🤖Future Casting

Fall 2020 • Carla Gannis • Mondays and Wednesdays • 4:00 – 5:50pm • 370J Rm 310

"No one can predict the future. But smart innovators still try."

There are two paths to innovation. One resides in our timeline just beyond now—solving a problem that exists today with technologies and resources available today. For comparison’s sake, let’s call it simple forecasting. The other path resides in our timeline years into the future—solving a problem that is, at least according to the tea leaves of trends and R&D pipelines, imminent, using technologies or resources that may not be currently available. That’s futurecasting. - https://www.magnani.com/blog/what-is-futurecasting-and-why-should-you-care

"The world is a social construction"

"...the world is a social construction, and can therefore be deconstructed and reconstructed into something new; that the world as it exists is not an inevitability, but in fact was built this way. That’s where the historical analysis comes in. If you understand the history, you understand that certain decisions were made so that people would live in certain ways." - Clint Smith, Counting Descent

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Imagine our civilization at least 20 years from now. Things have either collapsed beyond repair (yes, I know it may seem like we're already there, but "stretch" to think even worst case scenarios) or life has become a harmonious dream, or something in between those two extremes. Whatever the future holds, in this future, things are very different than they are now. Through some crazy combination of wormholes and string theory, you have the opportunity to create a piece of information that will be sent back to the current population, that shines a light on this future.

• What does your imagined future look, sound, and feel like? (your framing story)

• What message would you transmit to the current population from the future?

• You will brainstorm, research, sketch, map, design, and build physical (or virtual) prototypes of an object(s) or experience from your imagined future.

• You will deliver your message in any final medium(s) you choose. The only requirement is that it includes image(s), physical or virtual model(s), or video(s) of your proto-typed physical object(s).

REVIEW: CHAPTER 06 SPECULATIVE DESIGN

I suggest brainstorming one or more of the following themes to get you started, but you will need to eventually drill down from these very broad themes to specificity:

• Animals

• Commerce

• Education

• Engineering

• Ethics

• Information

• Health

  • For instance:

    • Aging

    • Disease

    • Infection

• Materiality

• Media: Moving Image, Photography, Painting, Print, Sound, etc.

• Memory

• Nature

• Networks

• Ruins

• Science

  • For instance:

    • Physics

    • Space Travel

• Sexuality

• Systems

• The Object

• Technology

  • For instance:

    • Artificial Intelligence / Post-humanism

• Time