[finders] Found Futures: Talking with Stuart Candy

[finders at findability.org]

August 21, 02008: Found Futures: Talking with Stuart Candy

http://www.findability.org/archives/000219.php

Stuart is a researcher at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies and
a research fellow of the exceptionally farsighted Long Now Foundation. He's
also a guerilla futurist who takes alternative futures to the streets.

With mentor Jim Dator and co-conspirator Jake Dunagan, Stuart has unleashed
a slew of artifacts and experiences from the future upon an unsuspecting
public, including postcards from 02036 and plaques honoring those who
suffered and died in the great pandemic of 02016.

As the sceptical futuryst explains, these exercises in ambient foresight and
anticipatory democracy are intended to engage the public in creative
thinking about possible and preferable futures.

By creating immersive experiences that provoke an emotional response and are
difficult to ignore, futurists can elude the dryness that can be associated
with the two-dimensional text and statistics of traditional scenario
planning.

These experiments are also answers to a question at the heart of Stuart's
research: how can we study human behavior in contexts that don't yet exist?

This question is clearly relevant to those of us in the design world as
well. Our work requires both insight and foresight. Whether the design
horizon is three months or five years, our deliverables bring imaginable
futures to life.

And, as these examples illustrate...

    * Design for Future Needs by the UK Design Council
    * Postcards from the Future by Nathan Shedroff and Davis Masten
    * WineM by Mike Kuniavsky and Tod E. Kurt
    * Aurora by Adaptive Path
    * The Future of Internet Search by Mac Funamizu

...we also engage directly in the design of more provocative tangible
futures.

These experiments in what Jason Tester calls Human-Future Interaction are
just the beginning. One of Stuart Candy's hopes is to engage wider, more
distributed audiences through simulations and gaming. Inspired by the
success of World Without Oil, he's accepted a spot as game master of
Superstruct. Whoever said being a futurist can't be fun?

Of course, futures thinking is hard work too. Towards the end of our
conversation, Stuart noted that as Stumbling on Happiness makes clear, most
of us are quite terrible at looking forward. We make basic and consistent
mistakes. And, we retrospectively edit our imagined futures, quietly
building our false memories and false confidence.

But, despite our inability to predict how we'll feel after eating a burrito,
Stuart intends to continue searching the future, and engaging us in the
process with surprising experiences and shocking artifacts. So be prepared
and stay alert.

You never know what might happen next.