“we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us”
It’s the centennial of McLuhan’s birth. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/books/marshall-mcluhan-media-theorist-is-celebrated.html?_r=1
Study shows we use internet as transactive memory
Abstract: The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can “Google” the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip … Read more
Search Engines eliminate the need for memory.
Fascinating article just posted on Wired. Check it out. “Thanks to search engines, most simple facts don’t need to be remembered. They can be accessed with a few keystrokes, plucked from ubiquitous server-stored external memory — and that may be changing how our own memories are maintained.” Really interesting when juxtaposed with the article Bora had shared about … Read more
From LEA interview with artist Stanza
“Can we use new technologies to imagine a world where we are liberated and empowered, where finally all of the technology becomes more than gimmicks and starts to actually work for us or are these technologies going to control us, separate us, divide us, create more borders? Will the securitization of city space create digital … Read more
Futuring Practices: Tools, Terms, and Perspectives
While approaches to futuring vary from institution to institution, a multitude of continuities, themes, and terms transcend. These elements consist of a series of tools, terms and perspectives that work together to guide the envisioning process. While my own research has sustained a primary focus on the research and processes of institutions and individuals, I … Read more
UNESCO’s futures curriculum
One of us should go through this curriculum… might provide some insight or a useful framework. http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_a/mod03/uncom03t03.htm
Futuring
Organizations http://www.iftf.org/ http://www.altfutures.com/ http://www.worldfutures.org/ http://www.wfs.org/ http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight Futurology: Futurology is a cultural investigation into how representations of the future affect the present. http://futurologyprogramme.org/ Books Cornish E.The study of the future. Washington: World Future Society; Kurian GT, Molitor GTT (editors).Encyclopedia of the future. New York: Macmillan; 1996. Masini E.Why futures studies? Grey Seal Books; 1993. Naisbitt … Read more
Embodiment and Ambient Thinking
From sceptical futurist Stuart Candy: “I want to propose two umbrella terms (brutal pun intended) for ways of looking at things that I find highly interesting playmates: embodiment thinking and ambience thinking. In embodiment thinking, crystallised elements are reopened up as distributed in space and time (a conceptual analogue of the visual technique of the exploded view). The object … Read more
Between Reality and the Impossible
“What happens when you decouple design from the marketplace, when rather than making technology sexy, easy to use and more consumable,designers use the language of design to pose questions, entertain and provoke – to transport our imaginations into parallel but possible worlds ? We are concerned not only with the expressive, functional and communicative possibilities … Read more