Near Future Laboratory Podcast

Patrick Tanguay is a Generalist, Synthesist, and Curator. He explores tech in society, signals of change, & prospective futures in his fantastic weekly newsletter Sentiers, which I recommend you subscribe to. Every Sunday I get a host of fantastic insights and pointers, one of the most interesting is his mentioning the most clicked story a year ago. This morning it was a great piece from last year — the somewhat manifesto-y article on Squad Wealth, some themes we discuss in this podcast. You can also find Patrick on Twitter at @inevernu  Please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon — doing so helps cover the costs of maintaining the various nozzles and nodes necessary to produce the podcast, plus maybe more than that — it shows that you support the effort that goes into this work. You can also buy me a "coffee" as a kind of tip for the effort. If you like the topics in and around this discussion, please consider signing up for General Seminar — it's my new experimental platform for conversations using the seminar framework to have several-to-several conversations in which everyone has a voice. Patrick has been a web developer for 15 plus years, and co-founded the first coworking space in Montréal, Station C, and co-initiated the critically acclaimed print magazine The Alpine Review. Over the years he also helped start a number of groups bringing people and ideas together: The Awesome Foundation Montréal, Webcamp, Creative Mornings Montréal, and Hacks/Hackers Montréal. Back in the day he was steward of the oldest and longest running blogger meetup, Yulblog.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is an author, consultant, public speaker, entrepreneur and designer living in London. She is the author of Creating a Culture of Innovation and Smarter Homes She is the founder of the Low Carbon Design Institute, a residency for creative people focused on climate change. She was named 1st in a list of 100 Internet of Things Influencers (Postscapes, 2016), 2nd in Top 100 Internet of Things Thought Leaders (Onalytica, 2014) and in the Top 100 Influential Tech Women on Twitter (Business Insider, 2014). She’s been included in the long-list of Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in Tech in the UK in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. She studied industrial design at the University of Montreal and interaction design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. You can find her work at designswarm Please support this podcast, which you can do at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. You can also buy me a coffee! You may also be interested in the Design Fiction newsletter, a somewhat weekly newsletter on topics related to design, innovation, culture and technology. As well, we have a new platform for sense-making called General Seminar. New sessions are in the planning phase. Sign up there to be notified of upcoming seminars on Augmented Reality, the Metaverse, and Design Fiction.

Tina He is a writer, designer, and investor dedicated to creating technology that fosters creativity, growth, and knowledge. Her essay "The New Frontier of Belonging" caught my attention as it navigated through a number of disparate terrains while describing the peculiar kinds of social formations arising out of blockchain mechanics — and it leads with a reference to Italo Calvino, which I found to be unexpected and beautiful. Please support my podcast: https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory Or buy me a small coffee: https://ko-fi.com/bleeckerj Here are some links related to this episode: https://tinahe.xyz/ https://fakepixels.substack.com/ https://desktop.pacecapital.com/ https://fakepixels.substack.com/p/fkpxls-the-new-frontier-of-belonging

A discussion about the social futures and social dynamics inherent in NFTs and Blockchain, with Sean Bonner. See his https://nftart.lol which compares various NFT platforms. And his blog: http://blog.seanbonner.com/nft/ He also publishes a semi-weekly email newsletter that I can highly recommend, called The Crowd https://tinyletter.com/seanbonner.

A long, ranging, technically challenged conversation with two participants in PizzaDAO which formed spontaneously on Clubhouse based on the idea to have a global pizza party. On March 15th, 2021 they opened Rare Pizzas Box NFT reservations to the public and raised $1.3 Million for real, cheese-y pizza. What is a DAO anyway, and what's it got to do with the future, let alone pizza? https://www.rarepizzas.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-van-de-ghinste-46663937 http://cargocollective.com/jedberk

In this episode I move to the otherside of the Q&A table. Jonas Schmidt had contacted me to do a Q&A for his master's program research, specifically on the Near Future Laboratory and our own approach to design and creative work. It was good fun — so I asked Jonas if he wouldn't mind if we made it into a mirrorworld podcast episode and he happily agreed. Please support this podcast on Patreon - https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — Thank you!

Devon Powers is an Associate Professor of Advertising at the Department of Advertising and PR in the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. Devon studies consumer culture, cultural history, and cultural circulation/intermediation, with a focus on trends, branding, and popular music. We discuss her book "On Trend: The Business of Forecasting the Future".

Alexis Lloyd is a product design and innovation leader who has spent her career designing experiences for how we read, write, and share information on the internet. She is currently the VP of Product Design at Medium and has previously led design and innovation work at The New York Times R&D Lab, Axios, and Automattic. She co-leads the Ethical Futures Lab and has a deep curiosity about how humans and machines co-evolve with one another.

This is Part 2 of my conversation with Madeline Ashby who is an American-Canadian science fiction writer and futurist, best known for her 2016 novel Company Town. She is a graduate of OCAD University's Master of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation. If you found this episode a worthy use of your time and is helping your futures brain bulk up, consider become a patron over at our Patreon — or you can offer a tip which is easy to do nowadays over at ko-fi.org/bleecker

Madeline Ashby is an American-Canadian science fiction writer and futurist, best known for her 2016 novel Company Town. She is a graduate of OCAD University's Master of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation. If you found this episode a worthy use of your time and is helping your futures brain bulk up, consider become a patron over at our Patreon https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory — or you can offer a tip which is easy to do nowadays over at https://ko-fi.org/bleecker