Near Future Laboratory Podcast

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 futur...

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...

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, too...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Plea...

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, pleas...

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...

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 inclus...

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 f...

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...

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...

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, pur...

This is from the Windermere Tapes Box 050 Tape 03 with Alan Hook , a Lecturer in Interactive Media and a Researcher in New Media and Play at Ulster University. Alan teaches Games Studies and New Media Studies within the School of Media Film and Journalism. Equine Eyes Alan Hook on Twitter Please support this podcast over at Patreon . Support comes with access to the bustling design fiction oriente...

Alt-Academia, Alt-Industry, Alt-R&D with Laura Dudek at the Design Research Works Jamboree , Brathay Hall, Windermere, UK https://2021.rca.ac.uk/students/laura-dudek https://laura-dudek.com/ https://jamboree.designresearch.works/ If you feel that this work contributes some meaningful value to your day, please take a moment to support the work over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory ,...

Tobias Revell in conversation with Julian Bleecker at Research Through Design 2022 at Brathay Hall, Windermere UK on or about August 2022. https://tobiasrevell.com/ https://jamboree.designresearch.works Tobias' reflections on the Design Research Works Jamboree: https://blog.tobiasrevell.com/2022/08/10/box077-an-hypothesis/ If you feel that this work contributes some meaningful value to your day, p...

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. Yo...

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...

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 th...

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 a...

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, relatio...

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?...

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 t...