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🟡 Sci-fi

At the end of the 19th century, New York City stank. One hundred fifty thousand horses ferried people and goods through the streets of Manhattan, producing 45,000 tons — tons! — of manure a month. It piled up on streets and in vacant lots, and in 1898 urban planners convened from around the world to brainstorm solutions to the impending crisis. They failed to come up with any, unable to imagine horseless transportation.

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🟠 Des-fi

A designer is by nature a futurist, designers create ideas that are not yet of this world, and turn those ideas into the world we live in. To design therefore is an exercise in futurity. While designers typically create for the very near future, how often does the designer reflect on the potential worlds they are creating? How often do they question…

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🔵 FS

But when it comes to culture we tend to believe not that the future will be very different than the present day, but that it will be roughly the same. Try to imagine yourself at some future date. Where do you imagine you will be living? What will you be wearing? What music will you love?

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🟠 Des-fi 🟡 Sci-fi

I’m in Tempe, Ariz., today for Emerge: Artists and Scientists Redesign the Future, a conference at Arizona State University. One intriguing new way to think about the future is through the concept of “design fiction.” When you first hear the phrase, it sounds slightly nebulous. One usefuldefinition calls design fiction “an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.”

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