Near Future Laboratory Blog
Thoughts, Reflections, Updates & Week Notes
Dec 29, 2020 – Feb 25, 2021
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Design Fiction or Science Fiction
Feb 25, 2021
In most instances I can think of, science fiction is more than simple dramatic storytelling about the future. It is often allegory through which the present state is refracted back to us — an assessment of who we are as...
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Cornell Box Futures
Feb 18, 2021
I’ll keep things brief this week as my brain is all filled up with reading our manuscript and I already begged our lovely whip-cracker crackerjack editorial shepherds with a three day extension to final-final stuff and...
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Feb 10, 2021
But before that, I want to mention that Nick presented [the closing keynote at the IKEA Digital Days](https://tinyurl.com/ikea-talk) conference last week from his studio in Oakland. He spoke about setting the right...
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The Manual of Design Fiction or Design Fiction: The Manual 🤷🏽‍♂️
Feb 03, 2021
This week was a bit of a highly generative and exciting few or four days here at the Near Future Laboratory's Distributed Global Headquarters. You see, there were some diverts and distractions, the most exciting of...
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When Caleb Gets A Call
Jan 28, 2021

There’s a wonderful Design Fictional moment, done with a kind of subtlety and incisiveness that implicates the residue of a possible episteme in which the Algorithm is the central mechanism of our relationship to the world, and to ourselves.

You'd find that moment at around 43:50 in Westworld, Season 3, Episode 01. In that moment our earnest protagonist Caleb gets a call checking in on an unlikely desk job he recently applied for. On the phone is an agent from the company. The conversation is polite and quite empathetic on the part of the agent, who is explaining that, unfortunately, it wasn’t going to work out — seems there wasn’t a good fit. 🤷🏽‍♂️

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Commission File No. 1923172
Jan 20, 2021
THis post discusses "In The Matter of Everalbum and Paravision" and explores the implications of algorithmic regulation through a Design Fiction lens. It highlights the need for thoughtful engineering and design to address the challenges posed by algorithms in society. The post also presents a fictional scenario to stimulate imagination about future possibilities.
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The Algorithm's Bird Box Moment
Jan 14, 2021
In the film ‘Bird Box’, based on the book of the same name, humans are driven to such a degree of despair that they take their own lives when they see the shadow of their consciousness — the thing they most fear. They...
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Marketing Fiction vs. Design Fiction
Jan 06, 2021
Fiction effervesces gamely, shaping our imagination, consciousness, our habits, our aspirations, the things we wear, the words we speak, the tears we shed and laughs we laugh, and the various and sometimes deadly...
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Design Fiction and the Optimistic Contrarian
Dec 29, 2020
The Fosbury Flop and the power of unanticipated, optimistically contrarian perspectives to make creative work "creative" in...'
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