Contexualising critical design was the title of a paper (I only heard the talk) by Matthew Malpass, a Ph.D. student in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University.

In discussions these days about Augmented Reality — really vintage high technology if there ever was such — I am reminded of Aram Bartholl‘s workshop and project WoW, which is quite relevant. For some reason — I suspect Freemason conspiracy of the highest order — Augmented Reality is making some sort of bid to regai…

Running the blog-the-dog-eared-pages algorithm on Bruce Sterling‘s fantastic “Distraction“, I’ve selected these gems. They’re all intriguing speculations about a near future world to be, complete with some insights and implications that trace the now to the then if you think about how such moments, conversations, ob…

Design tactics from Imagination Lancaster at the Design Connexity conference dinner. Relevant to the Near Future Laboratory’s Bureau of Failures and Frack Ups.

Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction explores the concept of design fiction, a practice that blends design, science fiction, and material culture to speculate about near-future worlds. The essay delves into how design fiction serves as a tool for innovation, critical thinking, and storytelling, enabling designers to create provocative objects that inspire imagination and dialogue about possible futures.

In a busy, bustling hipster bar called The Alibi Room in Culver City California, you’ll get a magician-sized playing card to identify you as the party who ordered two flights of spicy pork korean BBQ tacos, fries and a couple of pints of girlie beer. (That’s the same bar that was once much rougher, less hip, where y…

For anyone who hasn’t watched the amusing trekumentary How William Shatner Changed the World — please, treat yourself. It come back and forth to my mind as I hammer out some of the contours of design fiction thinking and practices.

The Valley and The Sky, Sascha Pohflepp’s RCA dissertation, just now released into the wild’s of the networked jungle. A dissertation about California’s technology culture between idealism, business and futures for design. Submitted to Critical Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art in October 2008.

This is the most important thing you will read this year if you have any interest in or passion for ubicomp, design, making-things. I’ll quote a bit, then send you to the source. Eric wrote this on the centenary of The Futurist Manifesto, bringing these sensibilities into the context of ubicomp in particular, but I…