Near Future Laboratory Podcast

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!

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 https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/galaxy-brain/620d5303dc551a0020870079/i-found-the-tech-angle-on-the-vibe-shift/ 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 Michelle Kasprzak OCADU Super Ordinary Lab

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. http://dunneandraby.co.uk/ 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