FCAT’s Will Reed interviewed me in May 2025 about imagination, Futures Design, product development, and the ordinary things that help us picture unfamiliar technologies.
The conversation begins with the “Imagine Harder” hat. I describe imagination as an ability we all have and a practice that needs regular exercise. Hiring artists alongside engineers matters here. Artists bring creativity and poetry into technical work, and that combination made the early internet feel so expressive.
We also talk about Design Fiction as archaeology of the future. An archaeologist holds an unfamiliar object and wonders what sort of world produced it. A speculative prototype lets us perform a similar exercise with a possible future: put the object on the table, look at it closely, and imagine the people and circumstances around it.
My favorite part returns to very ordinary objects. Rather than announcing that AI will change everything, I ask what it might do to the clock radio beside the bed. George Perec’s teaspoon appears for the same reason. The mundane object gives the imagination somewhere specific to work.
Read the complete interview in the Near Future Laboratory talks archive, or read the original at FCAT.