Near Future Laboratory Podcast

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/ Philip: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philiplinnemann/ Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonasmschmidt/

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!  https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory

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'. Please consider supporting this podcast by becoming a subscriber over on Patreon.com. Also please rate and write a review on Apple Podcasts. Every little bit helps! Thank you for listening and thank you for your support!