Futurism

Cosmic clock

For years I’ve had a memory of a video showing the rise and fall of a city, over hundreds of years, from the top of a nearby hill. In particular I remembered being stunned by the way an entire civilization would appear like a blip, to an observer with a much longer timespan.

I’ve searched for a long time and finally found it; a clip called Cosmic Clock by Al Jarnow, originally shown on 3-2-1 Contact:

In my mind it was a rock on the hill; looks like it was a kid with a stopwatch instead. Thanks to Jason Kottke for the link!

The territory to be mapped

It’s more like the job of a science fiction writer is not to map the territory, but to point out that there’s territory to be mapped.

Science fiction is about pointing out that there are things that are out of the frame [in real life] that don’t properly belong out of the frame, whose ruling out is arbitrary—or customary, which is another way of saying the same thing.

> A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. – [Frederik Pohl](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/810570-a-good-science-fiction-story-should-be-able-to-predict)

A Beautiful Future

Alex Steffen–futurist, author, founder of Worldchanging–believes that [imagining a *beautiful* future is the key to saving humanity](https://vimeo.com/201938065) in the coming climate crisis:

> Above all, the desire to make things beautiful…is a thing people are willing to fight for.

> One way to look at the planetary crisis is to create something beautiful at the level of the necessary.

> It’s not only about how to prevent something terrible…it’s about how to make beauty.

> There are millions of people right now dying for the chance to see a future worth fighting for. And it’s our job to imagine it.”

Anarchy and our interconnected future

Most societal critiques today come from either the right or the left, so it was interesting to read this (very!) long analysis of multiple interconnected issues–democracy, capitalism, equality, opportunity, the climate crisis, technology, and more–from a self-professed anarchist perspective.

Near the end the author describes the central challenge of defining societal narratives that can compete with the dominant one:

We are increasingly being sold a transhumanist narrative in which nature and the body are presented as limitations to be overcome. This is the same old Enlightenment ideology that anarchists have fallen for time and again, and it rests upon a hatred of the natural world and an implicit belief in (Western) human supremacy and unfettered entitlement. It is also being increasingly used to make the capitalist future enticing and attractive, at a time when one of the primary threats to capitalism is that many people do not see things improving. If anarchists cannot recover our imagination, if we cannot talk about the possibility of a joyful existence, not only in fleeting moments of negation but also in the kind of society we could create, in how we could relate to one another and to the planet, then I don’t believe we have any chance of changing what happens next.

This is one of the few attempts I’ve read to even describe an alternative system encompassing economic, political, environmental, and technological aspects; the Green New Deal is another, though that’s still early in development. It’s clear that trying to change any single aspect of our interconnected society is doomed to fail against the inertia of the status quo; change will come all together or not at all.

Dystopia and its discontents

Kim Stanley Robinson [breaks down the various flavors of utopia and dystopia](https://communemag.com/dystopias-now/) and comes out in favor of writing about, and pursuing, utopias, despite their limitations.

He concisely explains why dystopias are unable to spur real change:

> These days I tend to think of dystopias as being fashionable, perhaps lazy, maybe even complacent, because one pleasure of reading them is cozying into the feeling that however bad our present moment is, it’s nowhere near as bad as the ones these poor characters are suffering through…If this is right, dystopia is part of our all-encompassing hopelessness.

And why utopias meet such strong opposition:

> It is important to oppose political attacks on the idea of utopia, as these are usually reactionary statements on the behalf of the currently powerful, those who enjoy a poorly-hidden utopia-for-the-few alongside a dystopia-for-the-many.

It’s interesting to read his comments in the context of reactions to politically progressive efforts like the Green New Deal and universal healthcare. Some of the loudest opposition has come from those who already enjoy the desired benefits.

> Immediately many people will object that this is too hard, too implausible, contradictory to human nature, politically impossible, uneconomical, and so on. Yeah yeah. Here we see the shift from cruel optimism to stupid pessimism, or call it fashionable pessimism, or simply cynicism. It’s very easy to object to the utopian turn by invoking some poorly-defined but seemingly omnipresent reality principle. Well-off people do this all the time.

Crafting a compelling utopia–or as I sometimes put it, designing a better way to live together–is the defining project of our generation. We have the resources and capability; what we still lack is the right design and pathway.

100-word utopias

Several years ago Kevin Kelly challenged people to [describe a desirable and believable future world in 100 words](https://kk.org/thetechnium/a-desirable-future-haiku/). I didn’t get my submission in at the time but just found it again in my inbox:

> Ahmad Rosencrantz skated across the sky bridge toward the empathygrove. The flowers were glowing softly as they effused dharmabiotics to be carried into the city by the morning breeze. He took a deep breath, and his sympathetic twinges sensed that his wife was happily playing with his daughter up the hill to the right. Ahmad leaned back and his shoes’ nanowheels slowed him enough to take a bite from the nearest chocolate tree. He winked to capture a VR360 of the beautiful scene as his shoes skated him uphill. “Hi guys!” he telepathed to his family.

Still interesting to me, though I might dial down the “tech” aspects in favor of more mindful experiences if I wrote it today.

The sweet spot of innovation

> Q: How many designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

> A: Does it really have to be a light bulb?

Designers are (in)famous for always trying to come up with the unexpected; the “next big thing”. Early in my career I even described my goal as delivering “not what was asked for, but something new and better”. It’s a dangerous trait that often puts us at odds with our teammates, who are typically more focused on tangible metrics and engineering milestones.

When I worked on Glass, there was disagreement among team members about whether we were building a research prototype or a mass-market consumer product. A research project would focus on pushing the boundaries and learning as much as possible. A consumer product would need to fit existing use cases and appeal to a wide audience. Unsurprisingly, people on each side of the argument proposed wildly different approaches to product design, engineering, marketing, and sales.

In the end, [we built a research prototype and marketed it as a consumer product](http://www.adweek.com/digital/google-exec-blames-google-glass-failure-bad-marketing-163535/), which didn’t work out very well. We didn’t achieve success in the market, and because we were distracted by selling, we didn’t learn as much as we should have. Glass was the classic example of a product that was ahead of its time…but of course [being too early is the same as being wrong](http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-failures-2011-5).

[This talk by Jon Friedman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5MGVbRLHaQ), a designer who worked on the Kin, the Courier, SPOT watches and other Microsoft hardware misadventures, tells some of the same stories. I admire Jon’s work (and I loved the Kin!), but watching the talk I became increasingly uncomfortable with the repeated similar failures. After all, the point of “failing fast” is not the failing–it’s the learning. Designers of these highly innovative products aren’t learning the lessons of past failures.

Glass and the failed Microsoft products share at least one trait: they all tried to change entire systems, all at once. Glass innovated on form factor, hardware technology, interface design, software architecture, marketing, sales, and support. The Microsoft Kin had new industrial design, stored your phone in the cloud, and changed the way you pay for the phone.

One of the most interesting lessons I learned from working for Tony Fadell (who took over the Glass project) was the idea that a new product should be 90% familiar and 10% wildly innovative. A product that’s too far out, that doesn’t feel connected to anything people recognize, will be too uncomfortable to succeed. But of course if you’re not innovative enough, no one will need what you’ve built. So now I set up an “innovation budget” to track how much change my designs are forcing on people, and I’m careful to keep that amount in check. The goal is to find the “sweet spot” of innovation where a design is both desirable and acceptable.

Friedman [goes on to describe his own career shift](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5MGVbRLHaQ&t=26m32s) from working on early-stage speculative new products to making smaller improvements to the Exchange platform, a mature system with lots of customers. He found that it was not only an interesting design challenge, but also fulfulling to make an immediate difference at scale.

He also describes a strategy of combining “something new and something old”–taking new technology into existing markets, or existing technology into new markets. In either case, you only have to invent half of the solution, as the other half has already been figured out.

Paul Rand said “Don’t try to be original; just try to be good.” Innovation is plentiful in design today…it’s important to stay focused on making the “basics” great as well. To evolve my younger self’s goal: the sweet spot of innovation is the place where you fulfill what was asked for, *and* provide something better.

Measuring national curiousity

> So, curiosity is a pretty weak motivator, unfortunately…in society, if you measure how much fear motivates you versus how much curiosity motivates you, it’s actually measurable: it’s the ratio of the defense budget versus the science budget. – [Peter Diamandis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KxckI8Ttpw&t=14m30s)

Doing more with less

The fundamental challenge of our generation is to design lifestyles that everyone wants and the earth can support forever. [Buckminster Fuller put it well](http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/buckminster_fuller/buckyfullermemoriallecture.shtml):

> The possibility of a good life for any man depends upon the possibility of realizing it for all men. I must be able to convert the resources of the earth, doing more with less, until I reach a point where we can do so much as to be able to service all men in respect to all their needs.