Stay ConnectedThe Near Future Laboratory Podcast is conversations at the vanguard of design, technology, futures, and culture, hosted by Julian Bleecker — founder of the Near Future Laboratory.
https://nearfuturelaboratory.com
https://julianbleecker.com
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Copyright: © Julian Bleecker
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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.
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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 julian@nearfuturelaboratory.com 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.
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/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IKEA_LifeatHome_Magazine2021.pdf
https://lifeathome.ikea.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Data_LifeatHomeReport_LAHR21.pdf
The artist known as DEAFBEEF began an as art project in 2020 at the start of the COVID 19 pandemic and has drawn attention during the 2021 NFT boom. His work experiments with generative practices, minimal and even near-obsolete technology, and creative emergence. 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 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.
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