June 9, 2025 • 59 mins
What happens when you hold an artifact from a future that doesn't exist yet? A newspaper headline from 2045, a product manual for technology not yet invented, or a social media post from an entirely different world? These aren't just creative exercises—they're powerful tools for making abstract futures tangible.
Julian Bleecker, one of the pioneering architects of design fiction, takes us on a fascinating journey through his approach to imagining possible tomorrows. Julian shares his journey from building computers in eighth grade to pioneering design fiction, creating tangible artifacts from imaginary futures that spark meaningful conversations about tomorrow's possibilities.
• Discovered a love for technology as a child, building a Xerox 820 computer with an 8-inch floppy drive
• Needed two engineering degrees and a PhD to articulate what he'd been chasing—that "whoa cool feeling" of exploring possibilities
• Created TBD Catalog, a breakthrough project that materialized possible futures through a product catalog format
• Founded Super Seminars as experimental gatherings where no one person is the expert
• Describes design fiction as "future archaeology"—retrieving artifacts from possible futures to understand what those worlds might be like
• Emphasizes imagination as an evolutionary advantage and essential skill that needs regular exercise
• Advocates "imagining harder" as vital for navigating our rapidly changing world
• Recommends doing design fiction exercises 2-3 times weekly, 20 minutes each, to build imaginative fitness
• Works across disciplines, recently bringing design fiction approaches to policy discussions around AI
Find Julian at the following places:
His Patreon (SUPPORT HIM!) https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory
*** The Patreon includes access to the coolest Discord on the planet.
His Podcast (LISTEN TO HIM!) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/near-future-laboratory-podcast/id1546452193
His LinkedIn (CONNECT WITH HIM!)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianbleecker
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Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/
Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on today's show.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I didn't know what it was good for, but I knew that
it was cool, it felt cool, andso I think you know I've just
been trying to chase after thatcool feeling from when I was in,
you know, eighth grade orwhatever, for my entire
professional life, just tryingto find the place, where and how
to do that.
And I think I, you know, Ilanded on something maybe when I
(00:23):
wrote that essay Design,science, fact and Fiction that
kind of led to kind ofinstantiating, saying out loud,
design, fiction.
I couldn't describe it in anykind of really thoughtful way.
I had to get two engineeringdegrees and a PhD in history of
(00:49):
consciousness to be able to findthe way to say, oh wait, that's
what I've been doing.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to the Think Forward Show.
I'm your host, steve Fisher.
Today we're venturing to one ofmy absolute favorite
territories the mesmerizingworld of design fiction.
You know, there's somethingmagical about holding an
artifact from a future thatdoesn't exist yet A newspaper
headline from 2045, or a productmanual for technology that
hasn't been invented, or asocial media post from an
(01:15):
entirely different world.
These aren't just creativeexercises.
They're powerful tools formaking the abstract future
tangible, and there's nobodybetter to guide us through this
than today's guest, julianBleeker.
Julian isn't just a practitionerof design fiction.
He's one of the pioneeringarchitects, from Nokia to his
groundbreaking super seminars.
Julian has transformed designfiction from a niche academic
(01:37):
concept into something thatshapes real conversations about
innovation and the kind of worldwe want to build Today.
We'll explore how creatingartifacts from imaginary
tomorrows is more powerful thanwriting reports about them.
We'll discover Julian's conceptof value circulation in the
creative community and whynurturing your imagination isn't
just a nice to have.
(01:57):
It's absolutely vital fornavigating our rapidly changing
world.
So get ready to spark yourimagination with one of the most
innovative minds in the field.
Welcome to episode 135, the Artof Design Fiction with Julian
Bleeker.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So welcome, welcome to the show, gosh.
It's funny how we've known eachother these couple of these
years and the field has changed.
You know, when I always startthese episodes, you know we
always kind of do the thebackground stuff and I think
(02:30):
you've had just this, thisamazing journey.
I mean you're a pioneer in thefield.
I mean you created really kindof.
You talk about design fictionas the moniker, but as a you
know, obviously other forms offiction have existed in terms of
that before.
But, um, you know you've hadthis journey through, like art
(02:51):
and technology and design.
Could you share, like just tellpeople you know who don't know
you, and then your path, umdoing this into this field?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
yeah, how did I get to where I am?
Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah, well, I think you know alot of it kind of started if I
were to think back with um, kindof really being into getting
getting somehow getting intoelectronics and computers, like
(03:24):
when I was super young, likeeight years old or something,
and it was just I think it was atime, um, and also the place.
So I was.
I grew up in princeton, newjersey, which is a university
town, so you're kind of forsomething that was emerging at
the time.
Like you know, computers werearound, but they were still not
quite understood as to theirpotentiality.
(03:45):
Or there was like a fictionalnotion or a particular notion
that came from fiction aboutwhat they were, what they were
good for and that kind of stuffas you might see through, like
film, like war games, you know,so everyone's seen war games.
That was like, oh yeah, whatcomputers can do and the whole
networking thing.
So I got, you know, I got intothat and um, and it was just
like a wonderful kind ofimaginative space because there
(04:07):
still was a very blank canvasabout what they were good for.
You remember early days, like Idon't know, like you were, your
computers were being sold on thepremise that they'd be a great,
great way to um, keep your,your, uh, your uh, your recipe
box.
You transfer all your recipesfrom the index cards into the
(04:28):
computer.
Isn't that great, and it wasjust so desperate to try to make
sense of what it was from amarketplace.
And you're kind of goingthrough that as a kid and and
and building computers becauseyou there were enough.
Um, this is like early, thisisn't like building a PC.
This was like I remember goingto this hobby fair near town.
(04:52):
I think it happened.
It was like an amateur radiohobby fair kind of thing and you
could get, if you went there,you could get parts to build a
Xerox 820.
Now the other computers werearound but there was a
sensibility about building ityourself from the ground up and
having it not be just somethingthat was generally commercially
understood.
So it was different fromgetting an IBM PC.
(05:13):
I don't think no one was reallybuilding IBM PCs back then.
Maybe they were, I can'tremember.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
No, they were proprietary, like the XTs.
Those were all cases, right?
Same trs, the radio shack trs80, you know the.
I had a ti 99.
My dad had the trs.
He had hidden floppy disks withhis uh.
He was, he's a civil engineer,so he did like a lot.
It was um, water and steward,like plotting a lot of math.
(05:38):
He thought it was like hediscovered fire because like
things that would take massiveamounts of time on calculators
or slide rules, like just thefact that you could plug in
coordinates and it would likespit it out, snap of a finger.
It was like.
But we were.
It was like you said, it waslike the world's most expensive
computer calculator.
Right, yeah, but homebrewingwas a different.
(06:01):
That was a totally differentthing and I don't it.
Yeah, I mean, ibm tried to keepit, almost like Apple, like
their enclosed ecosystem.
So, yeah, I mean, did you build, did you finish the Xerox?
Is that what your firstcomputer you built?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, xerox A20 with one 8-inch disk drive, 8-inch
floppy disk drive, floppy diskdrive, and it ran CPM and I got
a command prompt and I was likecool and didn't.
You know that was.
That was part of the exercise,I think, but there was that.
(06:35):
There was it just kind offeeling of something going on.
And when you're you know, whenyou're in junior high building a
computer, you're notnecessarily sure exactly what
that is.
You're, you know, when you'rein junior high building a
computer, you're not necessarilysure exactly what that is.
You're trying to make sense ofit, but it's more the feeling
and the vibe and the community.
You know the, the group of youknow full on, full on, right
(06:55):
from central casting computernerds.
You know the one kid who wasalways wearing a jacket inside.
You know the one kid his nose,nose was always running.
It was a whole thing and doingthat and then learning, you know
.
But with the network computers,like with modems, like that was
just.
It was just like an explorationwith, with the, the sense of
(07:17):
what it was and what it meantwas.
Um was just pure imagination,only imagining what it could,
what it was and what it could do.
So there was no specific taskand sometimes you know you'd be
like I'm going to write a gameprogram or something like that.
But it was allowing theimagination to fill in that
space of possibility implied bythe computer culture.
(07:40):
So I used to go to thePrinceton Public Library and
read Byte Magazine.
You'd read about what was goingon, who was doing what.
I didn't know what it was goodfor, but I knew that it was cool
, it felt cool, and so I thinkI've just been trying to chase
after that cool feeling fromwhen I was in eighth grade or
whatever, for my entireprofessional life, just trying
(08:04):
to find the place, where and howto do that.
And I think I, you know, Ilanded on something you know
maybe when I wrote that essayDesign, science, fact and
Fiction that kind of led to, youknow, kind of instantiating,
saying out loud design fiction,because it felt like it held
some sense of that.
(08:26):
It was an architecture.
It was an architecture aroundthat Woku feeling.
It was an explanation of itusing.
I didn't have the language whenI was in eighth grade I couldn't
describe in any kind of reallythoughtful way.
I had to get two engineeringdegrees and a PhD in history of
consciousness to be able to findthe way to say, oh know, two
engineering degrees and a PhD inhistory of consciousness, to be
(08:46):
able to find the way to say, ohwait, that's what I've been
doing, that's, I've been tryingto get that, and now I've.
Now I've got a, you know,professionally in a position
where it's like I can say it outloud enough people will pay
attention to it, that I can thensay that's what I'm going to do
, that's what I do.
I'm still, you know, it's likeI got home, like I finally kept
(09:11):
back to that thing that I wanted.
That I kind of vaguely feltwhen I was in eighth grade, you
know, high school, whatever andI found a way and I was able to
ride the, the challenges of notdoing that in when, in my
commercial you know phase of mylife, when I was working a job,
(09:34):
I even remember, like my firstjob, uh at a college, which I
was very excited to get, um wasat, uh was that was a data
general, so there was, this wasjust, you know, basically when
they were becoming irrelevantbecause PCs and workstations
were becoming more prevalent.
I mean, I remember, you know,like Sun was on its ascendancy,
(09:57):
so there's no more real need or,you know, the opportunity for
selling a department-widecomputer called the minicomputer
was, you know, it was kind oflosing its traction and I can
remember feeling like this isn'tthat whoa cool feeling, not an
amazing story company?
I mean, there was a PulitzerPrize winning book written about
the company called Soul of aNew Machine.
(10:17):
So they have an important placein the history of computation
and I am proud to have workedthere, even though you know I
didn't, I wasn't one of thefigures in the book, but the um,
the point I'm trying to make is, like you know, I, I, I, I got
to where I am, I think, by justkind of circling back to what I
wanted, what I felt when I wasin in, uh, in junior high, and
(10:39):
that is to be able to createthings that feel like they've
come from a possible future.
My imagination is tuned up to,like you know, eight on a scale
of 10, while I'm doing the workof trying to, you know, make,
imagine what the future could be, and I do that, you know,
mostly with blend of imagination, probably 80% imagination, 20%
(11:05):
engineer, engineer, you know,actual programmer, um, which I
think is is uh, somewhat, whichis, which is just great approach
to doing.
You're doing work, that you'regoing to do futures work, um, so
I'll say, you know to that it'slike I'm not I wouldn't
necessarily, with no aspersionslike I don't consider myself a
futurist.
I guess in the, in the generalway in which it's used in the,
(11:28):
in the, you know, the vernacularunderstanding of like what a
futurist is, is probably, I'mprobably, I feel less associated
with that.
Uh, because I don't feel like Ipredict or prognosticate so
much as create context forwondering and having
conversations about what couldbe.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Well, it's interesting, you said the word
predict.
How would you define a futurist?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, there are probably a lot of category kind
of semantic ways to get intothat.
One is like are you a member ofthe whatever association of
feature?
Uh, that's one way.
I mean that's a category,legitimate, and people, um use
that to affiliate with um, youknow, professionally, but also
because it's you know, it's a,it's a badge you can wear.
(12:16):
I don't know if they makeembroidered patches, but if they
did, you could probably get oneand wear it and and put it on
your you this is.
I also belong to thisaffiliation on your LinkedIn
page and that kind of thing.
So that's one way.
The other way is, I suppose areyou, do you orient your
activities in your whatever itis that you do professionally in
(12:40):
the direction of what could be?
Are you operating in that space, in the direction of what could
be?
Are you operating in that space?
And that's a little bit lessinstrumental in terms of
defining it, but it's like areyou, you know, I would in that
sense, like you might say, andyou might object, but you might
say like well, I think CoryDoctorow is a futurist.
He operates by thinking aboutwhat could be, both through his
(13:03):
novels but then also through hiskind of more public kind of
discourse about how theInternet's just a pile of shit
and all that kind of stuff.
So there are a bunch ofdifferent ways.
I think the ways that areinteresting to me are probably
less just personally, areprobably less oriented towards
(13:24):
first, I guess, commercialobjectives, like if I can get
myself in a position where I canstand in front of people and
charismatically hold forth onwhat they should be doing, I
guess that's sort of a littlebit less interesting to me.
Yeah, um, and I'm more of Ienjoy making things that feel
like they came from the futureas opposed to, uh, starting out
(13:50):
from a marketing perspective, Iguess.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
No, no, it's a nice, that's a.
That's a great answer.
It's an honest answer.
You know it's, I think, being afuturist, there's many
interpretation.
Like you said, there'saffiliation, um, there's
practice and you're right,there's different.
You know, you and I are bothdesign futurists and if they
want to label these thingsbecause it's about communicating
the future with like fiction orprototype, it's trying to
(14:15):
synthesize the future in a waythat people can touch and taste
or read.
You know they can experience itright versus I would and I I
put a differentiation between Iwould call it the futures
research, the strategicforesight.
There's so many brands, there'ssome names of it, I think
(14:38):
there's also.
For many years, my futures workwas really stealthy, covert
because a lot of people justcouldn't handle it or they
weren't.
That's just not the way theyoperated.
But in terms of doinginnovation work or product work,
you had to have that lens right.
You just brought the exercisesin and you know you bring it in
(15:00):
a different way.
I think the way the world hasreally become, uh, the
acceleration of change at theexhibit, the visible
acceleration of change, combinedwith the uncertainty caused by
things like COVID, all this kindof other thing that people are
(15:21):
more open to.
How do I be resilient?
How do I deal with this changethat's coming at me?
Some don't want to at me, Somedon't want to, but there's many
that are looking at this as okay.
This is happening.
How do I address it?
(15:44):
And I always look at it.
As you know, futurists are neverpredictors.
We look at possible futuresLike we look at the possibility
of what eventually might becometo pass as the present.
And how do you navigate that?
And I think what you do is soimportant because you try and
put whether it's completely, itis completely speculative.
People can connect to it andunderstand that they're.
(16:07):
You know what does this looklike?
I always keep thinking aboutjake dunnigan's work on and I
think Stuart and him did it itwas like like a flooding, like
if, if Rhode Island was likeflooded, like what is the future
of like that, and what did thecity change?
You know like there are so manydifferent ways to present
possibility to people in a waythat they can accept that and
(16:32):
and understand that, and I thinkthat's one of the awesome
things that you do is you'reable to also teach people how to
do it.
So, yeah, but you know for youwhat's a good example for you
that kind of encapsulates theapproach.
Like somebody listening to hearthe term design, they might
(16:53):
think of science fiction orstories or world-built.
You know, like universes,what's a project you do that you
think that really captures thisfor people.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, so I would go back to the project that set a
trajectory, which was TBDCatalog.
Oh, yes, the thing about thatthat I think gives a good
explanation is that I emphasizethe way in which it came into
(17:29):
being.
What was the work to actuallyget there?
So that it's the thing that Idon't think you oftentimes see
in some context, like there'sthe catalog itself, the book
which you can buy, you know, andthen, but then the book itself,
without revealing too muchabout, without, without um,
taking down the fourth wall yeah, is it also in there?
(17:51):
It gives you a sense of like,oh, how this came into being,
which was in practical terms.
It's like I just sent out anemail to get a bunch of friends
together to meet in detroit tospend a few days having
conversations, but then gettingmaterializing what we thought
the future might look like at.
From that I think it was 2008,something like that and we can
(18:18):
have conversations, but what wewant to do is we want to create
a product catalog that feelslike it came from the future,
that we sort of think, as amixed group of people artists
and designers, grad students,museum curators, all these kinds
of people, design, directors ofmajor regional museums to
(18:42):
imagine a future, but produce,on the other side of that, a
product catalog as if it camefrom the future.
Can we make the product catalogtell the story of what we
imagine this future might be?
And so for me, that's thearchitecture of a really good
design fiction project.
That is to say, you workshopthe topic, but the outcome of
(19:03):
the workshop is an artifact thathas come from that future.
So the output of it isn'tprimarily a PowerPoint deck or a
bunch of pictures of Post-itnotes.
It's got to be something thatallows people to wander into
with their imagination whathappened in that room, what
people were thinking.
But the explanation of whatthey were thinking isn't super
(19:27):
didactic.
It's just like oh, here's aproduct.
Didactic.
It's just like oh, here's aproduct, it's a, it's a, you
know it's a, it's a.
I don't know, you know it's.
It's a Bitcoin mining machine,but it's.
It's not an abstraction.
It's like it looks like a pieceof it's.
(19:47):
It's, you know, sold at aparticular price.
It's described in a particularway, it's got a particular brand
associated with it and it's gota little bit of you know kind
of product reviews fromconsumers.
So it starts to feel all of asudden like, wait a minute, does
this thing really exist?
And I think that's the thing youwant to get to is you want
people to let their guard downand when they're exposed to the
artifact whether it's a productcatalog or a map or a newspaper,
(20:08):
each of those have come from afuture you want them to be like
oh, this is just a newspaper.
Or each of those have come froma future.
You want them to be like, oh,this is just a newspaper, wait a
minute, hold on, wait, what'sgoing on here?
And you want that little bit ofa kind of a stumble where
they're looking around and thenthey're looking to the left or
right to look at someone and saylike, hey, have you seen this?
This is crazy.
And once they're in that mode,now you're back to that whoa,
(20:29):
cool feeling, hopefully, whereyou're like, you know, you're
looking at the Xerox A20 with aneight-inch floppy that's a big
floppy and you're looking at itand you're kind of like, whoa,
what is this thing that youbuilt?
You know, imagine going into aworld where computers didn't
weren't.
You weren't expecting to find acomputer in the family room of
an eighth grader on the floor,you know, a bunch of parts and a
(20:50):
power supply that's almostbigger than the computer itself.
You're like, what is going onhere, what is this about?
And then the kid's trying toexplain to the adult.
He's like so how does this?
You got to hook up to thetelevision set Like what the
hell's going?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
on.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
You just want to get in that.
You want to get in thatwondering feeling, and I don't
think PowerPoint really doesthat well.
So that's why I kind of, youknow, really emphasize making
the thing that feels as if yousee a PowerPoint.
You kind of know what it is.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
It's that just totally sparked a memory, like
when I had a TI, not my textinstruments.
This is 1982, 83.
You had a RS two2 peripheralthat I eventually bought.
You had floppy drives and allthat stuff, but you could record
your programming to a cassettetape oh, totally, I had a
recorder, that's my father couldnot wrap his head around that
(21:45):
yeah that I could use a taperecorder.
That was usually for like, mixedtapes or recording comedy, like
that you could record acomputer program on it.
He's like that's on it.
I'm like, yeah, and I played orrecording comedy, like that you
could record a computer programon it.
He's like that's on it.
I'm like, yeah, and I played itand it was like all the garble
and I'm like watch and I loadedit back into the system and it
was just like.
I think it's because you putthe.
There's almost like this hardconstruct.
(22:05):
As you get older, that's likeit's harder, it's almost like a
thicker wall around thebelievability or the, the
flexibility of thought.
And it's funny that you talkedabout the.
You brought up bitcoin whenit's so working in the space for
a long time in the digitalasset space.
That was actually brought.
It's funny that that sparkedactually the reality of somebody
(22:28):
came.
You know, miners use a lotenergy, so if you're a home for
like and it also generates a lotof, it's a lot of heat.
So somebody came up with theidea to create a Bitcoin miner.
That was two things.
One, it was an actual heatspace heater for your house,
your room, and because of theenergy it produced, it would
actually eventually pay yourentire electric bill and you'd
(22:50):
have a little bit.
So your Bitcoin would heat yourhouse but pay your entire
electric bill and you'd have alittle bit.
So your bitcoin would heat yourhouse but pay your electric
bill and maybe have a little bitleft over, like.
So it was like it was the leapof the design, fiction to kind
of go, oh, and then some ofthese things, people are like,
well, can I do that, can Iactually create that?
Like, and that's the beauty of,I think, of this stuff is that
it just gets people reallyconnecting between the, the
(23:12):
liminal space, between thepossible and the like, even the
problem, like I could, we could,we could do this, we're with
this things, when this comes, wecould, and I think that's
that's what I love about this somuch the space so, um, when you
, you, you bring together, youmentioned the super seminars.
(23:34):
Where did that idea come about?
What do you achieve with that?
What do you love about that somuch?
If people haven't checked itout, I'll make sure it's in the
show notes so people can checkthem out.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, cool.
So there was a general seminarwhich started with the idea, you
know, I don't know.
It was like COVID and likethere was lots of stuff going on
.
I'm not talking necessarilyCOVID stuff, but just like there
was the crypto thing was goingon and I was just doing a lot of
like whoa, I wasn't kind ofexpecting this so much and so I
was wondering about it andyou're just kind of talking to
people and during COVID theonline thing became kind of
(24:24):
hygiene.
It's like everyone not justkind of tech nerds or whatever,
or work-from-home people startedgetting a fluency with doing
seminars online and that kind oftech nerds or whatever, or work
from home people like startedgetting a fluency with with
doing seminars online and thatkind of thing.
And I had this.
I, it was just a.
I just put it out there likehey, with a little bit of
framing around it.
Uh, I want to do be able to seeif I can host a session where I
(24:47):
don't have to.
I'm not the expert in the room.
I'm not the expert in the room,I'm the guy who kind of just
got things together.
I like community building.
Maybe to a fault, I don't thinkI should be doing tons and tons
of that, because I like to makestuff.
Community building takes time.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Well, you're making a community, it is making
something.
It is in the sense of creating.
You are creating connection.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
so yeah, yeah, no, I think that's the point.
It's, I'm not, I'm not opposedto it, it's just like, um, yeah,
I wanted to see what wouldhappen if I, if I, um, if I put
something up and out thereamongst the, the community
basically was subscribed to mynewsletter and said, hey, uh,
with a little bit of you knowkind of humor attached around it
, uh, could propose somethingwhere it's like crypto, what the
(25:38):
fuck, like I don't know, like,do you?
You know, do you have any ideas?
And that was the general theme,or the art, this kind of
semantic structure around allthese things.
It's like I don't know, do you?
But I bet if we get together ina room we can make some sense
of it.
You know, maybe inconclusively,but I didn't really have a lot
planned for that in particular.
(26:00):
But there were a couple ofthings.
One thing I was like wouldpeople pay for this?
Is there real value here thatthey'll pay for?
And that was a question for meand I just kind of wanted to
know as an experiment, me, andand I, and I just kind of wanted
to know as an experiment, um,and then the other thing was
could you, could you have a?
It was an experiment with thekind of structure of this, of
the seminar itself.
In other words, what wouldhappen if you if you led people
(26:24):
and it kind of kind of guidedthem into the future, told them
that they're going to the future, and now I want you to explore
and almost like, almost like aPilates for the imagination, go
into that world and I want youto bring back some artifacts.
Imagine that you ended up insomeone's you know kitchen and
(26:44):
we're talking about crypto.
What?
What do you find in thatkitchen?
So I was trying to find a wayto get people to not just be
very analytic or, even worse,say what they heard in the news
directly, you know, like justparroting what they thought was
the right answer.
There's no right answer.
It's you who's going there andimagining what you might find
(27:06):
using your imagination, not whatyou know, elon or whoever says
about what the future is, and sothat was.
You know.
There were whoever says aboutwhat the future is, and so that
was.
You know.
There were a couple of thingsgoing on there, and it was also
sort of derived from anexperience I had when I was in,
when I was doing my PhD.
We had this seminar where itwas just like a course number
and a general enough descriptionof the course that you could
(27:28):
basically come up with your owncurriculum.
And that was a kind ofwonderful thing because all of a
sudden I mean I guess it's alsogood for people who are getting
a PhD.
It's like you got to figure outif you're going to put together
a curriculum, if you're goingto someday teach how to do that
I don't know.
There's just a whole bunch ofstuff going on there and I did
(27:50):
that.
At least once you get enoughpeople together to say here's a
topic and it was always.
My understanding was that itshould be something at the
vanguard.
In other words, we're not goingto sit around and talk about
19th century European arthistory because that's already
sorted.
There's nothing we're not goingto.
What are we going to do there?
I mean, you want somethingwhere it's like the basis of
(28:11):
knowledge, like the epistemology, is under question or it's
under development.
There's no consensus about whatthe particular topic is.
We wanted to look at how spacethat people occupy, physical
(28:36):
space, architecture, urbanplanning.
People were wondering how can weunderstand this with a social
dimension attached, and therewas a lot of social theory
attached to it and I was likethat sounds really cool.
And my approach, my motivation,I think, was I'd been doing
this kind of longitudinalresearch project.
(28:57):
That became part of mydissertation, which was on video
games that represented physicalspace, simcity I was looking at
analytically very closely howdoes SimCity represent cities
(29:17):
and what are the questions wecan wonder about the game and
how the game's implications ofwhat a city is.
It's kind of curious to exploreand ask questions about and
wonder and what are theopportunities.
And then there was the earlydays of first days of of first
person point of view games.
So one game was it was aterrible game made by,
(29:39):
underwritten by the imprimaturof Daryl Gates, who was the not
very cool police commissioner ofLos Angeles at the time.
And so he was.
He got himself involved inmaking the shoe games about cops
terrorizing around Los Angeles,you know, and it was.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
It was such a wait, he was the chief during like
Rodney King, wasn't he?
And like OJ Simpson, that wholelike era of the night.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Okay, yeah, that's what I remember on phone Cause
he might've been the rampartscandal, I don't know Anyway,
but he's, you know, careerpolice guy, but very very
clearly law and order.
No, yeah, extreme, and so thisis all you know.
So then you're starting to beable to talk about how certain
values can be embedded intovideo games, which isn't a
surprise.
But you have a case study andan argument and your grad
(30:27):
students like, oh, this is gonnabe great, and there weren't a
lot of video game studies at thetime.
So I was interested in tryingto find a theoretical framework
to talk about these things,aside from just saying, like,
man, this, the action is prettycool, but the politics are shit.
You know the I have to be alittle bit more articulate when
you're a grad student.
So that was that was what,something like this seminar that
(30:47):
we had in grad school, and Iwas like, can I do the same
thing in a topic where no one'san expert?
But you get in a room with abunch of clever, bright,
insightful people who arearticulate and can wonder about
it themselves, without coming insaying I'll tell you what this
is, just coming and being likeoh, here's what I see, here's
(31:10):
what I understand, here's what Iappreciate.
And I think maybe this isrelated to this.
You just have a discussion, andso that was the kind of basic
architecture for General Seminar, which then later became Super
Seminar, because I recognizedthat the people loved it.
They were like this is great,when are you going to do the
next one?
And that kind of thing.
And Super Seminar was just likea little bit of a flip to say
(31:33):
of thing.
And super seminar was just likea little bit of a flip to say I
instead of I think at one pointI was like, uh, my, my, my, my
marketing was like ted is deadand he was.
You know, the is the like.
You know, let's, let's, we, wedon't.
I don't know, maybe I wasplaying dangerously with the
idea of the decline of theexpert, but it's like we have an
expert on stage to hold forthlike we can.
We're smart people.
(31:54):
We could be on the stage justas much as they could.
So why don't we just kind ofget together and and um and
wonder about the topic?
And that's when I would sort ofI, I would have people I know in
my community, who you knowmaybe, who had a perspective.
Rather than it just being anopen discussion, they would kind
of like prompt the discussion.
(32:14):
So it wasn't so much apresentation as it was kick us
off, which is what we would doin the seminar in grad school.
It's like each week when we met, one person would sort of be
taken lead based on you knowkind of what we had read for
that week, and they would be thebased on you know kind of what
we had read for that week, andthey would be the um uh,
(32:39):
interlocutor who would start thediscussion almost along, like
okay, so here's what I'm saying,here's what I've been might be
a good area to focus, and theywould kind of they would sort of
hold forth or read something ordeliver something in to start
the conversation and it'd belike maybe like a 15 minute
kickoff discussion whereeveryone would listen and then
we would have responses going onaround around the seminar table
(33:00):
.
And so it was a similar sort ofthing with super seminar, which
is like let me get, let me getKevin Bethune, like let me, let
me, he's got a bunch of stuffthat he could share, let me have
him start.
And then we would kind of goaround and people would add
their contribution and usuallyended up, you know, kind of
posing a question or pushingback on a point or stretching a
point a little bit further, andI found that really, really
(33:22):
interesting too, and peoplewanted it to where they would
pay for it, and that to me, it'snot so much about the
commercial thing as it is to saythere's value in this kind of
work.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Right, there's validation in that people will
compensate because theyappreciate your time and
people's time.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
And they recognize that there's something for them
in it.
And all those things I thinkare really important in this
space.
Important in this space.
Again, I'm not primarily, maybe, to a fault, motivated by the
commercial opportunities, but Ido recognize the importance of
value circulation in one form oranother.
That means if you want toparticipate in this, you have to
(34:04):
show that, you have to feel foryourself that it has value and,
for better or worse, one of theways, ways which we do that at
this point in in the history ofvalue creation, is we give
someone folding money, say likethanks for that.
I appreciate it that's good,that's helping me yeah, and it's
.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
It's also a lot of times as a fellow artist, you
almost you just want to share itwith the world and it's almost
like there's a guilt in like thetaking, the, the, the idea of
commerce, cause there's almostlike I feel like a personally I
can't speak for you, but I wantto hear your perspective.
There's almost like a guilt,like I don't want to.
(34:44):
You're giving me money.
It's like you're going to causeyou want you think I'm a
starving artist or he'ssupporting me, like, or he's
supporting me like is there.
But I just want to share itwith you and I don't want to
feel guilty like I'm.
But at the same time you'reright, like I happily, you know,
pay to come to your seminar,because one of the things you
you kind of offhandedly you know, because you like to create,
but I view your community as acreation too.
(35:06):
I mean, for those of you don'tknow, and I'll put it, I'll also
put this in the link in theshow notes there's a wonderful
discord community and there's alot of discords out there.
I wish there was a way to likejust hide or group, like the
discord icons you know, like theones you're kind of active on
because, like you're my one ofmy top ones, like I love going
in and just, and you have what?
10, 15 000 people right now?
(35:28):
I think in that.
How is this like?
1200 what's that?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
1200.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
I think I thought it was like 10.
I thought it was more than that.
But but the thing about it,okay, well, there's not even a
quantity, but there's a vibrancy.
People are always.
There's a lot of conversationin that and there's, you know,
you want the.
It's like that long.
(35:55):
They're deeply futures, fluentfutures, engaged, future
practicing in some way.
And I don't know, I always thinkof communities like this or
just like a super seminars.
I'm a big fan of the kind ofgilded age of history.
I really am fascinated.
There's different periods, butI think I live here in Boston
and in the West.
There's different periods but Ithink, uh, we, I live here in
Boston and in the West.
(36:16):
There's the Berkshires and theyused to have these.
They were called quote unquotecottages where their mansions.
But uh, edith Wharton's cottagestill survives, it's called the
Mount and you walk into thisthing and it's like Downton
Abbey.
It's like you walk in and youimagine like they have somebody
over for the wealthy to listenand they all have conversations.
But it was such a small group,right, and it's like, now you
(36:39):
think about it, you can havelike super seminar where people
can really be in that kind ofenvironment.
But it's for the world and Ithink that's just the beauty of
of where we are in creatingthese spaces.
Um, I don't know if you willreact to that or how you thought
you think about that, but, um,and I just think about your work
(37:07):
and people who now do designfiction and do this type of
speculative work.
I mean, how do you?
You've seen this journey, howdo you see it?
You know, what do you see forthe much more common with people
?
Do you think GPT will helppeople write better, synthesize
(37:30):
that kind of work?
Where do you see this part ofthe field and the space growing?
What are you?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
seeing Part of me feels like I'm looking forward
to its evolution and I'm notsure how much I will be involved
in in educational context.
Like I'm going to USC tomorrowI'm doing two separate talks
(37:58):
that I had to coordinate to beon the same day so I'd have to
(38:34):
do right.
Who are emerging into thepractice and very grateful for
the you know for for facultyintegrating it into their
curriculums and that kind ofstuff globally.
So it's super fascinating.
So I'm curious how it isadopted and taken up and evolved
by the generation or generationor two behind where I am
professionally.
Like what will it become?
And I guess maybe that's justlike a little bit of an allergic
reaction to stasis and fighting.
(38:56):
I want to see what the kids dowith it.
I don't mean that in adismissive way, but it's like,
you know, blues became rock androll, like that's got to happen,
and so I want to see whathappens.
You know, design fiction becomeswhat in practice.
So I you know, I guess onelittle hope is like I feel like
(39:22):
it's got exceptional value inlots of different realms that I
just haven't been able to focuson.
Me coming from product design,I think about it in commercial
context and I think, coming fromother realms, I found that
people have wanted to figure outhow to integrate it into other
(39:45):
contexts.
So late last year I worked in aworkshop for a couple of days
with pretty analytic, prettyserious policy people around the
topic of AI, design fictiondirectly in the context of
(40:08):
policy.
But learning about what policydoes and how it operates and how
an approach like design fictioncan be integrated into that has
been super fascinating, andoccasionally you just find
people within that space who areexpansive enough in their
thinking that they can be likeokay, I think we need to.
If we're going to innovate inpolicy, we have to do more than
just communicate what we believeare good structures around
(40:32):
things like AI through a policywhite paper that not a lot of
people are going to read, ormaybe the wrong kind of people
are going to read.
I don't mean wrong in a bad way,but just kind of people who are
ungrounded.
In other words, they're notliving in the world that the
policy is meant to implicate,but they're not.
They're not normal humans whoare just kind of going about
(40:53):
their day all of a suddenwondering why is this?
What is this new rule about?
You know what my refrigeratormust do.
Where'd that come from?
Whose idea was it to integratethis into you know?
Or or a you know in a?
In a more kind of pedestriansense, like how come all the
traffic lights are being takendown?
(41:15):
I don't get what's going onhere, cause some policy said,
like you know, this is a wasteof time and money and resources
because now most vehicles drivethemselves and know how to
coordinate, uh, negotiating anintersection, don't need the
traffic lights.
You know, I mean, this is.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
These are extreme examples, but I'm trying to no,
but you push the boundaries outand then it makes people go huh
and then you can bring them back.
You can back cast into thosethings.
So that's the.
That's beautiful.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, I love it, I love it uh,when you at usc, is this the
film school or is this the?
Speaker 2 (41:52):
uh, one talk is at the film school and one one
school is at the the dr dreschool I can't remember what
it's called, like the jimmy ivy,uh, dr dre, I can't remember
his real name, they, they.
They started an innovationschool at USC.
They wrote a big check, orpromised that they would write a
big check, and so they're doing.
There's a workshop going on forthrough the weekend I think it
(42:15):
starts Friday and goes throughthe weekend and then on kind of
innovation in the AI space.
So they asked me to come in andjust kind of, um, get people
excited, uh, to kick off that,that workshop.
And then the other one is withthe film school.
So it was with Alex McDowell,total hero, um, designer,
(42:36):
minority report played, runner,et cetera.
Um, he, he asked me to come anddo a talk at his class.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
That's great.
Yeah, alex McDowell is a legendin the world building.
Oh yeah, he's great.
You may not.
Maybe you've heard the term,maybe you know what it is, maybe
probably don't know what it isat all Like when you introduce
someone to the concept, what arethe misconceptions people have?
Because they'll think of designfiction.
Maybe they'll see sciencefiction Like what are the?
Speaker 2 (43:20):
what happens when you first kind of introduce people
to this?
Yeah, I think you're right, Ithink there are.
I'll be generous and say it'snot a misconception.
It's like these terms arepreloaded with their kind of
meaning and sense of what it isto people.
When you say design fiction,it's a little bit of a I guess
(43:44):
to a certain degree beingprovocative to say let's bring
these two things together.
They're all kinds of design andall kinds of fiction.
But have we put them togethervery deliberately and set it out
loud design fiction and thenwonder what that might actually
be and how it might operate?
And so it requires a bit ofexplanation, usually through.
This is what it is kind of intext and it's like now let me
(44:05):
show you some examples of it andI think you can go through
enough examples where they'relike okay, and so you're saying
it's the representation ofpossible futures in the form of
a material cultural artifact.
People are like what's amaterial cultural artifact?
I was like, okay, good question.
Imagine that you're anarcheologist but rather than
digging into the past or theground, you're actually rooting
(44:27):
around the future because, checkit out, you got a time machine
and this time machine you can gointo possible futures.
It's not a very good timemachine because you're not sure
exactly where you're going toend up and you don't have a
limited amount of time whenyou're there.
And one of the things aboutthis kind of quantum entangled
time travel is that you can'tactually talk to people You're
not on their plane but you cansee artifacts and see objects,
(44:52):
and so what you're able to dolike an archaeologist is grab an
artifact and that becomes likethe traditional, the trad
archaeologists.
They have an artifact and theirentire career has been puzzling
over it.
What is it?
What does it mean?
Where did it come from?
What does it represent aboutthis world?
And they, they have to tell astory about that world.
(45:13):
Now they might not say thatthey're storytellers, but they
are telling a story to help usimagine into what that world
could have been and what it waslike.
What were his power structures?
What was forms of valueexchange?
What were his power structures?
What were its forms of valueexchange?
What were its hierarchies?
Did it have somethingunderstood as a family unit?
So how did it operate?
Was it extended?
You know, all these kinds ofthings are what the archeologist
(45:35):
is trying to do with theassumption that this will help
us understand where we've comefrom.
What I'm trying to do is thesame thing to say wonder into
where are we getting to or wheredo we.
The same thing to say wonderinto where are we, where are we
getting to?
Or where do we want to get to,what, what is that?
What is our success conditionfor ourselves as beings in this
world in some possible future?
(45:55):
And to doing that less throughprose.
So it's not prose fiction,object, that is, that feels like
it's not quite.
You know, it's a little bithere and now.
I sort of recognize it, justlike you might.
You know, in the tradarchaeologists they might come
and say this looks like a bowland maybe this bowl was used to
(46:18):
eat out of.
You know, you look at it, it'sfamiliar.
In that sense it's notcompletely alien.
It's evocative of somethingthat you can sense and feel into
as a person existing in thehere and now.
Can you do the same thing withobjects that feel like they
could have come from, that couldcome from a possible future,
and can you make them evocativeenough to get someone to say
(46:40):
like, okay, I'm sort of gettinga sense?
This is kind of interestinghere.
It's got a kind of form to itthat feels familiar or actually
that's crazy.
It's got a.
It's got a.
It's got a.
It's got an Apple logo on it.
Huh, I wonder what's up withthat.
And and you start getting it,you know you're connecting it
into feelings and the overallgoal isn't to predict what it
(47:00):
might look like.
It's fun to kind of work thesethings through and create the
artifacts.
I think the thing you're tryingto do is kick someone's
imagination into gear, is toreally kind of give a shock to
the system, to be like oh yeah,now we're doing something, we're
opening up a conversation aboutwhat could be in, about the
(47:21):
future.
So my meta goal is to just getpeople to imagine harder, like,
remember that we've got thisevolutionary advantage of being
able to imagine the world.
Otherwise.
Now I don't know if it's true,but it's fun to think that we
are particularly well-suited, asyou know, humans with this kind
of lump of vascularized meat inour head that we call brain, to
(47:42):
be able to do that, to imagineinto possibility.
And part of doing design fictionis to do the design fiction but
also remind ourselves that wehave this existentially vital
capacity capability to imagine.
It's kind of remarkable.
We can imagine something andactually create it.
(48:05):
I was talking to somearchitects the other day.
What you guys do is amazing.
I mean, you have this image inyour head of a thing that could
be, and then you go throughthese steps, you articulate it
and represent it in differentways.
You might make a model, youmight make a 3d render and at
some point someone's like I.
I feel your imagination to sucha degree that I'm gonna write
you a check.
(48:25):
And now can you get yourengineers together and start
pouring concrete.
I mean, that to me is just likewhat that's crazy, or same
thing with film.
You know all these differentways in which we imagine and and
instantiate our imagination,from artists to you know god
bless them the people who makefinancial models, who are as
much doing fiction as anyoneelse.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
Oh yeah, yeah, exactly, I was just saying yes,
I'm from financial forecast.
Yeah, that's definitely a pieceof design fiction, you know,
projections.
Well, that leads to, you know,one of the questions I've.
I've also had to deal with alot as in doing innovation work
and product work, dealing withstrategists that are more
(49:10):
forecasters, I would say, moreshort-term than not, in terms of
that long-term strategy.
Let's just take, for example,how to incorporate, how can
people do this is my question toyou.
But I'll cite an example Doingyour user experience design, you
do persona work, you createpersonas.
So I changed the name.
I called them persona, you know.
(49:31):
You know it was you the thestory of a persona, or the
persona story, or like a personof the future, like I changed
the name of it because a lot oftimes people almost like they
have a reaction to fiction.
The word for design like whatis?
You know, it's like stories,persona stories, like just
(49:53):
changing the thing so thatthere's like almost a semantic,
easier acceptance.
You know, when you're talkingto students and they're going to
go out in the world, how do you, when you talk to you know your
clients or people are thinkingabout it?
Just like you talked about thearchitect.
How do you, when you talk toyou, know your clients or people
are thinking about it, justlike you talked about the
architect?
How do you get them to likemeaningfully incorporate this
stuff like you could do?
(50:14):
How do you work with them tokind of teach to fish?
Speaker 2 (50:21):
yeah, I guess I just teach them.
I mean, I usually just teachyou.
Yeah, the simple thing is, likethey, these kind of go along
with like what I sort of referto as like design fiction 101,
which is, you know what is it,how do you do it?
And then actually doing it in aeither either, you know, like a
case that is relevant to themor actually a problem that
they're trying to work throughrelevant to them, or actually a
(50:43):
problem that they're trying towork through.
And if it's a problem thatthey're trying to so there's a
problem that they're trying towork through, it's usually a
much more longitudinalengagement.
If it's like they're just likewe want a sense of of what this
is and how it works, then it'susually like um, you know, they,
they just gotta, they justgotta go through, learn about
(51:07):
what it is, and then get the,get the workbook and work
through a bunch of problems thatare more like uh, yeah,
remember you like learning,calculus or whatever.
There was the problem sets atthe back of each chapter that
you just got to work through,and you're not trying to solve a
problem in in a, in ainstrumental sense.
You're not trying to figure outhow are we going to get this
rocket booster to separate atthe right rate or whatever.
You're just kind of goingthrough hypotheticals.
(51:27):
And I think, doing thehypotheticals, it's like you
know if you're, if you, if yourun, I mean I don't know, you
know if you, if you, if you ridea bike, you're um, you know um,
cycling enthusiasts, so you're,you're really into cycling.
(51:48):
There might be something thatyou're working towards, like a
race or whatever, um, butwhatever you do, you just gotta
you just gotta keep riding yourbike and you gotta have a
routine with it.
I think doing this kind of workis similar like you just need
to do a lot of it, um, but as adaily routine, and at first it
hurts, you know, just like whenyou start riding a bike or
running or doing Pilates orlifting weights, whatever it is
that you do, at first it hurts,but you know that there's a,
(52:11):
that there's a, there's a,there's a fitness goal.
That is just general, like Ijust want to feel fit, I want to
feel better, or whatever, andyou start, you sort of start
working towards that.
I think you know doing thesekinds of things is similar like
you should do it.
Yeah, do a little designfiction exercise, like two or
three times a week, 20 minutes,yeah, and just as a routine,
(52:32):
because that instills that senseof.
I think it bulks up theimagination.
So you got a really, really fitimagination and it gets you
thinking beyond the, the youknow the constraints of
expecting someone else to comeup with an idea or just
parroting some other idea thatyou heard.
It moves beyond the kind ofhygienic responses to, like,
(52:54):
what's the future of AI?
Like no one.
I haven't heard any kind ofarticulate statement about that.
Really, when it comes down tothis, oh, we'll be able to have
conversations with Uber's 10Kfiling.
It's like, okay, now you'rereally struggling, but we don't
know what the answer is.
And we can accept that we don'tknow what the answer is, but we
(53:15):
should be exploring thepossibility space expansively,
like doing things that don'tnecessarily imagining, things
that don't necessarily makedirectly make any sense.
That was one thing that I didwith the policy group was I came
to that workshop with anewspaper that I called Applied
Intelligence, tomorrow's NewsToday, which I thought was fun,
(53:38):
and the idea was to create anewspaper, an artifact that had
come from an AI future, thatreally looked around the
boundaries of what that futuremight be like and what might it
be like to live in a world whereAI is just as normal, ordinary
and everyday as, like a Wi-Ficonnection at a coffee shop.
(53:58):
What does that world look likeand feel like?
And I think that for me,because I did the newspaper,
that was like a wonderful likefeeling really good about doing
like a marathon, like yeah, thatwas harder, but I enjoyed it.
You know, and I think that'sbecause, like I'm doing these
(54:19):
things routinely, I feel likegetting to a state where that is
possible, where people are asenthusiastic about doing it as
they are about jogging orwhatever people are doing,
rucking then we're in a goodplace.
And I think, again, that's backto that meta goal of we need to
(54:39):
remind ourselves that we havean imagination and we need to
use it.
We need to remind ourselvesthat we have this important
capacity and ability that I feellike is maybe diminished a bit
I might be overstating it forthe purposes of being
evangelical, we need to imagineharder.
Speaker 3 (54:56):
No, that's a great term to kind of as closing on
this conversation, becauseyou're going to talk to all
these students tomorrow and it'sgood advice for them to make
that kind of impact.
You look back, you have manymore years ahead, but I always
like to ask about the legacyquestion, having your work
(55:17):
remembered, the impact.
What would you like that to be?
People look back and thinkabout Julian and the amazing
work you've done, and peoplelook back and think about Julian
and the amazing work you'vedone.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
So, uh, you know, if, if, if I I getting the feeling
that I've I've touched peopleand shaped their way of thinking
and um their, their sense ofyou know, what they, what, their
own possibility, and it wascentered around this idea of you
know, imagine harder, Like Ilearned how to imagine from that
guy.
That would be, that'd be great,That'd be amazing.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
Yeah, that's a.
It's a wonderful way to way tothink about it.
So, for those who want to findyou cause you have such amazing
content out there, like what,what's coming up for you that
you'd like people to know aboutand where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (56:10):
yeah, so they can find me at
nearfuturelaboratorycom or whichis, um, more or less a trimmed
down version of that, and we gotit.
You know everything's on there.
I got the podcast, uh, which isjust the near future laboratory
podcast, and we got anewsletter, which is a bit
infrequent.
All the usual kind of platformsand stacks, patreon these are
(56:31):
all places where you can, whereyou can find, find me.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
And I'll put that all I'll be on the show notes for
people listening.
You want to check it out too,so I'll have links for that.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
So that's great Thank .
Thank you for the time today,julian.
It's been always a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Yeah, I appreciate you asking for me to join you,
steve, and it's been wonderfultalking to you as well.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for listening to theThink Forward podcast.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
You can find us on all the major podcast platforms
and at wwwthinkforwardshowcom,as well as on YouTube under
Think Forward Show.
Speaker 3 (57:05):
See you next time.
Coming up on today's show.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I didn't know what it was good for, but I knew that
it was cool, it felt cool, andso I think you know I've just
been trying to chase after thatcool feeling from when I was in,
you know, eighth grade orwhatever, for my entire
professional life, just tryingto find the place, where and how
to do that.
And I think I, you know, Ilanded on something maybe when I
(00:23):
wrote that essay Design,science, fact and Fiction that
kind of led to kind ofinstantiating, saying out loud,
design, fiction.
I couldn't describe it in anykind of really thoughtful way.
I had to get two engineeringdegrees and a PhD in history of
(00:49):
consciousness to be able to findthe way to say, oh wait, that's
what I've been doing.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to the Think Forward Show.
I'm your host, steve Fisher.
Today we're venturing to one ofmy absolute favorite
territories the mesmerizingworld of design fiction.
You know, there's somethingmagical about holding an
artifact from a future thatdoesn't exist yet A newspaper
headline from 2045, or a productmanual for technology that
hasn't been invented, or asocial media post from an
(01:15):
entirely different world.
These aren't just creativeexercises.
They're powerful tools formaking the abstract future
tangible, and there's nobodybetter to guide us through this
than today's guest, julianBleeker.
Julian isn't just a practitionerof design fiction.
He's one of the pioneeringarchitects, from Nokia to his
groundbreaking super seminars.
Julian has transformed designfiction from a niche academic
(01:37):
concept into something thatshapes real conversations about
innovation and the kind of worldwe want to build Today.
We'll explore how creatingartifacts from imaginary
tomorrows is more powerful thanwriting reports about them.
We'll discover Julian's conceptof value circulation in the
creative community and whynurturing your imagination isn't
just a nice to have.
(01:57):
It's absolutely vital fornavigating our rapidly changing
world.
So get ready to spark yourimagination with one of the most
innovative minds in the field.
Welcome to episode 135, the Artof Design Fiction with Julian
Bleeker.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So welcome, welcome to the show, gosh.
It's funny how we've known eachother these couple of these
years and the field has changed.
You know, when I always startthese episodes, you know we
always kind of do the thebackground stuff and I think
(02:30):
you've had just this, thisamazing journey.
I mean you're a pioneer in thefield.
I mean you created really kindof.
You talk about design fictionas the moniker, but as a you
know, obviously other forms offiction have existed in terms of
that before.
But, um, you know you've hadthis journey through, like art
(02:51):
and technology and design.
Could you share, like just tellpeople you know who don't know
you, and then your path, umdoing this into this field?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
yeah, how did I get to where I am?
Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah, well, I think you know alot of it kind of started if I
were to think back with um, kindof really being into getting
getting somehow getting intoelectronics and computers, like
(03:24):
when I was super young, likeeight years old or something,
and it was just I think it was atime, um, and also the place.
So I was.
I grew up in princeton, newjersey, which is a university
town, so you're kind of forsomething that was emerging at
the time.
Like you know, computers werearound, but they were still not
quite understood as to theirpotentiality.
(03:45):
Or there was like a fictionalnotion or a particular notion
that came from fiction aboutwhat they were, what they were
good for and that kind of stuffas you might see through, like
film, like war games, you know,so everyone's seen war games.
That was like, oh yeah, whatcomputers can do and the whole
networking thing.
So I got, you know, I got intothat and um, and it was just
like a wonderful kind ofimaginative space because there
(04:07):
still was a very blank canvasabout what they were good for.
You remember early days, like Idon't know, like you were, your
computers were being sold on thepremise that they'd be a great,
great way to um, keep your,your, uh, your uh, your recipe
box.
You transfer all your recipesfrom the index cards into the
(04:28):
computer.
Isn't that great, and it wasjust so desperate to try to make
sense of what it was from amarketplace.
And you're kind of goingthrough that as a kid and and
and building computers becauseyou there were enough.
Um, this is like early, thisisn't like building a PC.
This was like I remember goingto this hobby fair near town.
(04:52):
I think it happened.
It was like an amateur radiohobby fair kind of thing and you
could get, if you went there,you could get parts to build a
Xerox 820.
Now the other computers werearound but there was a
sensibility about building ityourself from the ground up and
having it not be just somethingthat was generally commercially
understood.
So it was different fromgetting an IBM PC.
(05:13):
I don't think no one was reallybuilding IBM PCs back then.
Maybe they were, I can'tremember.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
No, they were proprietary, like the XTs.
Those were all cases, right?
Same trs, the radio shack trs80, you know the.
I had a ti 99.
My dad had the trs.
He had hidden floppy disks withhis uh.
He was, he's a civil engineer,so he did like a lot.
It was um, water and steward,like plotting a lot of math.
(05:38):
He thought it was like hediscovered fire because like
things that would take massiveamounts of time on calculators
or slide rules, like just thefact that you could plug in
coordinates and it would likespit it out, snap of a finger.
It was like.
But we were.
It was like you said, it waslike the world's most expensive
computer calculator.
Right, yeah, but homebrewingwas a different.
(06:01):
That was a totally differentthing and I don't it.
Yeah, I mean, ibm tried to keepit, almost like Apple, like
their enclosed ecosystem.
So, yeah, I mean, did you build, did you finish the Xerox?
Is that what your firstcomputer you built?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, xerox A20 with one 8-inch disk drive, 8-inch
floppy disk drive, floppy diskdrive, and it ran CPM and I got
a command prompt and I was likecool and didn't.
You know that was.
That was part of the exercise,I think, but there was that.
(06:35):
There was it just kind offeeling of something going on.
And when you're you know, whenyou're in junior high building a
computer, you're notnecessarily sure exactly what
that is.
You're, you know, when you'rein junior high building a
computer, you're not necessarilysure exactly what that is.
You're trying to make sense ofit, but it's more the feeling
and the vibe and the community.
You know the, the group of youknow full on, full on, right
(06:55):
from central casting computernerds.
You know the one kid who wasalways wearing a jacket inside.
You know the one kid his nose,nose was always running.
It was a whole thing and doingthat and then learning, you know
.
But with the network computers,like with modems, like that was
just.
It was just like an explorationwith, with the, the sense of
(07:17):
what it was and what it meantwas.
Um was just pure imagination,only imagining what it could,
what it was and what it could do.
So there was no specific taskand sometimes you know you'd be
like I'm going to write a gameprogram or something like that.
But it was allowing theimagination to fill in that
space of possibility implied bythe computer culture.
(07:40):
So I used to go to thePrinceton Public Library and
read Byte Magazine.
You'd read about what was goingon, who was doing what.
I didn't know what it was goodfor, but I knew that it was cool
, it felt cool, and so I thinkI've just been trying to chase
after that cool feeling fromwhen I was in eighth grade or
whatever, for my entireprofessional life, just trying
(08:04):
to find the place, where and howto do that.
And I think I, you know, Ilanded on something you know
maybe when I wrote that essayDesign, science, fact and
Fiction that kind of led to, youknow, kind of instantiating,
saying out loud design fiction,because it felt like it held
some sense of that.
(08:26):
It was an architecture.
It was an architecture aroundthat Woku feeling.
It was an explanation of itusing.
I didn't have the language whenI was in eighth grade I couldn't
describe in any kind of reallythoughtful way.
I had to get two engineeringdegrees and a PhD in history of
consciousness to be able to findthe way to say, oh know, two
engineering degrees and a PhD inhistory of consciousness, to be
(08:46):
able to find the way to say, ohwait, that's what I've been
doing, that's, I've been tryingto get that, and now I've.
Now I've got a, you know,professionally in a position
where it's like I can say it outloud enough people will pay
attention to it, that I can thensay that's what I'm going to do
, that's what I do.
I'm still, you know, it's likeI got home, like I finally kept
(09:11):
back to that thing that I wanted.
That I kind of vaguely feltwhen I was in eighth grade, you
know, high school, whatever andI found a way and I was able to
ride the, the challenges of notdoing that in when, in my
commercial you know phase of mylife, when I was working a job,
(09:34):
I even remember, like my firstjob, uh at a college, which I
was very excited to get, um wasat, uh was that was a data
general, so there was, this wasjust, you know, basically when
they were becoming irrelevantbecause PCs and workstations
were becoming more prevalent.
I mean, I remember, you know,like Sun was on its ascendancy,
(09:57):
so there's no more real need or,you know, the opportunity for
selling a department-widecomputer called the minicomputer
was, you know, it was kind oflosing its traction and I can
remember feeling like this isn'tthat whoa cool feeling, not an
amazing story company?
I mean, there was a PulitzerPrize winning book written about
the company called Soul of aNew Machine.
(10:17):
So they have an important placein the history of computation
and I am proud to have workedthere, even though you know I
didn't, I wasn't one of thefigures in the book, but the um,
the point I'm trying to make is, like you know, I, I, I, I got
to where I am, I think, by justkind of circling back to what I
wanted, what I felt when I wasin in, uh, in junior high, and
(10:39):
that is to be able to createthings that feel like they've
come from a possible future.
My imagination is tuned up to,like you know, eight on a scale
of 10, while I'm doing the workof trying to, you know, make,
imagine what the future could be, and I do that, you know,
mostly with blend of imagination, probably 80% imagination, 20%
(11:05):
engineer, engineer, you know,actual programmer, um, which I
think is is uh, somewhat, whichis, which is just great approach
to doing.
You're doing work, that you'regoing to do futures work, um, so
I'll say, you know to that it'slike I'm not I wouldn't
necessarily, with no aspersionslike I don't consider myself a
futurist.
I guess in the, in the generalway in which it's used in the,
(11:28):
in the, you know, the vernacularunderstanding of like what a
futurist is, is probably, I'mprobably, I feel less associated
with that.
Uh, because I don't feel like Ipredict or prognosticate so
much as create context forwondering and having
conversations about what couldbe.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Well, it's interesting, you said the word
predict.
How would you define a futurist?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, there are probably a lot of category kind
of semantic ways to get intothat.
One is like are you a member ofthe whatever association of
feature?
Uh, that's one way.
I mean that's a category,legitimate, and people, um use
that to affiliate with um, youknow, professionally, but also
because it's you know, it's a,it's a badge you can wear.
(12:16):
I don't know if they makeembroidered patches, but if they
did, you could probably get oneand wear it and and put it on
your you this is.
I also belong to thisaffiliation on your LinkedIn
page and that kind of thing.
So that's one way.
The other way is, I suppose areyou, do you orient your
activities in your whatever itis that you do professionally in
(12:40):
the direction of what could be?
Are you operating in that space, in the direction of what could
be?
Are you operating in that space?
And that's a little bit lessinstrumental in terms of
defining it, but it's like areyou, you know, I would in that
sense, like you might say, andyou might object, but you might
say like well, I think CoryDoctorow is a futurist.
He operates by thinking aboutwhat could be, both through his
(13:03):
novels but then also through hiskind of more public kind of
discourse about how theInternet's just a pile of shit
and all that kind of stuff.
So there are a bunch ofdifferent ways.
I think the ways that areinteresting to me are probably
less just personally, areprobably less oriented towards
(13:24):
first, I guess, commercialobjectives, like if I can get
myself in a position where I canstand in front of people and
charismatically hold forth onwhat they should be doing, I
guess that's sort of a littlebit less interesting to me.
Yeah, um, and I'm more of Ienjoy making things that feel
like they came from the futureas opposed to, uh, starting out
(13:50):
from a marketing perspective, Iguess.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
No, no, it's a nice, that's a.
That's a great answer.
It's an honest answer.
You know it's, I think, being afuturist, there's many
interpretation.
Like you said, there'saffiliation, um, there's
practice and you're right,there's different.
You know, you and I are bothdesign futurists and if they
want to label these thingsbecause it's about communicating
the future with like fiction orprototype, it's trying to
(14:15):
synthesize the future in a waythat people can touch and taste
or read.
You know they can experience itright versus I would and I I
put a differentiation between Iwould call it the futures
research, the strategicforesight.
There's so many brands, there'ssome names of it, I think
(14:38):
there's also.
For many years, my futures workwas really stealthy, covert
because a lot of people justcouldn't handle it or they
weren't.
That's just not the way theyoperated.
But in terms of doinginnovation work or product work,
you had to have that lens right.
You just brought the exercisesin and you know you bring it in
(15:00):
a different way.
I think the way the world hasreally become, uh, the
acceleration of change at theexhibit, the visible
acceleration of change, combinedwith the uncertainty caused by
things like COVID, all this kindof other thing that people are
(15:21):
more open to.
How do I be resilient?
How do I deal with this changethat's coming at me?
Some don't want to at me, Somedon't want to, but there's many
that are looking at this as okay.
This is happening.
How do I address it?
(15:44):
And I always look at it.
As you know, futurists are neverpredictors.
We look at possible futuresLike we look at the possibility
of what eventually might becometo pass as the present.
And how do you navigate that?
And I think what you do is soimportant because you try and
put whether it's completely, itis completely speculative.
People can connect to it andunderstand that they're.
(16:07):
You know what does this looklike?
I always keep thinking aboutjake dunnigan's work on and I
think Stuart and him did it itwas like like a flooding, like
if, if Rhode Island was likeflooded, like what is the future
of like that, and what did thecity change?
You know like there are so manydifferent ways to present
possibility to people in a waythat they can accept that and
(16:32):
and understand that, and I thinkthat's one of the awesome
things that you do is you'reable to also teach people how to
do it.
So, yeah, but you know for youwhat's a good example for you
that kind of encapsulates theapproach.
Like somebody listening to hearthe term design, they might
(16:53):
think of science fiction orstories or world-built.
You know, like universes,what's a project you do that you
think that really captures thisfor people.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, so I would go back to the project that set a
trajectory, which was TBDCatalog.
Oh, yes, the thing about thatthat I think gives a good
explanation is that I emphasizethe way in which it came into
(17:29):
being.
What was the work to actuallyget there?
So that it's the thing that Idon't think you oftentimes see
in some context, like there'sthe catalog itself, the book
which you can buy, you know, andthen, but then the book itself,
without revealing too muchabout, without, without um,
taking down the fourth wall yeah, is it also in there?
(17:51):
It gives you a sense of like,oh, how this came into being,
which was in practical terms.
It's like I just sent out anemail to get a bunch of friends
together to meet in detroit tospend a few days having
conversations, but then gettingmaterializing what we thought
the future might look like at.
From that I think it was 2008,something like that and we can
(18:18):
have conversations, but what wewant to do is we want to create
a product catalog that feelslike it came from the future,
that we sort of think, as amixed group of people artists
and designers, grad students,museum curators, all these kinds
of people, design, directors ofmajor regional museums to
(18:42):
imagine a future, but produce,on the other side of that, a
product catalog as if it camefrom the future.
Can we make the product catalogtell the story of what we
imagine this future might be?
And so for me, that's thearchitecture of a really good
design fiction project.
That is to say, you workshopthe topic, but the outcome of
(19:03):
the workshop is an artifact thathas come from that future.
So the output of it isn'tprimarily a PowerPoint deck or a
bunch of pictures of Post-itnotes.
It's got to be something thatallows people to wander into
with their imagination whathappened in that room, what
people were thinking.
But the explanation of whatthey were thinking isn't super
(19:27):
didactic.
It's just like oh, here's aproduct.
Didactic.
It's just like oh, here's aproduct, it's a, it's a, you
know it's a, it's a.
I don't know, you know it's.
It's a Bitcoin mining machine,but it's.
It's not an abstraction.
It's like it looks like a pieceof it's.
(19:47):
It's, you know, sold at aparticular price.
It's described in a particularway, it's got a particular brand
associated with it and it's gota little bit of you know kind
of product reviews fromconsumers.
So it starts to feel all of asudden like, wait a minute, does
this thing really exist?
And I think that's the thing youwant to get to is you want
people to let their guard downand when they're exposed to the
artifact whether it's a productcatalog or a map or a newspaper,
(20:08):
each of those have come from afuture you want them to be like
oh, this is just a newspaper.
Or each of those have come froma future.
You want them to be like, oh,this is just a newspaper, wait a
minute, hold on, wait, what'sgoing on here?
And you want that little bit ofa kind of a stumble where
they're looking around and thenthey're looking to the left or
right to look at someone and saylike, hey, have you seen this?
This is crazy.
And once they're in that mode,now you're back to that whoa,
(20:29):
cool feeling, hopefully, whereyou're like, you know, you're
looking at the Xerox A20 with aneight-inch floppy that's a big
floppy and you're looking at itand you're kind of like, whoa,
what is this thing that youbuilt?
You know, imagine going into aworld where computers didn't
weren't.
You weren't expecting to find acomputer in the family room of
an eighth grader on the floor,you know, a bunch of parts and a
(20:50):
power supply that's almostbigger than the computer itself.
You're like, what is going onhere, what is this about?
And then the kid's trying toexplain to the adult.
He's like so how does this?
You got to hook up to thetelevision set Like what the
hell's going?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
on.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
You just want to get in that.
You want to get in thatwondering feeling, and I don't
think PowerPoint really doesthat well.
So that's why I kind of, youknow, really emphasize making
the thing that feels as if yousee a PowerPoint.
You kind of know what it is.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
It's that just totally sparked a memory, like
when I had a TI, not my textinstruments.
This is 1982, 83.
You had a RS two2 peripheralthat I eventually bought.
You had floppy drives and allthat stuff, but you could record
your programming to a cassettetape oh, totally, I had a
recorder, that's my father couldnot wrap his head around that
(21:45):
yeah that I could use a taperecorder.
That was usually for like, mixedtapes or recording comedy, like
that you could record acomputer program on it.
He's like that's on it.
I'm like, yeah, and I played orrecording comedy, like that you
could record a computer programon it.
He's like that's on it.
I'm like, yeah, and I played itand it was like all the garble
and I'm like watch and I loadedit back into the system and it
was just like.
I think it's because you putthe.
There's almost like this hardconstruct.
(22:05):
As you get older, that's likeit's harder, it's almost like a
thicker wall around thebelievability or the, the
flexibility of thought.
And it's funny that you talkedabout the.
You brought up bitcoin whenit's so working in the space for
a long time in the digitalasset space.
That was actually brought.
It's funny that that sparkedactually the reality of somebody
(22:28):
came.
You know, miners use a lotenergy, so if you're a home for
like and it also generates a lotof, it's a lot of heat.
So somebody came up with theidea to create a Bitcoin miner.
That was two things.
One, it was an actual heatspace heater for your house,
your room, and because of theenergy it produced, it would
actually eventually pay yourentire electric bill and you'd
(22:50):
have a little bit.
So your Bitcoin would heat yourhouse but pay your entire
electric bill and you'd have alittle bit.
So your bitcoin would heat yourhouse but pay your electric
bill and maybe have a little bitleft over, like.
So it was like it was the leapof the design, fiction to kind
of go, oh, and then some ofthese things, people are like,
well, can I do that, can Iactually create that?
Like, and that's the beauty of,I think, of this stuff is that
it just gets people reallyconnecting between the, the
(23:12):
liminal space, between thepossible and the like, even the
problem, like I could, we could,we could do this, we're with
this things, when this comes, wecould, and I think that's
that's what I love about this somuch the space so, um, when you
, you, you bring together, youmentioned the super seminars.
(23:34):
Where did that idea come about?
What do you achieve with that?
What do you love about that somuch?
If people haven't checked itout, I'll make sure it's in the
show notes so people can checkthem out.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, cool.
So there was a general seminarwhich started with the idea, you
know, I don't know.
It was like COVID and likethere was lots of stuff going on
.
I'm not talking necessarilyCOVID stuff, but just like there
was the crypto thing was goingon and I was just doing a lot of
like whoa, I wasn't kind ofexpecting this so much and so I
was wondering about it andyou're just kind of talking to
people and during COVID theonline thing became kind of
(24:24):
hygiene.
It's like everyone not justkind of tech nerds or whatever,
or work-from-home people startedgetting a fluency with doing
seminars online and that kind oftech nerds or whatever, or work
from home people like startedgetting a fluency with with
doing seminars online and thatkind of thing.
And I had this.
I, it was just a.
I just put it out there likehey, with a little bit of
framing around it.
Uh, I want to do be able to seeif I can host a session where I
(24:47):
don't have to.
I'm not the expert in the room.
I'm not the expert in the room,I'm the guy who kind of just
got things together.
I like community building.
Maybe to a fault, I don't thinkI should be doing tons and tons
of that, because I like to makestuff.
Community building takes time.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Well, you're making a community, it is making
something.
It is in the sense of creating.
You are creating connection.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
so yeah, yeah, no, I think that's the point.
It's, I'm not, I'm not opposedto it, it's just like, um, yeah,
I wanted to see what wouldhappen if I, if I, um, if I put
something up and out thereamongst the, the community
basically was subscribed to mynewsletter and said, hey, uh,
with a little bit of you knowkind of humor attached around it
, uh, could propose somethingwhere it's like crypto, what the
(25:38):
fuck, like I don't know, like,do you?
You know, do you have any ideas?
And that was the general theme,or the art, this kind of
semantic structure around allthese things.
It's like I don't know, do you?
But I bet if we get together ina room we can make some sense
of it.
You know, maybe inconclusively,but I didn't really have a lot
planned for that in particular.
(26:00):
But there were a couple ofthings.
One thing I was like wouldpeople pay for this?
Is there real value here thatthey'll pay for?
And that was a question for meand I just kind of wanted to
know as an experiment, me, andand I, and I just kind of wanted
to know as an experiment, um,and then the other thing was
could you, could you have a?
It was an experiment with thekind of structure of this, of
the seminar itself.
In other words, what wouldhappen if you if you led people
(26:24):
and it kind of kind of guidedthem into the future, told them
that they're going to the future, and now I want you to explore
and almost like, almost like aPilates for the imagination, go
into that world and I want youto bring back some artifacts.
Imagine that you ended up insomeone's you know kitchen and
(26:44):
we're talking about crypto.
What?
What do you find in thatkitchen?
So I was trying to find a wayto get people to not just be
very analytic or, even worse,say what they heard in the news
directly, you know, like justparroting what they thought was
the right answer.
There's no right answer.
It's you who's going there andimagining what you might find
(27:06):
using your imagination, not whatyou know, elon or whoever says
about what the future is, and sothat was.
You know.
There were whoever says aboutwhat the future is, and so that
was.
You know.
There were a couple of thingsgoing on there, and it was also
sort of derived from anexperience I had when I was in,
when I was doing my PhD.
We had this seminar where itwas just like a course number
and a general enough descriptionof the course that you could
(27:28):
basically come up with your owncurriculum.
And that was a kind ofwonderful thing because all of a
sudden I mean I guess it's alsogood for people who are getting
a PhD.
It's like you got to figure outif you're going to put together
a curriculum, if you're goingto someday teach how to do that
I don't know.
There's just a whole bunch ofstuff going on there and I did
(27:50):
that.
At least once you get enoughpeople together to say here's a
topic and it was always.
My understanding was that itshould be something at the
vanguard.
In other words, we're not goingto sit around and talk about
19th century European arthistory because that's already
sorted.
There's nothing we're not goingto.
What are we going to do there?
I mean, you want somethingwhere it's like the basis of
(28:11):
knowledge, like the epistemology, is under question or it's
under development.
There's no consensus about whatthe particular topic is.
We wanted to look at how spacethat people occupy, physical
(28:36):
space, architecture, urbanplanning.
People were wondering how can weunderstand this with a social
dimension attached, and therewas a lot of social theory
attached to it and I was likethat sounds really cool.
And my approach, my motivation,I think, was I'd been doing
this kind of longitudinalresearch project.
(28:57):
That became part of mydissertation, which was on video
games that represented physicalspace, simcity I was looking at
analytically very closely howdoes SimCity represent cities
(29:17):
and what are the questions wecan wonder about the game and
how the game's implications ofwhat a city is.
It's kind of curious to exploreand ask questions about and
wonder and what are theopportunities.
And then there was the earlydays of first days of of first
person point of view games.
So one game was it was aterrible game made by,
(29:39):
underwritten by the imprimaturof Daryl Gates, who was the not
very cool police commissioner ofLos Angeles at the time.
And so he was.
He got himself involved inmaking the shoe games about cops
terrorizing around Los Angeles,you know, and it was.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
It was such a wait, he was the chief during like
Rodney King, wasn't he?
And like OJ Simpson, that wholelike era of the night.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Okay, yeah, that's what I remember on phone Cause
he might've been the rampartscandal, I don't know Anyway,
but he's, you know, careerpolice guy, but very very
clearly law and order.
No, yeah, extreme, and so thisis all you know.
So then you're starting to beable to talk about how certain
values can be embedded intovideo games, which isn't a
surprise.
But you have a case study andan argument and your grad
(30:27):
students like, oh, this is gonnabe great, and there weren't a
lot of video game studies at thetime.
So I was interested in tryingto find a theoretical framework
to talk about these things,aside from just saying, like,
man, this, the action is prettycool, but the politics are shit.
You know the I have to be alittle bit more articulate when
you're a grad student.
So that was that was what,something like this seminar that
(30:47):
we had in grad school, and Iwas like, can I do the same
thing in a topic where no one'san expert?
But you get in a room with abunch of clever, bright,
insightful people who arearticulate and can wonder about
it themselves, without coming insaying I'll tell you what this
is, just coming and being likeoh, here's what I see, here's
(31:10):
what I understand, here's what Iappreciate.
And I think maybe this isrelated to this.
You just have a discussion, andso that was the kind of basic
architecture for General Seminar, which then later became Super
Seminar, because I recognizedthat the people loved it.
They were like this is great,when are you going to do the
next one?
And that kind of thing.
And Super Seminar was just likea little bit of a flip to say
(31:33):
of thing.
And super seminar was just likea little bit of a flip to say I
instead of I think at one pointI was like, uh, my, my, my, my
marketing was like ted is deadand he was.
You know, the is the like.
You know, let's, let's, we, wedon't.
I don't know, maybe I wasplaying dangerously with the
idea of the decline of theexpert, but it's like we have an
expert on stage to hold forthlike we can.
We're smart people.
(31:54):
We could be on the stage justas much as they could.
So why don't we just kind ofget together and and um and
wonder about the topic?
And that's when I would sort ofI, I would have people I know in
my community, who you knowmaybe, who had a perspective.
Rather than it just being anopen discussion, they would kind
of like prompt the discussion.
(32:14):
So it wasn't so much apresentation as it was kick us
off, which is what we would doin the seminar in grad school.
It's like each week when we met, one person would sort of be
taken lead based on you knowkind of what we had read for
that week, and they would be thebased on you know kind of what
we had read for that week, andthey would be the um uh,
(32:39):
interlocutor who would start thediscussion almost along, like
okay, so here's what I'm saying,here's what I've been might be
a good area to focus, and theywould kind of they would sort of
hold forth or read something ordeliver something in to start
the conversation and it'd belike maybe like a 15 minute
kickoff discussion whereeveryone would listen and then
we would have responses going onaround around the seminar table
(33:00):
.
And so it was a similar sort ofthing with super seminar, which
is like let me get, let me getKevin Bethune, like let me, let
me, he's got a bunch of stuffthat he could share, let me have
him start.
And then we would kind of goaround and people would add
their contribution and usuallyended up, you know, kind of
posing a question or pushingback on a point or stretching a
point a little bit further, andI found that really, really
(33:22):
interesting too, and peoplewanted it to where they would
pay for it, and that to me, it'snot so much about the
commercial thing as it is to saythere's value in this kind of
work.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Right, there's validation in that people will
compensate because theyappreciate your time and
people's time.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
And they recognize that there's something for them
in it.
And all those things I thinkare really important in this
space.
Important in this space.
Again, I'm not primarily, maybe, to a fault, motivated by the
commercial opportunities, but Ido recognize the importance of
value circulation in one form oranother.
That means if you want toparticipate in this, you have to
(34:04):
show that, you have to feel foryourself that it has value and,
for better or worse, one of theways, ways which we do that at
this point in in the history ofvalue creation, is we give
someone folding money, say likethanks for that.
I appreciate it that's good,that's helping me yeah, and it's
.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
It's also a lot of times as a fellow artist, you
almost you just want to share itwith the world and it's almost
like there's a guilt in like thetaking, the, the, the idea of
commerce, cause there's almostlike I feel like a personally I
can't speak for you, but I wantto hear your perspective.
There's almost like a guilt,like I don't want to.
(34:44):
You're giving me money.
It's like you're going to causeyou want you think I'm a
starving artist or he'ssupporting me, like, or he's
supporting me like is there.
But I just want to share itwith you and I don't want to
feel guilty like I'm.
But at the same time you'reright, like I happily, you know,
pay to come to your seminar,because one of the things you
you kind of offhandedly you know, because you like to create,
but I view your community as acreation too.
(35:06):
I mean, for those of you don'tknow, and I'll put it, I'll also
put this in the link in theshow notes there's a wonderful
discord community and there's alot of discords out there.
I wish there was a way to likejust hide or group, like the
discord icons you know, like theones you're kind of active on
because, like you're my one ofmy top ones, like I love going
in and just, and you have what?
10, 15 000 people right now?
(35:28):
I think in that.
How is this like?
1200 what's that?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
1200.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
I think I thought it was like 10.
I thought it was more than that.
But but the thing about it,okay, well, there's not even a
quantity, but there's a vibrancy.
People are always.
There's a lot of conversationin that and there's, you know,
you want the.
It's like that long.
(35:55):
They're deeply futures, fluentfutures, engaged, future
practicing in some way.
And I don't know, I always thinkof communities like this or
just like a super seminars.
I'm a big fan of the kind ofgilded age of history.
I really am fascinated.
There's different periods, butI think I live here in Boston
and in the West.
There's different periods but Ithink, uh, we, I live here in
Boston and in the West.
(36:16):
There's the Berkshires and theyused to have these.
They were called quote unquotecottages where their mansions.
But uh, edith Wharton's cottagestill survives, it's called the
Mount and you walk into thisthing and it's like Downton
Abbey.
It's like you walk in and youimagine like they have somebody
over for the wealthy to listenand they all have conversations.
But it was such a small group,right, and it's like, now you
(36:39):
think about it, you can havelike super seminar where people
can really be in that kind ofenvironment.
But it's for the world and Ithink that's just the beauty of
of where we are in creatingthese spaces.
Um, I don't know if you willreact to that or how you thought
you think about that, but, um,and I just think about your work
(37:07):
and people who now do designfiction and do this type of
speculative work.
I mean, how do you?
You've seen this journey, howdo you see it?
You know, what do you see forthe much more common with people
?
Do you think GPT will helppeople write better, synthesize
(37:30):
that kind of work?
Where do you see this part ofthe field and the space growing?
What are you?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
seeing Part of me feels like I'm looking forward
to its evolution and I'm notsure how much I will be involved
in in educational context.
Like I'm going to USC tomorrowI'm doing two separate talks
(37:58):
that I had to coordinate to beon the same day so I'd have to
(38:34):
do right.
Who are emerging into thepractice and very grateful for
the you know for for facultyintegrating it into their
curriculums and that kind ofstuff globally.
So it's super fascinating.
So I'm curious how it isadopted and taken up and evolved
by the generation or generationor two behind where I am
professionally.
Like what will it become?
And I guess maybe that's justlike a little bit of an allergic
reaction to stasis and fighting.
(38:56):
I want to see what the kids dowith it.
I don't mean that in adismissive way, but it's like,
you know, blues became rock androll, like that's got to happen,
and so I want to see whathappens.
You know, design fiction becomeswhat in practice.
So I you know, I guess onelittle hope is like I feel like
(39:22):
it's got exceptional value inlots of different realms that I
just haven't been able to focuson.
Me coming from product design,I think about it in commercial
context and I think, coming fromother realms, I found that
people have wanted to figure outhow to integrate it into other
(39:45):
contexts.
So late last year I worked in aworkshop for a couple of days
with pretty analytic, prettyserious policy people around the
topic of AI, design fictiondirectly in the context of
(40:08):
policy.
But learning about what policydoes and how it operates and how
an approach like design fictioncan be integrated into that has
been super fascinating, andoccasionally you just find
people within that space who areexpansive enough in their
thinking that they can be likeokay, I think we need to.
If we're going to innovate inpolicy, we have to do more than
just communicate what we believeare good structures around
(40:32):
things like AI through a policywhite paper that not a lot of
people are going to read, ormaybe the wrong kind of people
are going to read.
I don't mean wrong in a bad way,but just kind of people who are
ungrounded.
In other words, they're notliving in the world that the
policy is meant to implicate,but they're not.
They're not normal humans whoare just kind of going about
(40:53):
their day all of a suddenwondering why is this?
What is this new rule about?
You know what my refrigeratormust do.
Where'd that come from?
Whose idea was it to integratethis into you know?
Or or a you know in a?
In a more kind of pedestriansense, like how come all the
traffic lights are being takendown?
(41:15):
I don't get what's going onhere, cause some policy said,
like you know, this is a wasteof time and money and resources
because now most vehicles drivethemselves and know how to
coordinate, uh, negotiating anintersection, don't need the
traffic lights.
You know, I mean, this is.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
These are extreme examples, but I'm trying to no,
but you push the boundaries outand then it makes people go huh
and then you can bring them back.
You can back cast into thosethings.
So that's the.
That's beautiful.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, I love it, I love it uh,when you at usc, is this the
film school or is this the?
Speaker 2 (41:52):
uh, one talk is at the film school and one one
school is at the the dr dreschool I can't remember what
it's called, like the jimmy ivy,uh, dr dre, I can't remember
his real name, they, they.
They started an innovationschool at USC.
They wrote a big check, orpromised that they would write a
big check, and so they're doing.
There's a workshop going on forthrough the weekend I think it
(42:15):
starts Friday and goes throughthe weekend and then on kind of
innovation in the AI space.
So they asked me to come in andjust kind of, um, get people
excited, uh, to kick off that,that workshop.
And then the other one is withthe film school.
So it was with Alex McDowell,total hero, um, designer,
(42:36):
minority report played, runner,et cetera.
Um, he, he asked me to come anddo a talk at his class.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
That's great.
Yeah, alex McDowell is a legendin the world building.
Oh yeah, he's great.
You may not.
Maybe you've heard the term,maybe you know what it is, maybe
probably don't know what it isat all Like when you introduce
someone to the concept, what arethe misconceptions people have?
Because they'll think of designfiction.
Maybe they'll see sciencefiction Like what are the?
Speaker 2 (43:20):
what happens when you first kind of introduce people
to this?
Yeah, I think you're right, Ithink there are.
I'll be generous and say it'snot a misconception.
It's like these terms arepreloaded with their kind of
meaning and sense of what it isto people.
When you say design fiction,it's a little bit of a I guess
(43:44):
to a certain degree beingprovocative to say let's bring
these two things together.
They're all kinds of design andall kinds of fiction.
But have we put them togethervery deliberately and set it out
loud design fiction and thenwonder what that might actually
be and how it might operate?
And so it requires a bit ofexplanation, usually through.
This is what it is kind of intext and it's like now let me
(44:05):
show you some examples of it andI think you can go through
enough examples where they'relike okay, and so you're saying
it's the representation ofpossible futures in the form of
a material cultural artifact.
People are like what's amaterial cultural artifact?
I was like, okay, good question.
Imagine that you're anarcheologist but rather than
digging into the past or theground, you're actually rooting
(44:27):
around the future because, checkit out, you got a time machine
and this time machine you can gointo possible futures.
It's not a very good timemachine because you're not sure
exactly where you're going toend up and you don't have a
limited amount of time whenyou're there.
And one of the things aboutthis kind of quantum entangled
time travel is that you can'tactually talk to people You're
not on their plane but you cansee artifacts and see objects,
(44:52):
and so what you're able to dolike an archaeologist is grab an
artifact and that becomes likethe traditional, the trad
archaeologists.
They have an artifact and theirentire career has been puzzling
over it.
What is it?
What does it mean?
Where did it come from?
What does it represent aboutthis world?
And they, they have to tell astory about that world.
(45:13):
Now they might not say thatthey're storytellers, but they
are telling a story to help usimagine into what that world
could have been and what it waslike.
What were his power structures?
What was forms of valueexchange?
What were his power structures?
What were its forms of valueexchange?
What were its hierarchies?
Did it have somethingunderstood as a family unit?
So how did it operate?
Was it extended?
You know, all these kinds ofthings are what the archeologist
(45:35):
is trying to do with theassumption that this will help
us understand where we've comefrom.
What I'm trying to do is thesame thing to say wonder into
where are we getting to or wheredo we.
The same thing to say wonderinto where are we, where are we
getting to?
Or where do we want to get to,what, what is that?
What is our success conditionfor ourselves as beings in this
world in some possible future?
(45:55):
And to doing that less throughprose.
So it's not prose fiction,object, that is, that feels like
it's not quite.
You know, it's a little bithere and now.
I sort of recognize it, justlike you might.
You know, in the tradarchaeologists they might come
and say this looks like a bowland maybe this bowl was used to
(46:18):
eat out of.
You know, you look at it, it'sfamiliar.
In that sense it's notcompletely alien.
It's evocative of somethingthat you can sense and feel into
as a person existing in thehere and now.
Can you do the same thing withobjects that feel like they
could have come from, that couldcome from a possible future,
and can you make them evocativeenough to get someone to say
(46:40):
like, okay, I'm sort of gettinga sense?
This is kind of interestinghere.
It's got a kind of form to itthat feels familiar or actually
that's crazy.
It's got a.
It's got a.
It's got a.
It's got an Apple logo on it.
Huh, I wonder what's up withthat.
And and you start getting it,you know you're connecting it
into feelings and the overallgoal isn't to predict what it
(47:00):
might look like.
It's fun to kind of work thesethings through and create the
artifacts.
I think the thing you're tryingto do is kick someone's
imagination into gear, is toreally kind of give a shock to
the system, to be like oh yeah,now we're doing something, we're
opening up a conversation aboutwhat could be in, about the
(47:21):
future.
So my meta goal is to just getpeople to imagine harder, like,
remember that we've got thisevolutionary advantage of being
able to imagine the world.
Otherwise.
Now I don't know if it's true,but it's fun to think that we
are particularly well-suited, asyou know, humans with this kind
of lump of vascularized meat inour head that we call brain, to
(47:42):
be able to do that, to imagineinto possibility.
And part of doing design fictionis to do the design fiction but
also remind ourselves that wehave this existentially vital
capacity capability to imagine.
It's kind of remarkable.
We can imagine something andactually create it.
(48:05):
I was talking to somearchitects the other day.
What you guys do is amazing.
I mean, you have this image inyour head of a thing that could
be, and then you go throughthese steps, you articulate it
and represent it in differentways.
You might make a model, youmight make a 3d render and at
some point someone's like I.
I feel your imagination to sucha degree that I'm gonna write
you a check.
(48:25):
And now can you get yourengineers together and start
pouring concrete.
I mean, that to me is just likewhat that's crazy, or same
thing with film.
You know all these differentways in which we imagine and and
instantiate our imagination,from artists to you know god
bless them the people who makefinancial models, who are as
much doing fiction as anyoneelse.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
Oh yeah, yeah, exactly, I was just saying yes,
I'm from financial forecast.
Yeah, that's definitely a pieceof design fiction, you know,
projections.
Well, that leads to, you know,one of the questions I've.
I've also had to deal with alot as in doing innovation work
and product work, dealing withstrategists that are more
(49:10):
forecasters, I would say, moreshort-term than not, in terms of
that long-term strategy.
Let's just take, for example,how to incorporate, how can
people do this is my question toyou.
But I'll cite an example Doingyour user experience design, you
do persona work, you createpersonas.
So I changed the name.
I called them persona, you know.
(49:31):
You know it was you the thestory of a persona, or the
persona story, or like a personof the future, like I changed
the name of it because a lot oftimes people almost like they
have a reaction to fiction.
The word for design like whatis?
You know, it's like stories,persona stories, like just
(49:53):
changing the thing so thatthere's like almost a semantic,
easier acceptance.
You know, when you're talkingto students and they're going to
go out in the world, how do you, when you talk to you know your
clients or people are thinkingabout it?
Just like you talked about thearchitect.
How do you, when you talk toyou, know your clients or people
are thinking about it, justlike you talked about the
architect?
How do you get them to likemeaningfully incorporate this
stuff like you could do?
(50:14):
How do you work with them tokind of teach to fish?
Speaker 2 (50:21):
yeah, I guess I just teach them.
I mean, I usually just teachyou.
Yeah, the simple thing is, likethey, these kind of go along
with like what I sort of referto as like design fiction 101,
which is, you know what is it,how do you do it?
And then actually doing it in aeither either, you know, like a
case that is relevant to themor actually a problem that
they're trying to work throughrelevant to them, or actually a
(50:43):
problem that they're trying towork through.
And if it's a problem thatthey're trying to so there's a
problem that they're trying towork through, it's usually a
much more longitudinalengagement.
If it's like they're just likewe want a sense of of what this
is and how it works, then it'susually like um, you know, they,
they just gotta, they justgotta go through, learn about
(51:07):
what it is, and then get the,get the workbook and work
through a bunch of problems thatare more like uh, yeah,
remember you like learning,calculus or whatever.
There was the problem sets atthe back of each chapter that
you just got to work through,and you're not trying to solve a
problem in in a, in ainstrumental sense.
You're not trying to figure outhow are we going to get this
rocket booster to separate atthe right rate or whatever.
You're just kind of goingthrough hypotheticals.
(51:27):
And I think, doing thehypotheticals, it's like you
know if you're, if you, if yourun, I mean I don't know, you
know if you, if you, if you ridea bike, you're um, you know um,
cycling enthusiasts, so you're,you're really into cycling.
(51:48):
There might be something thatyou're working towards, like a
race or whatever, um, butwhatever you do, you just gotta
you just gotta keep riding yourbike and you gotta have a
routine with it.
I think doing this kind of workis similar like you just need
to do a lot of it, um, but as adaily routine, and at first it
hurts, you know, just like whenyou start riding a bike or
running or doing Pilates orlifting weights, whatever it is
that you do, at first it hurts,but you know that there's a,
(52:11):
that there's a, there's a,there's a fitness goal.
That is just general, like Ijust want to feel fit, I want to
feel better, or whatever, andyou start, you sort of start
working towards that.
I think you know doing thesekinds of things is similar like
you should do it.
Yeah, do a little designfiction exercise, like two or
three times a week, 20 minutes,yeah, and just as a routine,
(52:32):
because that instills that senseof.
I think it bulks up theimagination.
So you got a really, really fitimagination and it gets you
thinking beyond the, the youknow the constraints of
expecting someone else to comeup with an idea or just
parroting some other idea thatyou heard.
It moves beyond the kind ofhygienic responses to, like,
(52:54):
what's the future of AI?
Like no one.
I haven't heard any kind ofarticulate statement about that.
Really, when it comes down tothis, oh, we'll be able to have
conversations with Uber's 10Kfiling.
It's like, okay, now you'rereally struggling, but we don't
know what the answer is.
And we can accept that we don'tknow what the answer is, but we
(53:15):
should be exploring thepossibility space expansively,
like doing things that don'tnecessarily imagining, things
that don't necessarily makedirectly make any sense.
That was one thing that I didwith the policy group was I came
to that workshop with anewspaper that I called Applied
Intelligence, tomorrow's NewsToday, which I thought was fun,
(53:38):
and the idea was to create anewspaper, an artifact that had
come from an AI future, thatreally looked around the
boundaries of what that futuremight be like and what might it
be like to live in a world whereAI is just as normal, ordinary
and everyday as, like a Wi-Ficonnection at a coffee shop.
(53:58):
What does that world look likeand feel like?
And I think that for me,because I did the newspaper,
that was like a wonderful likefeeling really good about doing
like a marathon, like yeah, thatwas harder, but I enjoyed it.
You know, and I think that'sbecause, like I'm doing these
(54:19):
things routinely, I feel likegetting to a state where that is
possible, where people are asenthusiastic about doing it as
they are about jogging orwhatever people are doing,
rucking then we're in a goodplace.
And I think, again, that's backto that meta goal of we need to
(54:39):
remind ourselves that we havean imagination and we need to
use it.
We need to remind ourselvesthat we have this important
capacity and ability that I feellike is maybe diminished a bit
I might be overstating it forthe purposes of being
evangelical, we need to imagineharder.
Speaker 3 (54:56):
No, that's a great term to kind of as closing on
this conversation, becauseyou're going to talk to all
these students tomorrow and it'sgood advice for them to make
that kind of impact.
You look back, you have manymore years ahead, but I always
like to ask about the legacyquestion, having your work
(55:17):
remembered, the impact.
What would you like that to be?
People look back and thinkabout Julian and the amazing
work you've done, and peoplelook back and think about Julian
and the amazing work you'vedone.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
So, uh, you know, if, if, if I I getting the feeling
that I've I've touched peopleand shaped their way of thinking
and um their, their sense ofyou know, what they, what, their
own possibility, and it wascentered around this idea of you
know, imagine harder, Like Ilearned how to imagine from that
guy.
That would be, that'd be great,That'd be amazing.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
Yeah, that's a.
It's a wonderful way to way tothink about it.
So, for those who want to findyou cause you have such amazing
content out there, like what,what's coming up for you that
you'd like people to know aboutand where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (56:10):
yeah, so they can find me at
nearfuturelaboratorycom or whichis, um, more or less a trimmed
down version of that, and we gotit.
You know everything's on there.
I got the podcast, uh, which isjust the near future laboratory
podcast, and we got anewsletter, which is a bit
infrequent.
All the usual kind of platformsand stacks, patreon these are
(56:31):
all places where you can, whereyou can find, find me.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
And I'll put that all I'll be on the show notes for
people listening.
You want to check it out too,so I'll have links for that.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
So that's great Thank .
Thank you for the time today,julian.
It's been always a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Yeah, I appreciate you asking for me to join you,
steve, and it's been wonderfultalking to you as well.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for listening to theThink Forward podcast.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
You can find us on all the major podcast platforms
and at wwwthinkforwardshowcom,as well as on YouTube under
Think Forward Show.
Speaker 3 (57:05):
See you next time.
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