09/futures-thinking-and-design-thinking/) and recently I found it quite helpful for describing the 'Where' of design fiction in a conversation with a c-level executive who wanted to have a better sense of where it 'fit' alongside other practices within their innovation design teams. I discuss this further in the Issue 32 of the Design Fiction Newsletter.

Elliott P. Montgomery is a design researcher, strategist and educator whose work focuses on speculative inquiries at the confluence of social, technological and environmental impact. He is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design, The New School, teaching in the MFA Transdisciplinary Design Program and across the School of Design Strategies. He is also the co-founder of The Extrapolation Factory, an award winning design-futures research studio based in Brooklyn. He was previously a design research resident at the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, Energy as well receiving the Graham Foundation's Individual Grant and The Shed's Open Call commission. He holds a Master's in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London and a Bachelor's in Industrial Design from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

A conversation with Jonas Schmidt and Philip Linnemann from the design agency Kontrapunkt. We discuss the state of play around the broad collection of practices we refer to as speculative design, and their new futures tool, Kontrapunkt Futures: https://futures.kontrapunkt.com/

Philip also recently gave a TEDx talk discussing the concept of futures design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj63yLFBZdk

Kontrapunkt: https://www.kontrapunkt.com/

Kontrapunkt Futures: https://futures.kontrapunkt.com/

Philip: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philiplinnemann/

Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonasmschmidt/

Simone Rebaudengo describes himself as "a designer?" He works at the intersection of tradition and unanticipated possibilities that are implicated in possible futures and adjacent presents.
Simone's early experiments with what an IoT world could (should?) look like involved a global networked web of kitchen toasters that playfully forced us to think about our relationship to appliances, and were the only toasters in the history of appliances to have a waiting list. Recently, his studio OiO contributed to the Dubai Museum of the Future project, an epic intervention to instill a very specific imaginary about space travel and space colonies as our future.
I caught up with Simone last week just outside of London, a fortuitous encounter while we were both working on a client project.

Julian Montague is an artist, designer, and illustrator. I first came across his work through his Instagram feed, where he occasionally features 'faux books, posters and record album covers. The playful nature of these speculations caught my attention, as well as the way they speculated, of course. It resonates with my own interests in uses of fiction in design specifically, and not just as an idiom of writing. Please consider supporting the podcast over at Patreon, and rate and write a review right here — wherever you happen to be listening. Your support really does help! 

https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

This episode of the Near Future Laboratory is an after action report with Camille MacRae about her experience of life on Mars.

Mars College is an educational program, R&D lab, and off-grid residential community dedicated to cultivating a low-cost, high-tech lifestyle, and Camille spent 3 months there in the desert earlier this year and took a few minutes to share her experience.

You can read more about Mars over at https://mars.college

And more about Camille here: https://camillemakes.work/Information

Please rate, write a review, and share the Near Future Laboratory podcast amongst your friends, teammates and colleagues.

If you're interested in working with us, it's easy. Just visit https://nearfuturelaboratory.com or email send me an email via https://julianbleecker.com

Also be sure to sign up to our mailing list at https://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/newsletter/ to get our latest news on our forthcoming book, 'The Manual of Design Fiction' — https://nearfuturelaboratory.myshopify.com/products/the-manual-of-design-fiction

You can always support the podcast and the Design Fiction newsletter over here: https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

Thank you for your support!

Julian

Andrew Dana Hudson is an speculative fiction writer, researcher, futurist who's novel 'Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures' was just published. We get into a range of topics around ways of imagining possible futures, particularly around wicked and super-wicked problems where there are often no clear solutions, something he works through in 'Our Shared Storm'.

Please consider supporting this podcast by becoming a subscriber over on Patreon.com. Also please rate and write a review on Apple Podcasts. Every little bit helps!

Thank you for listening and thank you for your support!

This is a special episode of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast — a digest of General Seminar 20 which was on the topic of "METALABELS". So this episode consists of excerpts from that seminar, along with some commentary for context. Thanks to all the wonderful participants from that session!

Some links mentioned:

https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/a-vibe-shift-is-coming.html

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/galaxy-brain/620d5303dc551a0020870079/i-found-the-tech-angle-on-the-vibe-shift/

If you dig this topic, you'll probably dig the Near Future Laboratory Discord community. Contact me at about joining the Near Future Laboratory in there.

Please support the Near Future Laboratory Podcast over on Patreon — https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — Your support is very much appreciated and helps me know that you value the effort that goes into producing the show!

Want to find out more about General Seminar? Looking to bring General Seminar into your team or organization to help flex your imagination muscle and be a better futures thinker? Get in touch! https://generalseminar.com

Please subscribe, rate and share this podcast amongst your friends and colleagues! Thank you for listening! Seriously!

My guest Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell, AO FAHA FTSE is an Australian anthropologist best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technological development. She taught Anthropology at Stanford before being recruited to Intel in 1998 to build out their social-science research program in their advanced R&D labs. There, Bell and colleagues helped orient Intel to a more market-inspired and experience-driven approach, establishing Intel's UX competency and, indeed, introducing the viability of UX research within high technology. Together with Paul Dourish, she wrote the book 'Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing', an exploration of the social and cultural components of ubiquitous computing. In 2017 she returned to Australia, appointed as Entrepreneurial Fellow and distinguished professor at Australian National University's College of Engineering and Computer Science where she directs the School of Cybernetics and the Autonomy, Agency & Assurance Institute.

In our conversation I refer to her recent paper in the MIT Technology Review, 'The metaverse is a new word for an old idea'

I mention this short documentary “You’ve Never Been Completely Honest” by Joey Izzo. (Trigger warnings apply — read the interview with Izzo before watching to figure out if you really want to watch it.)

Genevieve mentions an audio recording of Gregory Bateson called "Versailles to Cybernetics" and a recording Stewart Brand made with Bateson and Margaret Meade that is in a kind of annotated transcript here: "For God's Sake Margaret!"

"Cybernetic Serendipity" is the exhibition she mentions curated by Jasia Reichardt.

Please consider supporting this podcast! You can do so over here at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. You can also buy me a "coffee" over at ko-fi.com/bleeckerj

Thank you for your support!

Please support this podcast over on Patreon! You can also support me by rating and writing a review over on Apple Podcasts. Thanks!

This is a Special Bulletin from the Near Future Laboratory on a report that Michelle Kasprzak shared in our NFLPRO Discord that was commissioned and funded by by the Government of Canada, specifically Canadian Heritage. Titled "Decrypting the Medium: A Report on the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Marketplace", it's a cogent, steady-handed look at the NFT Marketplace that I found insightful and refreshingly balanced. When I read it I thought it would be of general interest to the wider audience, particularly for folks who are curious enough about vanguard cultural phenomenons to not become super partisan. It's also fascinating to learn more about how the Canadian Government is educating itself as pertains NFTs and cultural production.

On the heels of that report is an essay that Michelle wrote and also shared in the NFLPRO Discord titled "Ethical Engagement with NFTs — Impossibility or Viable Aspiration" which couples nicely with the more academic report previously mentioned.

Sign up for the Near Future Laboratory Email List

Michelle Kasprzak

OCADU

Super Ordinary Lab

Originally I wanted to have Yancey Strickler as a guest to discuss his book This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World, after I read it last spring. A year has passed since I thought it would be fun to have Yancey on and in that time he created something called Metalabel, and that was equally interesting and maybe more so because I've been actively working on various social architectures to facilitate groups and teams whose purpose is creative action, creating culture, groups and teams that translate ideas into material form. And, somehow, from what I heard and read, Metalabel sounds like it is doing something similar. So, this is what we focused on — futuristic kinds of arrangements of creative cultures.

Because this topic is so curious and intriguing and evocative and still at the edge of making sense, I deployed a General Seminar on the topic for Wednesday April 20th at 3pm PDT, General Seminar N°20 - Metalabel WTF Join me and 16 others to work through the question and discuss this idea of the 'Metalabel.'

Yancey Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur. He’s the cofounder of Kickstarter, cofounder of Metalabel, cofounder of the artist resource The Creative Independent, creator of Bentoism, creator of The Ideaspace, and the author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World.

Please support this podcast either directly at nearfuturelaboratory.eth or over at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. You can also support the podcast by rating it on whatever podcast platform you are using, but especially Apple Podcast and write a review! All those little low-lift things really do help!

 This is the second in a series of conversations with people operating in the foresight/futures arena — Futurists Talking To Futurists.

J. Paul Neeley is a speculative designer and service designer. He teaches at the Royal College of Art in the service design course. His work explores the social, cultural, economic, and ethical implications of emerging technologies, designing speculative futures that help us engage with possibility as a way of reframing and understanding anew our current state. Recent projects have focused on happiness, healthcare and wellbeing, self quantification, social polarization and civility, future mobility, AI, synthetic biology, and issues of complexity and computational irreducibility in design and business.

Find out more about his practice at https://www.neeleyworldwide.com and https://www.critical.design

Also — super important! Please consider supporting this podcast. The easiest way to do this is to rate, write a review on whatever podcast service you are currently looking at! Also, please share it widely amongst your team, friends, colleagues, family.

You can also support the podcast over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory or you can buy me a "coffee" over at https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj.

Another way to support this work is to commission us to help you and your team use the approaches and techniques we discuss in the podcast. We regularly facilitate workshops and entire programs, like what we discussed in Episode N°25 with Katie McCrory from IKEA. Contact me directly at [email protected] to learn more.

My guests in this episode are the design practice known as Dunne & Raby, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. They continue to be pioneers at the vanguard of design practice with a particular emphasis on speculative design, and the use of design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of existing and emerging technologies.

They are the authors of several books on the topic, most recently "Speculative Everything" and a long-awaited reprint of their seminal book "Hertzian Tales". In our discussion they allude to a forthcoming book as well.

http://dunneandraby.co.uk/

https://www.designedrealities.org/

Hey! Please consider supporting this podcast! The easiest way to do this is to share it amongst your team, friends, colleagues, family — and rank the podcast on whatever platform on which you're listening.

But more directly you can support the podcast over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory or you can buy me a "coffee" over at https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj. Your support is greatly appreciated!

You can find more links, including an invitation to join the Near Future Laboratory Discord, here: https://linktr.ee/bleeckerj

This is a special episode of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast — a digest of General Seminar 17 which was on the topic of "Solarpunk". So this episode consists of excerpts from that seminar, along with some commentary for context. Thanks to all the wonderful participants from that session, and especially to our extra special guest participant Andrew Dana Hudson who has a forthcoming book on Climate Fiction called Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures due to drop on April 5th.

I mentioned that I would put a link to a Solarpunk Futures proposal the Near Future Laboratory DAO submitted. The proposal is up on IPFS — it's called A Design Fiction Blockchain Solar Punk Public Future Project. I implore you to take a look, and help us figure out how we can develop this further. Creating imaginaries of more habitable plausible possible near futures is vital — maybe even more important than just building tech for climate change mitigation. If you don't have a large public shared imaginary of what a more habitable future might look like, you've lost the game for creating a future. All I see nowadays for the future is dismal ruin. (Thanks Hollywood!)

Please support the Near Future Laboratory Podcast over on Patreon — https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — Your support is very much appreciated and helps me know that you value the effort that goes into producing the show!

Want to find out more about General Seminar? Looking to bring General Seminar into your team or organization to help flex your imagination muscle and be a better futures thinker? Get in touch! https://generalseminar.com

Also, learn more about the Design Fiction mindset and get involved with us! Join the Near Future Laboratory Discord — https://linktr.ee/bleeckerj

Please subscribe, rate and share this podcast amongst your friends and colleagues! Thank you for listening.

This is the first of what I hope to be a series of conversations with people operating in the foresight/futures arena and I'm calling it Futurists Talking To Futurists. Radha Mistry and I met late last year when her team posted a role in their growing strategic foresight team. I was intrigued by our conversation and asked if she would come on the podcast to talk about her role, experiences, and insights — mostly because I was trying to understand what "foresight" meant or means now after I had been away for nearly 8 years quite focussed on building and growing my product company OMATA. It was a super fun, casual chat where I could ask naive questions and learn from Radha and her remarkable trajectory in and around architecture, futures, and strategic foresight. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Please consider supporting this podcast. The easiest way to do this is to share it amongst your team, friends, colleagues, family — and rank the podcast on whatever platform on which you're listening.

You can also support the podcast over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory or you can buy me a "coffee" over at https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj. Your support is greatly appreciated!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/radha-mistry-63024440/

This is a special episode of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast — a digest of General Seminar 16 which was on the topic of "The Generalist". So this episode consists of excerpts from that seminar, along with some commentary for context. Thanks to all the wonderful participants from that session.

Please support the Near Future Laboratory Podcast over on Patreon — https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — Your support is very much appreciated and helps me know that you value the effort that goes into producing the show!

Want to find out more about General Seminar? Looking to bring General Seminar into your team or organization to help flex your imagination muscle and be a better futures thinker? Get in touch! https://generalseminar.com

Also, learn more about the Design Fiction mindset and get involved with us! Join the Near Future Laboratory Discord — https://linktr.ee/bleeckerj

Please subscribe, rate and share this podcast amongst your friends and colleagues! Thank you for listening.

Ed Finn is Director at Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination and Associate Professor at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. In our conversation we wonder through a variety of topics including the nature of the imagination and education, Design Fiction, CSI's work on Climate Futures and Climate Fiction and a whole lot more!

Please support this podcast at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory or buy me a coffee ☕ — thanks!

Check out my linktree for links to the Near Future Laboratory Discord server, my portfolio site, and newsletter and all the rest.

Katie McCrory leads the Life at Home global team at IKEA, where she oversees the production of the annual global Life at Home Report. Katie bought into the principles of Design Fiction, particularly the focus on the "everyday", and commissioned me to work with her team to bring some clarity and acuity to the global research 2021 results with some Design Fiction, ultimately delivered within the Life at Home Magazine. In this episode, Katie and I talk about the role of Design Fiction in corporate contexts, and a bit "behind the scenes" as to how we effectively and efficiently achieved some impactful and meaningful results and delivered them in the Life at Home Magazine.

Please consider supporting this podcast. You can do so over on https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. You can also "buy" me a "coffee" over at https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj or disintermediate and support us directly by sending $ETH to bleecker.eth. 

If you're into this kind of material and the discussions and work surrounding it, consider joining the Near Future Laboratory Discord! General Seminar is entering Season 2 — be sure to check it out and sign up, and you'll definitely want to sign up to the Design Fiction Newsletter. To find out more about me and my work or to talk about work, visit my portfolio site here: https://julianbleecker.com and reach out.

https://lifeathome.ikea.com/

https://lifeathome.ikea.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IKEA_LifeatHome_Magazine2021.pdf

https://lifeathome.ikea.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Data_LifeatHomeReport_LAHR21.pdf

https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/design-fiction-a-short-essay-on-design-science-fact-and-fiction

https://julianbleecker.com

https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj

https://buttondown.email/designfiction

General Seminar N°14 was on Web3! 

Yeah! 

What the heck is that anyway?? 

Well — that's why we have General Seminar; to discuss the things we're somewhat confused about..the things on the edge of meaning. General Seminar. Listen in on some of the outcomes of Seminar and tune in to our design fiction excavations. We started with a simple brief: what is travel in a Web3 universe? What is the refrigerator in a Web3 universe? DISCUSS!

Please support the Near Future Laboratory Podcast over on Patreon — https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — Your support is very much appreciated and helps me know that you value the effort that goes into producing the show!

Want to find out more about General Seminar? Looking to bring General Seminar into your team or organization to help flex your imagination muscle and be a better futures thinker? Get in touch! https://generalseminar.com

Also, learn more about the Design Fiction mindset and get involved with us! Join the Near Future Laboratory Discord — https://linktr.ee/bleeckerj

Jaymo a/k/a Jay Springett is a writer, podcaster, strategist, currently specializing in the distributed web, metaverse, and world running. He works with individuals and organisations to create cohesive worlds. Hybrid environments made up of people, places, technologies and the cultures they create together. You can find him and his work at thejaymo.net.

Here are some links to some of the material, references, and topics we covered:

Interdependence Ep. 22: This is All Happening Right Now: Solarpunk, cultural fracking and the real Jurassic Park with Jay Springett

Permanently Moved Podcast

Headless Brands Essay

“The indifference Engine” (also The Indifference Engine - An Ecological Characterisation of Bitcoin)

Olalekan Jeyifous

"Olalekan Jeyifous Is Imagining an Afrofuturist Brooklyn"

Mieke Marple is an artist and writer, and creator of the Medusa Collection, a set of 2,500 unique NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s a large scale artwork + restorative history + fundraiser that dedicates 25% of all sales to Steven Van Zandt’s national education non-profit TeachRock.org

Mieke and I talk about art, running a traditional art gallery, and her motivations to move to digital and specifically crypto art.

Please consider supporting this podcast over on Patreon or buy me a coffee! Thank you for ranking this podcast, and for your support!

LINKS

[Mieke Marple] (https://miekemarple.com/)

[Medusa Collection] (http://medusacollection.io/)

[Teach Rock] (https://teachrock.org/)

[Become a Patron] (https://www.patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory)

[Near Future Laboratory Discord]( https://discord.gg/PHbDruNGN5)

A discussion with Nick Foster, Head of Design at X (a/k/a The Moonshot Factory). Please consider supporting this podcast, or if you want — buy me a Coffee! You may also be interested in the Design Fiction Newsletter as well as the Near Future Laboratory Discord, high-signal / low-noise channel discussing design, technoculture, and futures. Thank you for listening! Julian

I had a chance to meet up with Jess Charlesworth and Tim Parsons while they passed through Los Angeles a few weeks ago. It was great to meet them in person after following their work for years now. Their work has been exhibited internationally at some of the most awesome venues and exhibition forums — I suggest you settle in to look at their website, which is a great catalog of their works and their motivating principles.

Parsons & Charlesworth are collaborative artists focusing on the objects and habits of humankind. Their inventive sculptural practice relies upon creating objects that allow us to examine our future selves and perhaps navigate better. Utilizing sculpture, objects, narrative writing and photography, their work addresses key social, ecological and technological challenges of our time, including climate change and the future of work.

Please consider supporting this podcast, or if you want — buy me a Coffee! You may also be interested in the Design Fiction Newsletter as well as the Near Future Laboratory Discord, high-signal / low-noise channel discussing design, technoculture, and futures.

Thank you for listening!

Julian

This is a special episode of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast — an annotated highlight reel from our General Seminar N°10 — a discussion on CRYPTO GAMES. You can find out more about this General Seminar here: https://generalseminar.com/general-seminar-no-10.)

Yeah. CRYPTO GAMING. That’s like..games and blockchains, right? Or pay-to-play-to-earn, as I’ve heard it referred to? Or is it, like..being able to take your broadsword from Fortnite into Call of Duty or something? 

Listen along to General Seminar N°10 with hosts Julian Bleecker, Katie Dreke, and Ian Bogost and our 16 participants.

Please consider supporting this podcast! You can do so at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory or you can buy me a Coffee here:https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj! You can also send $ETH to https://bleecker.eth.

(Oh, also— I mention in my introduction that something really unsettling happened when I was producing this episode and I refer to a tweet — it's this one here — https://twitter.com/slavin_fpo/status/1449455253670309895)

Sarah Friend studied painting as a fine artist and is now one of the more audacious media artists. Her art projects probe the contours of possible kinds of social relations built on top of blockchain mechanics, inspired and shaped by her interest in science-fiction and futures. Sarah's medium is software, her canvas is the blockchain, and her paintbrushes non-fungible tokens and Solidity contracts. He project Lifeforms and Off are especially evocative, pushing into the near future of how cryptodynamics and blockchain architecture can operate as instruments and expressive media. 

Please consider supporting this podcast. You can do so at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory or by buying me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj. You can also send crypto here to me directly at bleecker.eth

======

Some links to Sarah Friend's work

https://isthisa.com/

https://twitter.com/isthisanart_

https://off.supply/

https://lifeforms.supply/about

https://github.com/ana0

Extracting Computerized Desires — A Review of Clickmine

Near Future Laboratory Discord: https://discord.com/invite/j7DggW2ahj

Design Fiction Newsletter: https://buttondown.email/designfiction

This is a special episode of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast — a highlight reel from our General Seminar N°9 — a discussion on Synthetic Brands / Synthetic Media. We are now nudging into a world in which algorithmically synthetic and computer-generated artificial entities will likely be participating, collaborating, and fully assuming roles up and down the culture stack  — from customer care bots to pop-stars and politicians. How do we make sense of all this?

General Seminar is a platform for sense-making through discussion.   

One-to-many “expert” platforms like podcasts, TED Talks, and Masterclasses serve a role in the dissemination of ideas and opinions of a small group of experts. By their nature these are largely one-way, where ideas flow to a mostly passive audience who still must make sense of the topic on their own.

General Seminar provides an alternative. Sign up to be notified of future General Seminar sessions.

This podcast is supported by the good graces of my patron's on Patreon. Please consider supporting this podcast and my Design Fiction Newsletter! Or, you can buy me a coffee to show your thanks!

Patrick Tanguay is a Generalist, Synthesist, and Curator. He explores tech in society, signals of change, & prospective futures in his fantastic weekly newsletter Sentiers, which I recommend you subscribe to. Every Sunday I get a host of fantastic insights and pointers, one of the most interesting is his mentioning the most clicked story a year ago. This morning it was a great piece from last year — the somewhat manifesto-y article on Squad Wealth, some themes we discuss in this podcast. You can also find Patrick on Twitter at @inevernu 

Please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon — doing so helps cover the costs of maintaining the various nozzles and nodes necessary to produce the podcast, plus maybe more than that — it shows that you support the effort that goes into this work. You can also buy me a "coffee" as a kind of tip for the effort.

If you like the topics in and around this discussion, please consider signing up for General Seminar — it's my new experimental platform for conversations using the seminar framework to have several-to-several conversations in which everyone has a voice.

Patrick has been a web developer for 15 plus years, and co-founded the first coworking space in Montréal, Station C, and co-initiated the critically acclaimed print magazine The Alpine Review. Over the years he also helped start a number of groups bringing people and ideas together: The Awesome Foundation Montréal, Webcamp, Creative Mornings Montréal, and Hacks/Hackers Montréal. Back in the day he was steward of the oldest and longest running blogger meetup, Yulblog.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is an author, consultant, public speaker, entrepreneur and designer living in London.

She is the author of Creating a Culture of Innovation and Smarter Homes

She is the founder of the Low Carbon Design Institute, a residency for creative people focused on climate change.

She was named 1st in a list of 100 Internet of Things Influencers (Postscapes, 2016), 2nd in Top 100 Internet of Things Thought Leaders (Onalytica, 2014) and in the Top 100 Influential Tech Women on Twitter (Business Insider, 2014). She’s been included in the long-list of Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in Tech in the UK in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.

She studied industrial design at the University of Montreal and interaction design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.

You can find her work at designswarm

Please support this podcast, which you can do at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. You can also buy me a coffee!

You may also be interested in the Design Fiction newsletter, a somewhat weekly newsletter on topics related to design, innovation, culture and technology. As well, we have a new platform for sense-making called General Seminar. New sessions are in the planning phase. Sign up there to be notified of upcoming seminars on Augmented Reality, the Metaverse, and Design Fiction.

Tina He is a writer, designer, and investor dedicated to creating technology that fosters creativity, growth, and knowledge.

Her essay "The New Frontier of Belonging" caught my attention as it navigated through a number of disparate terrains while describing the peculiar kinds of social formations arising out of blockchain mechanics — and it leads with a reference to Italo Calvino, which I found to be unexpected and beautiful.

Please support my podcast: https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

Or buy me a small coffee: https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj

Here are some links related to this episode:

https://tinahe.xyz/

https://fakepixels.substack.com/

https://desktop.pacecapital.com/

https://fakepixels.substack.com/p/fkpxls-the-new-frontier-of-belonging

This episode is a conversation with Scott Smith, Managing Partner at Changeist. In this chat with Scott, we cover most all of that territory. We talk about what makes Design Fiction Design Fiction and not Science Fiction or Literary Fiction. We discuss David Kirby, who will be featured in a forthcoming episode, and the diegetic prototype. And a big discussion about ‘what Design Fiction is good for.’