Of Futures and Pluralism
Considering the role of context and culture in creating diverse and meaningful futures
When humans think of the future, we often stick to the crystal ball mindset — there is but one future to predict. We then either divide ourselves into pessimists, dreading a doomsday scenario or denialists who don’t acknowledge change and carry on with a vision of a rosy future- as if the world is going to be same however we treat ourselves and our fellow planeteers.
In short, we tend to see it in black or white - a binary.
Most of the times it is not.
Futures thinking — note the “s” — is not an emerging trend or a fad. The central idea has been around for decades - inspiring artists and authors to craft and create alternative future realities of the world we will live in.
As a designer and a lifelong learner, I am always thinking about what the future holds: what devices will we use? what air will we breathe? what kind of food will we eat and how will we travel? This constant hunger for knowing more drew me to PRIMER conference this year.
What I discovered is that this futures thinking mindset is influencing different domains slowly and steadily, slowly making a foray into the mainstream as it is incorporated into design, sciences, humanitarian work, corporate strategies and governance policies. In each these domains, the lenses and the tools of this mindset are manifesting to visualize different futures - plausible, possible and preferable. And it is rightly so, for if we don't dream, design and visualize different futures to choose from and work towards as a collective, there will be others who may do it for us.
Governance of the future
Starting with a personal story, Jake Dunagan’s eye-opening keynote wove the narrative of the birth of America and the culture shifts and governance design over the ages.
I had never thought about governance with a futures thinking lens.
Anticipatory grieving, a concept wherein people are living with a ghost of a future that may not exist is thought-provoking and disturbing at the same time. What stood out for me was the Inventor’s toolkit — his call to action to all participants to write their own preamble and value statements that would guide a new constitution.
Rural futures are glocal
Another major theme that resonated with me was the ability to look at futures through global themes and local lenses.
Avinash Kumar from QuickSand and Siddharth Khajuria from Barbican Centre talked about speculative futures for humanitarian work in South Asia. Through their project HUM 2035, they focused on the theme of water scarcity in India in the future. They created a graphic novel, a catalogue from a fictitious organization, personas for people who work in the organization and some diegetic prototypes that would exist in such a context.
It was inspiring and extensive- their narrative covered diverse aspects of how this future would unfold.
When we say futures, we tend to think of urban contexts and images of solarpunk-themed buildings with greenery creeping or intermingling with concrete facades come to mind. But what happens to the rural areas?
I have tossed this question over and over in my mind for a few years now and Ash Eliza Smith’s talk on the same topic added more perspective and provocation. Her talk referenced her movie project Southern Devices, the “triple bottom line” for industrial commons and wondering if there is more for rural futures than just being “flyover” country. Can we have spaces that would bridge this gap — called the unrural?
Corporate innovation
‘Polytopias’ was an addition to my futures vocabulary due to an engaging virtual workshop that was conducted by Anthony D Paul from Wabtec Corporation. Coming from transportation, an industry that is very structured and has a penchant for status quo, Anthony talked about how systems and futures thinking intermingled for him and the infinite blind spots he witnessed while handling myriad problems. The workshop also offered a set of tools and lenses to apply futures thinking to different business contexts and get stakeholder buy-in.
Flocks of birds functioning as nanosatellites and dogs in hazmat suits were just two absurd, quirky and interesting perspectives that came up in the different activities that we explored in this workshop on the future of public transit.
Tino Klähne from Lufthansa Innovation Hub had some strong practical takeaways from his experience with using Futures thinking in his practice. He emphasized the power of telling better stories, asking challenging questions, applying use-cases and examples to bring a futures thinking mindset into the corporate innovation arena.
‘What if Greta wins?’
was an example focal point Tino used in one of his workshops to get stakeholders to think of different future scenarios for the airline industry.
Dystopias as tools
A very interesting and radical perspective came from Agnes Pyrchla, who advocated using dystopia as a source of inspiration — not to predict the future but to critically examine the present. She shared a practice in which product and design teams thought about the worst-case scenarios and conducted regular dystopian thought experiments to actively design against those unwanted futures.
We need to create the future we want to live in
Who do you trust more- humans or machines?
Lasse Underbjerg from Designit pointed out the extreme importance of trust in an era where interactions with machines are increasing yet invisible.
How could we as designers, makers and enthusiastic futurists bring a slice of humanity-centered mindset into our lives?
We are surrounded by data and projections of changes in weather, food and resource scarcity but it is difficult for many to imagine how those impact our daily living and what should we be doing to confront that reality and prepare ourselves for it.
Creating speculative fiction and design experiments help us give tangibility to those abstract gloomy concepts that surround us every day.
This reminded me of Superflux studio, whose work is always inspiring. They worked on one such eye-opening and thought-provoking experiment- to design a future London apartment radically adapted for living with the consequences of climate change to make the experience of living in such a world more tangible, relatable and specific. The video below shows a personal narrative of adjusting to a world transformed by food insecurity and climate extremities at home, and in their local community.
Thinking in futures help us visualize different possibilities that we may live in but it also helps us choose and work towards creating one we want to live in.
As someone very passionate about rural futures, this conference was a great treasure of ideas and thoughts to reflect upon. As a core team member of Holis, where we foster social innovation through interdisciplinary collaboration and collective intelligence, this was invigorating and inspiring.
Since Holis has worked on problems ailing the countryside in its summer schools for the past 7 years, the talks of Ash Eliza Smith and Avinash Kumar resonated with me. Ash’s American context and Avinash’s Indian context were interesting to contrast and compare with Holis’s European context so far.
I hope that we can use some of these lenses and tools as we grow as an organisation with social innovation at our core.
