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
Support this podcast at https://www.patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory
Copyright: © Julian Bleecker
Read More 👉🏽 https://detroit.imaginesharder.com
Can you imagine your idea of the future of work, beyond Zoom calls from the beach?
What is the Onboarding Guide for the Future of Work?
What is the Resumé from the Future of Work?
What does the equivalent of the ‘org chart’ look like?
Want to help create a reinvigorated future imaginary of what work could be? Want to try your hand at Design Fiction Worldbuilding?
Join me for Detroit Imagines Harder: Futures of Work, a 3-day Design Fiction Summit & Workshop held in real life in real Detroit.
Just a few spots left!
October 16-18, 2024.
Read More 👉🏽 https://detroit.imaginesharder.com
Tobias and I have a tidy morning/evening conversation that revolves around the impact of Philip K. Dick's science fiction, particularly how his imaginative devices influence modern technological narratives. We talk about the ways he refers to and anticipates AI and other artifacts, of course there's a deep dive into the significance of the Minority Report's gestural interface created for the 2001 film adaptation, and how it has influenced real-world technological advancements.
What prompted this discussion was the recent release of the book Towards the Realm of Materiality: Designing Philip K. Dick's Non-Existing Technologies and Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the PKD book from an "adjacent now."
The question I have is this: what methods can be adopted in order to operationalize these science fiction themes into practical realities, with the aim of constructing a more habitable world using advanced design and speculative concepts.
Please consider supporting the podcast and joining the Near Future Laboratory community over on Patreon!
Exploring AI Imaginaries and Future Speculations In this episode, we discuss the continuation of the AI magazine project and the upcoming season of the Super Seminar series. And then we jump into discussing the book in which Tobias has an essay about the philosophy and conceptualization of technology in Philip K. Dick's works, particularly focusing on the adaptive nature of everyday technology. We get into the production design and cultural impact of the 2001 film "Minority Report", based on the 1956 (!) PKD novella of the same name, emphasizing how media can shape and influence technological advancements. 00:00 Introduction and Recap 01:53 Discussion on AI and Philip K. Dick 05:17 Minority Report and Technological Vernacular 11:25 Speculative Design and Future Technologies 16:44 Cultural Impact and Future Visions 25:03 Breeze Punk and Green Transition
Near Future Laboratory Podcast Episode 90: Exploring Creative Worlds with Kyle Ng Support the podcast on Patreon: https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory
Join us at Detroit Imagines Harder: https://detroit.imaginesharder.com
$55 Gets You 4 Design Fiction Books (Plus Electronic Sheep Training Cards): https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/the-manual-of-design-fiction-paperback In Episode 90 of the Near Future Laboratory podcast, Julian Bleecker, founder of the Near Future Laboratory, sits down with Kyle Ng, creative director and founder of Braindead, to discuss his journey through creativity and innovation. Kyle shares his experiences from a young age, detailing his diverse creative influences, from sports and punk rock to film and new media. He speaks about his brand evolution, beginning with Farm Tactics, and how he navigated the fashion world with a unique DIY ethos. We get into the importance of storytelling, building immersive worlds, and staying true to one's creative instincts. 00:00 Introduction 02:33 Upcoming Event: Detroit Imagines Harder 03:22 Design Fiction Books and Merchandise 04:03 Conversation with Kyle Ng Begins 04:10 Kyle Ng on Curiosity and Inspiration 08:25 Exploring Technology and Identity 16:44 Kyle Ng's Journey and Influences 22:43 Early Career and Creative Exploration 31:27 The Birth of Farm Tactics 32:54 From Biking to Business: Early Hustles 35:33 Scaling Up: From Local to Major Collaborations 37:41 The DIY Ethos and Business Growth 39:33 The Philosophy of Success and Failure 42:34 Brain Dead: Evolution and Expansion 48:03 Building Cultural Experiences 55:05 The Future Vision and Personal Anecdotes 57:55 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
In Episode 089 I get into an in-depth conversation with guest Silvio Lorusso, a designer, artist, and writer based in Lisbon. Our discussion centers around the complex relationship between design, disillusionment, and the evolving role of design in society, as Silvio has articulated in his recent book 'What Design Can't Do', a critique of the rhetorical expectations placed upon design. We consider the future and past inspirations relevant to the field of Design and cover various facets of design culture, including the loss of material practices, the socio-economic impacts of design evolution, and the melancholic nostalgia among designers today. We bet into the cultural significance of memes, the backlash against crypto art, and the generational gap in the perception of technological advancements. We also get to share personal anecdotes from our professional experiences, and come to share a kind of hopeful aspiration mixed with skepticism towards the promises of modern design and technology. A fun conversation!
Please rate and write a review on whatever platform you're listening right now, and support this work over on Patreon!
Your support is meaningful and gratefully received. To get in touch, contact me over at Near Future Laboratory
Thanks for listening!
_Julian
A discussion with Dave Gray about our experiences creating communities that foster human connection, imagination, and possibility. We share our own approaches to building new kinds of ways of organizing human potential where people can explore ideas and practice creatively.
"What if school was a place where we could test our theories by creating prototypes, proposals, and provocations; where experiments were encouraged, where people could play, practice, and prepare for life and work?"
https://schoolofthepossible.com
See all of my podcasts over on https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/
Also, please support the podcast over on patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. Becoming a patron gets you access to the Near Future Laboratory Discord, and discounts on SuperSeminar.
Please also rate the podcast and write a review!
Thank you!
Julian
Taryn O'Neil and Tamara Krinsky are the creative force behind Scirens, a creative team working at the intersection of science & storytelling, creative entertainment that encourages curiosity and imaginative thinking to shape a new vision for a rapidly changing world.
They recently produced the trailer for Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination's Climate Action Almanac.
You can see the trailer, called The Assignment over on Youtube.
Thank you to all my patrons who support this podcast and the work amongst the Near Future Laboratory's Discord community. Please consider supporting this work by becoming a Patron over at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory.
If you're interested in the work we do and how we do it, you will find some useful references and tools over at https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com
This is a digest of the 3PM session of General Seminar Season 05 Episode 01 where we discuss possible futures in which AI is as normal, ordinary, and everyday as wheels on luggage and televisions we talk to.
General Seminar is Near Future Laboratory's platform for sense-making in which we excavate artifacts from possible futures rather than make predictions and prognostications. This is the Design Fiction approach to imagining into possible futures.
To learn more about General Seminar sign up for the Near Future Laboratory's newsletter at https://nearfuturelaboratory.com and see past General Seminars at https://generalseminar.com
This is a digest of the 10AM session of General Seminar Season 05 Episode 01 where we discuss possible futures in which AI is as normal, ordinary, and everyday as wheels on luggage and televisions we talk to.
General Seminar is Near Future Laboratory's platform for sense-making in which we excavate artifacts from possible futures rather than make predictions and prognostications. This is the Design Fiction approach to imagining into possible futures.
To learn more about General Seminar sign up for the Near Future Laboratory's newsletter at https://nearfuturelaboratory.com and see past General Seminars at https://generalseminar.com
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather 'round for an electrifying journey through the cerebral and speculative realm of "Thrilling Wonder Stories." Listen as we regale you with a tale of imagination, innovation, and intellectual wonder. Our narrative unfolds through a dazzling array of discussions, exploring the intersection of technology, science, and the arts. From the organic to the artificial, from the accidental to the meticulously planned, our speakers weave a tapestry of ideas that challenge the boundaries of reality and fiction. Venture with us into discussions that span the history of consciousness, the marvels of special effects in film, the complexities of artificial intelligence, and the speculative frontiers of science fiction. This transcript is not just a record; it's a gateway to exploring the future's potential, the mysteries of the universe, and the uncharted territories of human creativity. Dive into a world where the wonders of tomorrow are discussed today, where imagination is the currency, and the possibilities are as boundless as the stars. Welcome to "Thrilling Wonder Stories," where every word is a step into the future!
With Liam Young, Matt Jones, Julian Bleecker, Bruce Sterling, and Kevin Slavin
In this episode, I chat with the fun, creative, thoughtful Ruth Guerra, a design researcher with a knack for amplifying the questions about design, creativity, research and futures through a wonderful social media presence. We dive into her journey from a theater undergrad to mastering future design, where she champions participatory design with a twist. Ruth shares her passion for storytelling, not just any storytelling, but the kind that shapes our future. She's also getting busy hosting innovative workshops to help people get a sense of how design research and design fiction legible to normal humans. So buckle up, we're exploring how design, values, and a sprinkle of theater can make the world a more engaging place. Spoiler alert: there are no spoilers in here even though we talk for a moment about 'Leave the World Behind.' This is a fun one that just might have you thinking about joining the Near Future Laboratory Discord and supporting this podcast over on patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory
Check out Ruth's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/ridguerra
And definitely her Instagram: https://instagram.com/ridguerra
Check out the episode's sponsored book, Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the book that came from an adjacent future in which the Sony Walkman failed: https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/androids-dream-of-electric-sheep
Some things that happened at the Near Future Laboratory the last weeks of 2023 including a day trip to SFO using a travel voucher that was going to expire at the end of the year, meeting with the NFL gang for an awesome lunch and chat, hanging with Will Carey from https://formation.eco to continue working on the meaning, purpose, and offering of this reinvigorated evolution of Near Future Laboratory. There were also a bunch of (other people's) podcasts that dropped (links below). And it was the 9 year anniversary of OMATA which had me go back and reflect on how I used Design Fiction to help me create a future vision of the company and share that vision with investors who were so enthralled with this vision that they ended up buying the whole company. Links https://formation.eco https://medium.com/design-fictions/why-did-i-write-an-annual-report-from-the-future-849cf12b0687 Reality Plus https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/realitypl-us/id1722133066?i=1000639248112 https://youtu.be/ld6FLoCH3Vw?si=NYJEXdD3jLDIybdg Expedition Works' Journey with Purpose https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/julian-bleecker-a-little-bit-more-curious/id1697389263?i=1000638677720 In Clear Focus / Design Fiction https://bigeyeagency.com/design-fiction-with-julian-bleecker/
Episode 082 of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast with Julian Bleecker in conversation with Shashwatch Santosh.
Please support this work and join the Near Future Laboratory Discord through Patreon:
https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory
You can also support the work by buying something from the Near Future Laboratory Shop of Futures Artifacts:
https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com
In Episode 082, Shash and I dance around the world of design education from Shash’s experiences at Parsons School of Design. He describes the challenging norms and his explorations around the boundaries of speculative design and Design Fiction. Shash reveals that he is a proponent of creative confusion, and shares his journey through design school, emphasizing the importance of breaking away from traditional labels and constraints. We get a candid discussion of the struggle to define his work, moving beyond conventional roles like industrial designer or object maker, and embracing the ambiguous realm of speculative design.
Shashwatch's insights are insightful and profound, particularly useful for those in or considering design education. I was especially intrigued by his critique of how the term 'speculative design' can inadvertently create aesthetic stereotypes and limit the scope of design projects. He advocates for a design approach that transcends labels, allowing work to speak for itself without being confined by preconceived notions of discipline. This approach, he believes, fosters creativity and opens up a world of possibilities beyond the conventional boundaries of design.
I somewhat echo Shashwatch’s sentiments, and we wonder together and probe the practical aspects of translating expansive and imaginative thinking into viable career paths — where viable means an exchange of value (insight/imagination/creativity for $$$). Shashwatch responds with examples from his own life, discussing the challenges of job hunting and the importance of presenting work effectively to various audiences. He highlights the significance of maintaining technical rigor in projects, which helps in navigating the murky waters of creative industries.
Shashwatch also shares his experience of struggling with familial expectations and the pressures of justifying his unconventional career path. He stresses the importance of finding a balance between creative freedom and economic viability, a dilemma faced by many in creative fields. His journey underscores the need for designers to possess not just creative skills but also the ability to articulate and market their ideas effectively in a commercial context.
You can find Shash’s thesis project 'The Public Library of Usables', a concept born from his exploration of object-oriented ontology. This project challenges traditional object functions, inviting a re-imagination of how objects are used and interact with each other, reflecting his deep engagement with speculative design principles.
Hopefully this Episode provides a compelling narrative on the complexities of design education and practice, highlighting the importance of breaking conventions, embracing ambiguity, and balancing creative aspirations with practical realities. I’d say that Shash's journey and optimism is a testament to the transformative power of speculative design and the value of creative exploration in shaping a unique design identity.
1. Postcards from some possible futures, sent to me by Elliot P. Montgomery 2. A Magazine from the Future in which autonomous vehicles are about as normal, ordinary, and everyday as television remote controls, wheels on luggage, and laptop sleeves. 3. Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, our pulp pop-psychology paperback from some future in which Sony's Aibo became as popular as the Sony Walkman and now, well — they're just here, and about as ferocious as a cuddly cute robot dog. https://magazinefromthefuture.comhttps://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com... * Exploration of Possible Futures through Artifacts: The use of creative artifacts like postcards, magazines, and books to explore and represent possible futures. These artifacts are designed to augment traditional, analytical approaches to future studies with imagination and sensory experiences. * Design Fiction as a Tool: The value of design fiction is that it’s a method that translates ideas and scenarios about the future into tangible, visual forms. You can think of Design Fiction’s translation of research analysis into something engaging as an analog to the way a screenplay becomes an immersive, engaging visual story when it is made into a film. Design fiction serves to make future concepts more relatable and understandable. * Some Examples of Artifacts I've Created * Magazine from a Future with Autonomous Vehicles: Created for a client, this magazine represents a world where autonomous vehicles are commonplace. It was developed through workshops with various researchers and designers, capturing collective hopes, fears, and expectations. * Book from a Future with Ho-Hum Androids: Imagine a world where androids are as common and non-threatening as a Sony Walkman. I created a book from that world — a pop-psychology analysis of the Android psyche. * Imagination and Speculation: It’s important to imagine and speculate about different futures, considering the wide-ranging implications of technological advancements. Design Fiction presents the useful challenge to think beyond the immediate and apparent effects of new technologies. * Cognitive and Sensory Engagement: Design Fiction is a way to create more immersive and sensory engagement with future scenarios, moving beyond traditional, data-driven methods. Design Fiction emphasizes the role of imagination and creativity - the making of artifacts from these futures — in making future studies more accessible and emotionally resonant.
Randy Plemel is a design and innovation consultant specializing in solving hard and complex problems for people in elegant, and hopefully simpler ways.
Randy has worked with a wide range of organizations in the public sector on democracy promotion, and the private sector on who their customer might be, including the Knight Foundation to reimagine the civic commons across eight cities, Bloomberg Philanthropies to cultivate city-based innovation in the U.S. and India, AARP to evolve their role in creating livable communities for all, and the City of Los Angeles and NYCHA to make cities better through design.
He’s also completed a range of new products and services with a diverse set of clients—including State Farm, Steelcase, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Tata, Citibank, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, and Walgreens—on a variety of design challenges, from new digital communication tools, to blended digital and physical experiences, to entirely new retail strategy and concepts.
Randy holds a BS in Architecture and Masters of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/randyplemel/
Expedition Works: https://expedition.works/
Journey With Purpose: https://jwp.news/founding/
Avery’s Journey, Randy’s Design Fiction exercise gives purpose to Generative AI tools rather than freaking out or fetishizing and drooling all over them.
https://expedition.works/project/averys-journey
Journey With Purpose Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/journey-with-purpose/id1697389263
(p.s. This ‘Better Bin’ episode with Colin Kelly discussing how his ad-hoc, let’s-see-what-happens submission to get the contract to design the new New York City public trash bin is awesomely inspiring.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/colin-kelly-better-bin/id1697389263?i=1000633101486)
Here it is. Another episode of 'Last Week from the Near Future'. This is Episode 007, for Week 49 of 2023.
Please support the Near Future Laboratory Podcast and get access to our awesomely vibrant Near Future Laboratory Discord community over on Patreon. Here's what I covered. PDPal: A 20-Year Anniversary I'm taking you on a trip down memory lane as I reminisce about the PDPal project, an emotional GPS I worked on 20 years ago. Discover how it made its way to the Times Square Jumbotron and how this early exploration of technology was an art-led prototyping of the kinds of location-based experiences we now take for granted from mobile devices. What most resonates for me about this project, on reflection, is the critical role of imagination and imaginative art projects in driving innovation. And it occurred to me that this was as good a time as any to reflect on the two major mobile projects I've done in my career, that being PDPal and the OMATA App. Both were done on a bit of a shoestring and with fairly high personal stakes, and both are, I would say and have been told, beautiful and evocative instances of design and engineering. Archigram and Speculative Architecture Archigram! The renowned collective of architects known for their imaginative designs in the 1960s. Consider their speculative architectural practice in contrast to today's world of Generative AI + Architecture, a topic I invite you to join me to discuss in Super Seminar 005 (https://superseminar.school) Patreon and Near Future Laboratory I'm excited to announce our new Patreon, where you can join me and many others in the Near Future Laboratory Discord, along with our weekly office hours. We've had an incredible 190 sessions so far – that's 190 Friday's in a row, as of last week! (https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory) Chris's Employee Handbook Project Chris Butler is the showrunner for this project in the Discord: creating an employee handbook as a Design Fiction archetype in order to explore possible futures of organizations. Book Haul Check out 'The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America' by Julian Montague. This book cleverly treats shopping carts as natural phenomena within our world of stuff – it's a fascinating read. Very kinda Design Fiction-y. Magazine from the Future of AI Project I'm introducing a draft proposal for the 'AI Future Magazine' project. Our goal is to make the AI future more tangible and relatable. If you want to get involved and help create a magazine set in a future where AI is an everyday part of life, join us through Patreon!
Here it is. Another episode of 'Last Week from the Near Future'.
Last Week from the Near Future Laboratory - Week 48/2023 This is what I was thinking about. 1. Failure of Imagination: This concept is a common issue in organizations that struggle to envision anything beyond their current operations. Design Fiction can help with imagining and visualizing potential unexpected events and futures or even those that no one is able to grapple with or say out loud for fear of becoming a pariah. Design Fiction does this uniquely, behaving in a way like a court jester in some sense and thus help to avoid this pitfall. 2. AI Futures in Everyday Life: It is important that we imagine AI's impact on ordinary, everyday aspects of life, such as breakfast routines or sports, rather than just focusing on extreme dystopian or utopian scenarios. 3. Material Cultural Artifacts: Creating tangible representations of potential futures, like magazines from an imagined future, not only yield better, richer, more compelling and engaging visualizations of possible futures, the work required to create them is actual design work. Making to think and making to engage in conversations yields a richer way of 'ideating' and yields a deeper appreciation of possible outcomes. 4. Design Fiction: A brief description of the concept of Design Fiction as a tool to bring research to life, transforming dry, prose-based research into tangible, vivid, and relatable artifacts. 5. Importance of Vivid Representations: I try to underscore the value of creating vibrant, imaginative representations of the future, such as illustrations or fictional artifacts, to make future scenarios more relatable and understandable. 6. Near Future Laboratory’s Approach: We here at Near Future Laboratory uses Design Fiction to create artifacts and representations that help people envision and understand potential futures. 7. Future Seminar and Community Platform: We've got SuperSeminar (https://superseminar.school) coming up on Generative AI. 8. Discord: The Near Future Laboratory has a Discord community, now about 3 years old and with over 1000 members. To join, go to https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory
SuperSeminar 005 is our second session on Speculative Architecture and Generative AI. Here's a sneak peek with Hassan Ragab where we get some insights into how GenAI is shaping what architecture is becoming. Do you want to know more? Sign up for SuperSeminar 005 at https://www.superseminar.school/ss005/genai-architecture our platform for learning from the key individuals who are at the vanguard of the transformational potential of new practices, tools, mindsets and approaches. Save 50% on all 3 of our upcoming Generative AI sessions! https://ti.to/near-future-laboratory/super-seminar-004/with/super-seminar-bundle-max
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.
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.
Mathieu Aguesse is a French entrepreneur, dedicated to innovation and education on impact-driven topics. He successfully launched the first open innovation class dedicated to solving plastic pollution, a program called Deplastify the Planet. At Haas, he is now running a class at called Equitable Design, which leverages the power of design to solve challenges related to diversity, equity and inclusion. He recently co-authored an article on Design Fiction in the Harvard Business Review. Oh, by the way – we wrote a manual of design fiction called, conveniently, The Manual of Design Fiction! You can pre-order it now (shipping early November!) over at http://themanualofdesignfiction.com Please consider supporting the podcast over on http://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — you support comes with access to the Near Future Laboratory Discord, our experiment in hypercollaboration. You won't want to miss all of that.
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.
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.
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://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://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/
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!
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'.
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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
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
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.
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
“The indifference Engine” (also The Indifference Engine - An Ecological Characterisation of Bitcoin)
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://twitter.com/isthisanart_
https://lifeforms.supply/about
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://fakepixels.substack.com/
https://desktop.pacecapital.com/
https://fakepixels.substack.com/p/fkpxls-the-new-frontier-of-belonging
A discussion about the social futures and social dynamics inherent in NFTs and Blockchain, with Sean Bonner. See his https://nftart.lol which compares various NFT platforms. And his blog: http://blog.seanbonner.com/nft/ He also publishes a semi-weekly email newsletter that I can highly recommend, called The Crowd https://tinyletter.com/seanbonner.
A long, ranging, technically challenged conversation with two participants in PizzaDAO which formed spontaneously on Clubhouse based on the idea to have a global pizza party. On March 15th, 2021 they opened Rare Pizzas Box NFT reservations to the public and raised $1.3 Million for real, cheese-y pizza. What is a DAO anyway, and what's it got to do with the future, let alone pizza? https://www.rarepizzas.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-van-de-ghinste-46663937 http://cargocollective.com/jedberk
In this episode I move to the otherside of the Q&A table. Jonas Schmidt had contacted me to do a Q&A for his master's program research, specifically on the Near Future Laboratory and our own approach to design and creative work. It was good fun — so I asked Jonas if he wouldn't mind if we made it into a mirrorworld podcast episode and he happily agreed. Please support this podcast on Patreon - https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — Thank you!
Devon Powers is an Associate Professor of Advertising at the Department of Advertising and PR in the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. Devon studies consumer culture, cultural history, and cultural circulation/intermediation, with a focus on trends, branding, and popular music. We discuss her book "On Trend: The Business of Forecasting the Future".
Alexis Lloyd is a product design and innovation leader who has spent her career designing experiences for how we read, write, and share information on the internet. She is currently the VP of Product Design at Medium and has previously led design and innovation work at The New York Times R&D Lab, Axios, and Automattic. She co-leads the Ethical Futures Lab and has a deep curiosity about how humans and machines co-evolve with one another.
This is Part 2 of my conversation with Madeline Ashby who is an American-Canadian science fiction writer and futurist, best known for her 2016 novel Company Town. She is a graduate of OCAD University's Master of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation. If you found this episode a worthy use of your time and is helping your futures brain bulk up, consider become a patron over at our Patreon — or you can offer a tip which is easy to do nowadays over at ko-fi.org/bleecker
Madeline Ashby is an American-Canadian science fiction writer and futurist, best known for her 2016 novel Company Town. She is a graduate of OCAD University's Master of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation. If you found this episode a worthy use of your time and is helping your futures brain bulk up, consider become a patron over at our Patreon https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — or you can offer a tip which is easy to do nowadays over at https://ko-fi.org/bleecker
Anab Jain is co-founder, along with Jon Arden, of Superflux which is a design studio based in London that create worlds, stories, and tools that provoke and inspire us to engage with the precarity of our rapidly changing world. If you found this episode a worthy use of your time and attention consider become a patron. You can do that at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — or you can offer a tip which is easy to do nowadays over at ko-fi.org/bleecker
This episode is with Professor David Kirby. David coined the term ‘diegetic prototype’ to describe an important component of Design Fiction. He describes this and much more in his important book "Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists and Cinema”.
This episode is a discussion with Liam Young. Liam is an Australian born archtect and film maker who uses design fiction and film in a really provocative and thoughtful and entertaining fashion. He also runs the MA in Fiction and Entertainment at the Southern California Institute of Archtecture (or SCI-ARC). Help support the Podcast by becoming a Patron at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory The Near Future Laboratory podcast is a series of discussions on Design Fiction.
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.’
We discuss the role of the generalist in discovery-based creative, design, future-oriented explorations.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
