Anticipation 22 Accepted Papers with Abstracts

Abstract: This talk takes a look at how architecture might offer new tools to mediate the usually invisible and affective processes that undercurrent our relationships to, and direct our actions with, our environments. Deploying arguments from phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) and process philosophy (Alfred N. Whitehead, Mark B. Hansen), I will argue that we need an aesthetic able to sensitize us for those processes that are invisible to our eyes, unavailable to objectification. I will analyze two examples of such an aesthetics: Philipp Rahm’s “Digestible Gulf Stream” and “Jade Eco Park.” Ultimately, I will propose that these aesthetic milieus call for a form of anticipation that does not proceed from an autonomous subject but from a subject that is integrated into a larger whole. It connects to the question of the conference: what role do emotions play in anticipatory thinking and practice?

Abstract: Abstract
The history of the future is a critical, systematic narration of the transformative trajectory of the future from its state as anticipation in the present-present to its eventual final state as past future in the past. The present-present is an ontological construct that encapsulates conflicting anticipations in different temporal patterns and scales. These anticipations either contest for a hegemony of the present-present or simply exist singularly within it. Upon manifestation of the future from its state as anticipation to past futures in the present-present, these past futures are immediately stored in the past, thus continually transforming the structure of the past into a cartography of past futures and past presents in historical time. This paper advocates that a critical investigation of these past futures in the past serves as a means of discovering silent, unknown knowable anticipations that latently exist in the present-present and influence the structure, character, and evolution of future. Hence, by investigating past futures in the past, newer ways to designing alternative futures could erupt through the discovery of latent anticipations stuck in the present-present. Further, by problematizing these past futures, novel driving agents, trends, megatrends or wildcards could become discoverable, and they could further be used to hunt for silent, latent anticipations existent in the present-present. Finally, by critically harnessing the potency of these latent anticipations in the present-present and structuring the trajectory of their transformation into past futures, newer, creative methods for writing histories of the future and developing alternatives futures could erupt. The paper proposes the Past Futures Framework (PFF) as both an anticipatory tool and an element of futures literacy that enhances the capability of humans to critically investigate and problematize past futures as a vital step towards designing alternative futures.


Relation to existing research
My proposed presentation for the 4th International Conference on Anticipation 16-18 November 2022, Tempe, Arizona USA is primarily based on a paper that I have published in the journal of Futures in 2021 as a part of my ongoing PhD project. In the paper, I theorized and introduced the Past Futures Framework (PFF) as an anticipatory framework for investigating the future in West Africa. The title of the paper is The Problem of the present in West Africa : Introducing a conceptual framework and the DOI can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2021.102815.

Hence, my conference presentation and paper is related to existing research on Anticipation Studies and Futures Literacy because the foundation of the Past Future Framework (PFF) is established as an element of futures literacy based on the rudiments of the Discipline of Anticipation. The paper simply advocates for the possibility of using intelligence from past futures to develop alternative futures using the anticipatory tool which I have theorized and termed the Past Futures Framework.


Connection with conference theme
The Anticipation 2022 conference theme in which I aim to present my paper is titled “What are the histories of the future? Which concepts and practices help us to use the past to inform alternative futures? I believe that my paper is directly connected to the theme of the conference because the paper argues for a method for conceptualizing histories of the future. The paper also argues for the potency of past futures and the Past Futures Framework (PFF) for hunting for anticipations in the present-present. It also argues that critical investigation and problematization of past futures could serve as a means for generating novel driving agents, trends, or megatrends that could be used to hunt for latent anticipations existent in and influencing the structure of the present-present and the future. Further, using the elements employed in theorizing the PFF, I advance a new definition of the ‘history of the future’ as the systematic narration of the transformation of the future from its state as anticipation in the present-present to its final state as past futures in the past. As a result, the paper meets the two central elements of the Conference Theme 6 which are Histories of the Future and Using the past to develop alternative futures.

At the end of my presentation at the 4th International Conference on Anticipation 16-18 November 2022, Tempe, Arizona USA, I anticipate gathering critique and newer ideas to improve or strengthen the idea of past futures and the Past Future Framework (PFF). This is because the PFF is still at an experimental stage in its theorization and its development will thrive by doing and practice. I also anticipate gathering new perspectives and new thinking into the future possibilities of the Past Futures Framework as an anticipatory system for investigating the future in postcolonial African spaces.

In terms of attendance, my preference is an in-person attendance as that would aid me acquire sufficient and robust feedback to further develop the Past Futures Framework as an anticipatory tool and element of futures literacy.

Abstract: Engaging with uncertainty is an increasingly difficult problem in urban planning and policy development. One approach that professionals have frequently adopted to navigate growing scales, scopes and speeds of change is scenario planning. While valuable in identifying avenues with which to accommodate increasingly unpredictable conditions, scenario planning has real limitations, particularly in the realm of participatory engagement. A growing body of literature cites not just the need for more effective engagement tactics in scenario-based planning and policy work, but the growing importance of engaging emotional and sensory responses to potential future conditions. Given these shifting attitudes, the potential presented by the growing field of experiential futures merits more attention in the urban planning and development disciplines. This research investigates frameworks for enhancing participation in scenario-based urban planning and policy development projects using experiential futures tools, through the assessment of three case studies. Comparison of these projects serves to articulate experiential futures’ potential utility in creating more participatory engagement in scenario-based urban development efforts.

Abstract: This interactive 90 minute curated discussion session brings together six UK futurists from very different disciplines and fields to discuss recent collaborations deploying creative and immersive approaches to futuring in defence and security – including cyber security – contexts. This session is designed to elicit deep conversation and reflection amongst both panel and conference participants in response to 2 key questions posed under the conference theme 5. Creativity, Innovation and New Media: (1) How can new media, VR/AR, immersive experience design and games be deployed to activate better futures in this space?; and (2)What media and systems are being used to create future narratives in defence and security, and what types of affordances, limitations and trade-offs do they enfold?

The format of the session (designed to facilitate both live and remote participation) will include 3 informal (10-15 minutes) ‘fireside chats’ with futures practitioners from UK government defence and security bodies: John Carney, Senior Principal Synthesist, and Jim Maltby, Principal Scientist, both at the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), Ministry of Defence (MoD); and a representative of the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ. These conversations will be shaped by questions posed both by conference participants and by 3 academic interviewers, who will introduce each ‘fireside chat’ with a short position paper (5-10 minutes) framing the theoretical and methodological positioning of the case study under discussion: Will Slocombe, Senior Lecturer in English and Co-Director of the Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures at the University of Liverpool; Emily Spiers, Senior Lecturer in Creative Futures and Co-Director of the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University; and Genevieve Liveley, Professor of Classics, Turing Fellow, and RISCS (Research Institute in Sociotechnical Cyber Security) ‘Anticipation and Futures Literacy’ Fellow at the University of Bristol.

Slocombe and Carney will discuss the role of speculative and science fictions in creating and communicating futures narratives, both as providing ready-made security and defence scenarios as well as inspiring and providing the building blocks for new imaginative fictions in this context. They will share learnings from recent Dstl’s Science Fiction Community of Practice events, including its Science Fiction Symposium, Science Fiction writers retreat, and they will introduce TWIST (sTory WritIng for Science fuTures) as the latest creative futuring project under development.

Liveley and the UK NCSC interviewee will share examples from a co-created storybook of futures narratives set in a near future of March 30th 2031 (inspired by real news stories and cyber security incidents) as a creative means of enhancing anticipation and futures literacy across the cyber security ecosystem. They’ll analyse the potential of such stories to help identify potential weaknesses in existing policies and plans, explore new ways to mitigate future risks and harms, and – crucially – to build not only resilience but forward-thinking anticipatory ‘prosilience’ in decision and policy-makers.

Spiers and Maltby will discuss the Museum of the Future (MOTF), a highly innovative virtual-reality environment (VRE) designed by Dstl to highlight the uncertainty of the future, using avant-garde techniques of immersion, cognitive estrangement, and other narrative and world-building techniques to encourage audiences to query and so better understand their own anticipatory assumptions. The aim of the MOTF project is to promote cognitive flexibility, enhance futures literacy, and ameliorate against the effects of knowledge shields by immersing audiences in three speculative environments that prompt novel ways of considering possible futures. This section of the session will be followed by an interactive demonstration of some of the features of the MOTF, incorporating (if technically feasible) some element of direct audience participation (15-30 minutes).

Connecting these 6 contributors and these 3 case-studies is an open and collaborative approach to bridging the academic/practitioner/policy divide, a deep commitment to interdisciplinary futures working, and the use of experimental co-produced and creative approaches throughout the research process. Each member of the panel is interested in exploring new ways in which we might better understand the dynamic relationship between futures thinking and anticipation in defence and security, recognizing that narrative and stories of all kinds offer particularly valuable tools for this challenge (see, e.g., Poli 2018; Liveley 2017; Miller 2011, 2006; Currie 2007). They understand that futures thinking in this space involves particular expertise in using “future-based information [and] acting in the present” (Poli 2017, 260; cf. Miller, Poli, and Rossel 2017; Miller 2018; Poli 2018), and see futures literacy – understood broadly in this context as “the capacity to think about the future” (Liveley, Slocombe, and Spiers 2021) – as an essential competence and capability for all those in defence and security working towards ‘securing the future(s)’.

Curator and main point of contact: Genevieve Liveley – g.liveley@bristol.ac.uk

Abstract: Regulatory sandboxes in the FinTech and LegalTech domains have pioneered an experimental approach to regulating algorithmic services that supports participatory engagements of institutional stakeholders. We use the model of live testing under supervision to accommodate exploratory goals that involve a variety of participants in the full cycle of design, implementation, and regulation of blockchain services (from smart contracts to NFTs). The main goal of an exploratory sandbox is to support participants in negotiating the relations between code, values, and regulations on a concrete case. We will describe 2020 - 2022 examples, on which we tested the sandbox method, to discuss how this direct engagement with code and regulations supports anticipatory governance of blockchain futures, public futures and sovereignty. The key challenge in regulating algorithmic services is to engage citizens not only as test subjects or users of new services but as actual stakeholders in the future as something of a new territory with unclear sovereignty, political representation and participation. We summarized this as an issue of participation and representation in the process of “algorithmization.” The emerging algorithmic services present a similar challenge as any extrajudicial territory or transnational, intergovernmental, and supranational organization where “there is no overarching sovereign with the authority to set common goals even in theory, and where the diversity of local conditions and practices makes the adoption and enforcement of uniform fixed rules even less feasible than in domestic settings” (Zeitlin, 2017). The sandboxes are sites that support this experimental or experimentalist approach to governance (Sabel and Zeitlin 2012) and emphasize the participation of stakeholders in the entire policy and design cycle from decision making to reflection and implementation. This is an iterative process with many risks and uncertainties, but it is essential that the regulation and policy include prototyping and design engagements with the stakeholders and thereby extend the discursive nature of the governance processes.

Abstract: There is no greater institutionalized form of risk assessment and anticipatory governance than insurance. Sociologists and legal scholars have described this industry as “the most pervasive and powerful institution in society” (Ericson et al. 2002:3). Insurance companies possess immense capacity for creating methods and practices for how future events will be managed in the present tense—and which futures are made more probable and more profitable.

Insurance has always been an industry built on data, calculation, and judgement. Accurately assessing and pricing risks requires knowing a lot of detailed information about people. Insurers have long been adept at aggregating statistics about entire groups and populations, which helps them apply averages and predict probabilities. They have much more difficulty monitoring individuals. The sources of data have been largely not available; at least not in the volume, variety, and velocity required for small-scale anticipation and real-time reaction. That is now changing. With the capabilities offered by emerging technologies like networked devices and AI analysis, insurers are gaining access to previously unavailable capacities to assess risk, control loss, and capture value.

Until recently, the tools at their disposal have been blunt. While applied to great effect, they tended to be deployed in broad ways. Now, however, the promise of developments in insurance technology (or, insurtech) is that insurers will be equipped with sharper tools. With more precise forms of power/knowledge, the insurtech industry is beginning to construct an anticipatory regime for governing everyday life based on a set of core features: ubiquitous intermediation, regular interaction, total integration, hyper-personalization, actuarial discrimination, and dynamic reaction.

It’s one thing for an insurer to say, “We anticipate that people with your demographic profile are more likely, over the course of a lifetime of coverage, to be more costly risks. But if you meet certain conditions, we will lower your premiums.” It’s quite another for an insurtech to say, “We anticipate that you, based on behavioural data collected from these five smart devices and additional data purchased from brokers, are likely to have a risk event in the next three weeks. So we have adjusted your premium accordingly.”

Based on empirical research into the political economy of the insurtech sector, this paper will provide a critical accounting of new technological developments in insurance. I will explain each of the features outlined above—providing examples of how they operate in practice—as a way of theorizing them as constituting an emerging, yet pervasive and powerful, regime of anticipatory governance in society.

Reference:
Ericson, R., Doyle, A. and Barry, D. (2003). Insurance as Governance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Abstract: Despite a dramatic increase in user experience (UX) roles held by those with training in the social sciences, UX professionals traditionally deploy ethnography as a tool for contextually assessing the practices of targeted user categories (“personas”) rather than self-study. Meanwhile, academic evaluations of UX methods tend to be siloed within applied anthropology communities or favor a quantitative/lab-driven approach if presented in human-computer interaction (HCI) forums (Robinson et al, 2018). While HCI has a long history of academic dedication to the concept of usability (e.g., Baecker, 1989; Kasik 1982; Churchill et al. 2013, 2014; Gould & Lewis 1985; Norman 1983), it lacks substantive discussion of UX as a social practice concerned with anticipating and reacting to the needs of others. It commonly fails to address the ways that UX as a business strategy contributes to the digital divide. In this paper, I will explore the ways that anticipation affects the decision-making of usability experts focused on conversational voice assistants (CVAs, like Alexa and Google Home) and conversation design. My analysis is based on ongoing ethnographic research and interviews with conversational UX professionals in the U.S. and Japan and is focused on usability as a practice of daily negotiation. I argue that anticipation is one of the main discursive strategies of usability work but is complicated by a lack of system transparency and discoverability for voice assistants. While UX work, at its best, tries to avoid thinking for others by involving testers at all stages of the design process, it frequently designs towards a dominant user model and constructs a form of conversational exchange that almost nobody finds usable (yet).

Abstract: The project team consists of Adriene Jenik, MFA; Stacia Dreyer, PhD; and Erica Berejnoi, PhD candidate. Jenik conceived and developed the ECOtarot cards and the readings.

Introduction and Research questions
This paper shares the results of a pilot study investigating the experiences and meaning making of individuals who have taken part in an ECOtarot reading. The ECOtarot is a public performance art practice of reading people’s climate futures. Drawing from the public's general familiarity with tarot cards, ECOtarot cards are used to read one’s climate future, using specialized cards, based on climate science that highlight climate change and sustainability issues. This project research explores the complex emotions elicited during this art practice. Past research has described potential benefits of climate change oriented visual art to the viewer (Roosen, Klöckner, & Swim, 2018), but a focus on performance art is lacking from the literature. This study aims to expands the literature.

ECOtarot readings
Unlike traditional tarot readings, the ECOtarot reading discusses an individual’s climate future as part of an immersive performance art piece. The cards of the ECOtarot deck update standard archetypes and interpretations from the original 78 card deck to reflect contemporary actors, values and symbols from our climate drama. The ECOtarot deck used to perform readings is printed on handmade, plant-based paper (agave and recycled cotton and linen), and hand-painted with natural pigments. Climate future readings are structured in “spreads” which align with the number of cards offered for interpretation.

Methodology
Participants over the age of 18 were recruited to take part in the survey following a reading. Everyone who had a reading and met the age limitation were eligible to be part of the survey (n=25). Data collection occurred in three waves, after the project received approval from ASU’s IRB. Wave 1 included our initial data and was collected via online surveys over a 2-day period at the EarthX event (April 26-27, 2019). The EarthX event is an “international, nonprofit environmental forum whose purpose is to educate and inspire people to action towards a more sustainable future” (EarthX, 2019). It is marketed as the world’s largest environmental experience and there were over 175,000 visitors at the 2019 event (EarthX, 2019). Wave 2 data was collected 2 weeks after Wave 1; Wave 3 data was collected 12 weeks after Wave 1.

Findings
Through this project, we were able to better understand the emotions experienced during the ECOtarot reading through self-reported measures after the reading. All respondents indicated that they experienced at least one emotion during the reading. Many people reported feeling inspired, satisfied, and/or confident during the reading. Our pilot data supports the anecdotal evidence Jenik has collected over the years with over 1200 readings. People leave the reading with renewed focus and resolve about their journey in the midst of a changing climate; pointing to an important role for art and cultural practices in environmental education.

Connection to Conference Themes
This ongoing creative research project considers the role of emotion in anticipatory thinking and practice (Critical Anticipatory Capacities) and is an example of a creative approach to engaging publics around the idea of "climate futures." With interpretations that weave together data from IPCC reports and ancestral teachings, the work fosters a space of imagination around a "just transition."

Abstract: Utopia became a famous concept from the 16th century book of Thomas More from which it received a dual meaning as “no place” and “good place” (Levitas 2010). Utopia has been subject of interest of several social sciences including the future studies. It has been given several meanings of which the “ideal, but unreachable place” is the most well-known (Sargent 2010: 2, Levitas 2010: 3-6). In this meaning utopia has been compared with a master plan based on an assumption that an ideal state of society, city, organization, or any target of planning can be envisioned and achieved (Hoch 2014, Popper 2002, Sargent 2000).

Envisioning the future through Robert Rosen's theory of anticipation draws attention to the function of the system in order to achieve its desired state (Rosen 1985). Anticipation is considered as a novel approach to visioning futures, the present state, and the past. When considering utopian thinking and anticipation in parallel, their fundamental difference relates to the accessibility of the desired future, and how it is linked to the actions in the present state. Anticipation does not support the assumption of a permanent, ideal future state of any social structure unlike utopia in the sense of a master plan. Anticipation refers to functioning always manifested in the system as a cognitive process (Nadin 2015).

Theories reconsidering the purpose of utopia (Levitas 2010, 2013) give an opportunity to explore the connection of utopia and the anticipation in a mutually beneficial way. Theories about the functionality of utopia suggest that utopia does not have to be a perfect outcome or outcome at all (Levitas 2010: 4-6, Sargent 2010: 126-127). Instead, it can be a modus operandi in an anticipatory process, utilizing imagination by knowingly disengaging from the present’s restrictions to our attitudes, expectations, hierarchies, and capabilities.

In our paper, we suggest that when used consciously and purposefully, the combination of utopian thinking and anticipation adds the elements of creativity and human emotion to the consideration of the public future. As a result of a deliberate detachment from reality and with the use of imagination, it is possible to discover and understand – often undercurrent – values and ideologies that are involved in reflecting on the public futures (e.g., Inayatullah 1998; 2004; Appadurai 2013: 286-289).

We believe that without the exploration of emotions, values and personal expectations related to the future, the process of anticipation will remain incomplete. The public debate on sustainable development is an example of expectations for the future that strongly reflect the underlying societal values. In this context, values are often linked to the responsibility of present decisions for future generations. However, in the context of scientific research on the energy transition, societal values have been approached at most as cultural factors without an element of social vision (e.g., Ruotsalainen et al. 2017).

We also suggest that by exploring the future in a way that combine utopian thinking with anticipation, it is possible to naturally broaden the scope of participation in the reflection of a desired future. A temporary leap from reality by “social dreaming” (Levitas 2013: 12-15, Moylan & Baccolini 2007: 95-99) can inspire creativity and encourage a variety of participants to open discussion about the emotions and values behind the desired future.


References:

Appadurai, A. (2013). The future as cultural fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London: Verso.

Hoch, C. J. (2014). Utopia, Scenario & Plan: A Pragmatic Integration. Planning theory, 15(1), 6–22.

Inayatullah, S. (1998). Causal layered analysis: poststructuralism as method. Futures, 30(8), 815–829.

Inayatullah, S. (2004). Causal layered analysis: theory, historical context, and case studies. In S. Inayatullah (Ed.), The Causal Layered Analysis CLA) Reader: Theory and Case Studies of an Integrative and Transformative Methodology (p. 1–52). Tamsui: Tamkang University Press.

Levitas, R. (2010). Levitas, R. (2010). The Concept of Utopia. Bern: Peter Lang AG.

Levitas, R. (2013). Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society: The imaginary reconstruction of society. UK: Palgrave McMillan.

Moylan, T. & Baccolini, R. (2007). Utopia, Method, Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming. Bern: Peter Lang.

Nadin, M. (2015). Concerning the Knowledge Domain of Anticipation – Awareness of Early Contributions in the Context of Defining the Field. International Journal of General Systems 44: 6, 621–630.

Popper, K. (2002). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge (first published 1963). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Rosen, R. (1985). Anticipatory systems: philosophical, mathematical and methodological
foundations. IFSR International Series on Systems Science and Engineering, vol. 1. Binghamton: IFSR.

Ruotsalainen, J., Karjalainen, J., Child, M. & Heinonen, S. (2017). Culture, Values, Lifestyles, and Power in Energy Futures: A Critical Peer-to-Peer Vision for Renewable Energy. Energy Research & Social Science 34, 231–239.

Sargent, L. (2000). Utopia and the Late Twentieth Century: A View from North America. In R. Schaer, G. Claeys & L. Sargent (Eds) Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sargent, L. (2010). Utopianism: very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: Creating clear, realistic visions of a better future—visions of what we can gain after difficult change– can be a powerful motivator to commit to action. We have adapted the Futures Studies tools to support collaborative visioning in racial justice contexts. For this session, we will explore the challenge of giving staying power to workshop visions, to last beyond the moment of co-creation. Future visions created in workshops don’t easily thrive outside of the safe environment of the futuring sessions. Using co-design and thinging, we will report on an experiment to turn the naïve fragile fictions of workshop outputs into sticky stories that serve as anchoring visions for justice-oriented action in the present.

Abstract: Whereas science fiction is a literary genre generally attributed to the Western imagination as an expression of projected technological progress born of the Industrial Revolution, when the concept of “science” is divorced from its Western rationalist materialist underpinnings, certain fantastical elements in African literary expression lend themselves to science fiction interpretations, both utopian and dystopian. Insofar as science fiction represents an imaginative escape from the limits of this world, whether it be on the moon, under the sea, or elsewhere within the imaginative universe, an Afrofuturist reading of select films, novels, short stories, plays, and poems reveals a similarly anticipatory African future that is firmly rooted in its pasts. As such, this paper identifies the contours and modalities of a futurist science fiction, rooted in the socio-cultural and geo-political context of African imaginaries. The theoretical construct of futurity, defined as the creative capacity to imagine and express a future, is therefore analyzed within the field of Francophone African literary expressions. This paper constructs an arc that begins with gender equality and cultural plurality as the bases for society and the role of education in affirming and perpetuating these values. This paper then traces the unofficial educative discourses of society, namely those of media representations and popular culture, as well as their ideological influence on populations, identifying critical mythologies that undermine social solidarity. The trajectory procedes with a critical analysis of globalization and the market-driven violence behind many intra-national conflicts, contrasted with an egalitarian, ecological, and equatorial ethos of communal engagement with, and respect for the diversity of the human and natural worlds.

This paper draws on critical Afrofuturist frameworks while also pushing the discursive boundaries of the field to more inclusive and broader cultural contexts, namely those of continental African fictions written in French. Prominent Africanist scholars, including Achille Mbembe, Felwine Sarr, and Handel Kashope Wright, have advocated and argued for new frameworks through which development in Africa could be conceptualized differently by appealing to indigenous forms of knowledge, societal organization, and cultural values. Consequently, this paper examines viable alternatives for endogenous development through the theoretical lens of Afrofuturism, a contemporary social aesthetic that combines cultural literacy with ecology and technology to imagine an inclusive and innovative future through deliberate and intentional study of literature and the arts as vehicles of socially responsible and culturally sensitive commentary in contemporary African cultural and developmental discourses. By exploring the realms of societal possibilities through creative expression that incorporates ancient African mythologies, cosmologies, and traditions while also adapting the technical and artistic elements of global modernity, this paper contributes to the concept of anticipation from a decolonial perspective, exploring indigenous knowledge systems and alternative imaginaries for conceiving human futures.

Bio: Isaac Joslin has a background in French and Continental philosophy. His PhD from the University of Minnesota, focused on postcolonial francophone African literatures, cinemas, and cultures. Assistant Professor of French at Arizona State University, his research interests include theories of representation, theories of cultural hybridity, ecocriticism, and Africanfuturisms. He has published scholarly articles in international academic journals, including The International Journal of Francophone Studies, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, African Literature Today, The French Review, Oeuvres et Critiques, and Nouvelles Études Francophones. His current monograph entitled Africanfuturisms, Ecology, Humanity, and Francophone African Cultural Expressions is currently under contract with Ohio University Press.

Abstract: While the idea of Anticipatory Governance (AG) has an intricate genealogy and it has been used in widely different contexts, I shall focus only on the transformation of executive power to better address the acceleration and complexity of political and social problems.
Systems of governance have been shaped before the discovery of complexity and policy strategies continue to be based on expectations of linearity. As many complexity thinkers have noted linearity distorts our notion of cause and effect. Under the influence of linearity, we tend to expect that each problem will have a unique solution and that proportional changes in the causes will produce proportional changes in the results. Linearity tries to indicate and define the ‘what to expect’ starting from today's factual analysis and carrying it forward linearly, that is, treating events in a consequential way, as if reality were a Ford assembly line. Input + Input + Input = output. Linearity is a kind of security blanket, supported by an engineering approach to reality, which seeks to appease our anxiety to know the future, providing an illusion of rationality and control. In this context, we believe that it is possible to break down the whole without destroying its coherence or losing information. That is why we divide governments into ‘vertical’ hierarchies that perfectly align legal mandates, bureaucratic boundaries, and selection and training of staff, all while expecting the end result to be fully integrated actions, that harmoniously fit into a functioning whole.
Two consequences are specifically relevant: the first is that the understanding of ‘anticipatory’ in the expression ‘anticipatory governance’ should not be confined to the restricted territory of forecasting. According to the terminology introduced by Poli (2019), what comes into play is not only the plan of forecasting based on quantitative data, but also that of foresight, and specifically of strategic foresight. The second aspect to keep in mind is how to build a non-bureaucratic organizational structure. In other words, while it is becoming increasingly clear that decentralization and the dismantling of hierarchies are inescapable processes if we are to increase the ability of organizations to adapt and respond quickly to surprises, challenges and new developments, the ways in which these objectives can be achieved are not obvious.
While the diagnosis is shared, there is no real consensus on the therapies to be adopted. A response to the increasingly obvious dysfunction of the traditional or linear systems of functioning of institutions is that of the anticipatory governance, understood as the framework that serves to develop institutional systems adapted to the complexity of the context in which they operate. A government capable of perceiving changes before they occur is said to be anticipatory, allowing to alleviate risks and take advantage of opportunities that may arise. But how can we move from an essentially reactive bureaucratic organization to an anticipatory one?
I shall discuss the main components of an AG system and focus on some of the most demanding issues. Specifically, I will show that an anticipatory government starts from the idea that futures are generated and consumed, that not all situations can be faced with instruments of risk, and that the management of genuinely complex situations requires particular sensitivity, different from the traditional viewpoint of watertight compartments. In fact, anticipatory governance embodies an active and thinking state. This is a government that thinks of and designs the common good, rather than merely managing the state machinery in a mechanistic way; a government that works for a ‘desirable’ future, without assuming a paternalistic role.

Abstract: In light of the dramatic changes witnessed in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region over the past decade, including the events of the Arab Spring, the demands for a democratic system in Arab countries has risen more than ever before. This study examines the problem of understanding the concept of democracy in Arab societies in terms of its possible contradiction with religion, and assessing the relevancy and gaps between Arab and western democracies, in light of legitimization parameters in each society. With careful consideration of critical influences, the study also examines the motives and root causes behind the Arab revolutions and popular movements, while exploring ample drivers of change, conceivably playing a major role in drawing the democratic futures of the region.
After nearly a decade since the start of the Arab Spring, this study attempts to foresee the future of democracy in the MENA region over the next two decades. This will be assessed by analyzing the most important changes in the region including qualitative and quantitative research, while anticipating scenarios in reference to relative drivers of change for the foreseeable duration. Furthermore, mapping the findings with the anticipatory futures will produce a possible new democracy paradigm for the region.

Abstract: This presentation identifies a new category of knowledge: subjunctivity. If science is defined as the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world—that is, the systematic study of reality—then subjunctivity is the systematic study of what the philosopher Nicholas Rescher has called “irreality.” The subjunctive refers to a mood of verbs that express what is imagined or wished or possible. Subjunctivity, then, takes as its domain of inquiry the conceptual space of the possible. Subjunctivity is an approach to knowledge that studies the ontologically inactual. The imagination becomes the cognitive means by which we apprehend the subjunctive domain.

This presentation proposes the creation of a College of Subjunctivity within the University that would bring together these possibilitarians from around the university—the counterfactual historians and physicists, the fiction writers and Buddhist philosophers, the futurists and visionaries—in one College: an epistemological organization of all those who seriously investigate the “shadow universe,” what we might term the “shadow university.”

Abstract: All design practices have a future orientation. While designers are not intentionally causing harms, design artifacts are regularly reproducers of social injustices in the future. This paper questions of how futures methods could support design for justice. Anticipation of the future is a process of identifying probable and plausible futures to inform decisions in the present. On the other hand, design speculation is an imaginative process to generate and make preferable futures. Designers can use anticipation, specifically, in the evaluation of design proposals, which would help their efforts to make just futures. Ethical designers speculate preferable futures, assume a political posture, anticipate plausible harms, and improve their proposals for justice.

Abstract: The number of studies on the "future of work" has grown rapidly in recent years, but the possible futures of the right to work are little explored. This paper presents the experience of a group of teachers and trainers who collaborated in the structuring of a foresight exercise for high school student on the future of the right to work.

Work is recognized as an essential part of the human condition, as a value that provides dignity, an enabler of other human rights for life; at its best, it enables an adequate standard of living (Mundlak, 2007). The future of work has been a topic explored by futurists for many years (Applebaum, 1992; Boyd & Huettinger, 2019; Cazes, 1976; Granter, 2008; Khallash & Kruse, 2012; Williams, 2008). Work implies the generation of income as well as the individual fulfilment and the constitution of one's identity and social inclusion; consequently, it is recognized that work belongs to the sphere of human rights (Sarkin and Koenig, 2011). Although the right to work remains controversial, as it is linked to fundamental questions of political philosophy, it offers interesting prospects for a future-oriented discourse on rights in the educational context and civic education.

On the horizon, the subjects of work remuneration (providers and recipients) and the relationships between them as we define them today could disappear or become unrecognizable (Ruotsalainen et al., 2016). On the other, the theme of rights and, specifically, of right to work is almost absent in educational praxis, "leaving them invisible in the school institution and the teaching-learning processes" (Redón S., 2020). These absences are framed by the hegemony of neoliberal economic ideas (Branco, M., 2019), the invisibilization of care work, between its labor recognition and the private sphere (Comas-d'Argemir, D., 2019) and finally, by the discourse of employability and entrepreneurship as alternatives to the very idea of the right to work (Rodríguez Crespo et al. 2020).

With the aim of promoting futures literacy, some teachers first experimented personally and then guided their high school students along a reflection on the future of the right to work, following an explicit protocol (called "Social-Fut-Lab") inspired by Fut-Labs (Emanuelli et al., 2018). The claim that everyone has their right to work can be a way to promote critical thinking and prospective on issues such as labor democracy, the organization of domestic work or the transition to a sustainable society (Scotto, P., 2020).
Fut-Labs are developed in three main phases, plus a test administered at the beginning of the lab and repeated at the end. The different answers provided by the students show the effects of the Fut-Lab. In the Social-Fut-Lab, the first phase focuses on the understanding of past and current changes, using a historical reconstruction of the main events related to right-to-work drafts over the last three centuries. The second phase concerns the visualization of possible alternative futures in terms of extensions of the current state (business as usual scenario) and the definition of desirable futures. The third phase returns to the present and uses what has been seen of the past and future, in a simplified backcasting exercise, to develop an individual or collective action plan.
The experimentation was coordinated by an Italian-Spanish team and involved students from two groups of students in a high school in Huelva (southern Spain), a medium-sized city with problems of emigration and seasonal work.
The protocol was found to be easily repeatable and particularly suitable for promoting futures thinking and the development of anticipatory skills in middle school contexts, where foresight approaches are generally less common. Guided reflection on the right to work provoked initial disorientation and emotional involvement, given the particular social context of Huelva; perhaps because of this it could have great potential to support improved aspirational capacity at the community level. It is hoped that the model will be recognized and disseminated by educational institutions to promote young people's ability to anticipate and democratically build their future.

References
Applebaum, H. (1992). Work and its future. Futures, 24(4), 336–350.
Boyd, J. A., & Huettinger, M. (2019). Smithian insights on automation and the future of work. Futures, 111, 104–115.
Branco, Manuel C. 2019. «Economics for the Right to Work». International Labour Review 158(1):63-81.
Cazes, B. (1976). The future of work: An outline of a method for scenario construction. Futures, 8(5), 405–410. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-3287(76)90004-5
Comas-d’Argemir, Dolors. 2019. «Cuidados y derechos. El avance hacia la democratización de los cuidados». Cuadernos de antropología social (49).
Emanuelli, C., Scolozzi, R., Brunori, F., & Poli, R. (2018). Future-Labs in the Classroom: The Experience of -skopìa. World Futures Review, 10(4), 294–302.
Granter, E. (2008). A dream of ease: Situating the future of work and leisure. Futures, 40(9), 803–811. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2008.07.012
Khallash, S., & Kruse, M. (2012). The future of work and work-life balance 2025. Futures, 44(7), 678–686.
Mundlak, G. (2007). The right to work: Linking human rights and employment policy. International Labour Review, 146(3–4), 189–215.
Redon, S. Ciudadanía y Educación. In Conceptos para Disolver la Educación Capitalista; Espinoza, R., Angulo, J.F., Eds.; TerraIgnota: Barcelona, España, 2020; pp. 59–80.
Rodríguez Crespo, Carlos, María Amparo Serrano Pascual, y Laureano Martínez Sordoni. 2020. «Las éticas de la empreabilidad en el programa de Garantía Juvenil en España: una perspectiva discursiva». Papers. Revista de Sociologia 1(1):1.
Ruotsalainen, J., Heinonen, S., Karjalainen, J., & Parkkinen, M. (2016). Peer-to-peer work in the digital meaning society 2050. European Journal of Futures Research, 4(1), 1–12.
Sarkin, J., & Koenig, M. (2011). Developing the Right to Work: Intersecting and Dialoguing Human Rights and Economic Policy. Human Rights Quarterly, 33(1), 1–42.
Scotto, Pablo. 2020. «Thinking the Future of Work through the History of Right to Work Claims». Philosophy & Social Criticism 46(8):942-60.
Williams, C. C. (2008). Re-thinking the future of work: Beyond binary hierarchies. Futures, 40(7), 653–663

Abstract: Arguably, design reviews are set up to help designers anticipate the future of design-in-the-making. Design reviews are typically known to take place at important points in the design process in commercial design settings, in which the quality and progress of design is discussed. However, critical design and speculative design (Dunne and Raby 2013) can also be seen as types of anticipatory design review, in which often-humorous (Malpass 2013) design proposals are used to provoke debate related to the possibilities of new or emerging technologies. In science and technology studies (STS), design is also often “reviewed” in relation to its often-unforeseen effects, thus effecting our understanding of the social world (Akrich 1992). But how might humorous critical-speculative design and the descriptive capacities of STS be united? How might we use this better engage people in discussing our anticipatory design reviews and reports? This techniques workshop explores how scholarly reviews of design might be humorously enlivened to engage people in anticipatory discussions related to design and technology.

Abstract: What do you want the future to look like? In which future would you like to live? These are questions of high relevance for policy and they are at the heart of the Conference on the Future of Europe. This year-long EU initiative has created a new space for debate with citizens on how to respond to the European Union’s challenges and to create the Union that its citizens collectively want for the future. However, beyond the formulation of many single wishes for the future, there is a need to structure these conversations and to build coherent and comprehensive alternative futures that are achievable. This can then provide a constructive space for political debate in the EU in a long-term perspective.
#OurFutures - Stories for the future of Europe addresses this need. It offers a simple questionnaire through an interactive multilingual platform that aims at collecting a large number of very short stories that express what participants would like to see in the Europe of the future, with their hopes, their uncertainties and their ideas for a positive future. These stories, written by Europeans from all walks of life, remain anonymous. To ensure success, the project relies on a robust methodology (powered by SenseMaker©) to exploit, in a foresight perspective, the rich material provided by participants.
This methodology operates in all EU languages to maximise reach. To avoid any bias, the analysis bases itself strictly on what the authors themselves tell through a few simple questions. The stories, translated into all EU languages, are published on the platform of the Conference on the Future of Europe to maintain connection with participants and stimulate discussions. This is an ongoing project that will remain active for a long time to collect as much material as possible. Results can be analysed per country, per age group, per policy domain or other classifications. Various types of responses can also be correlated to check whether certain values or preferences occur in specific combinations. The first analyses are very promising and the insights that they provide will serve to generate concrete, future-oriented recommendations for EU action to build together the Europe that its citizens want.
The purpose of this initiative is to empower Europeans to influence the creation of their own collective future by providing structured material that can feed the political debate.

Abstract: The case study documents an open, research-oriented design process during the Covid-19 pandemic for the Nordic Pavilion (retitled the Sami Pavilion) at the 2022 International Biennale of Art in Venice. We base the case study on earlier research demonstrating the ability to use 3d-scanning and game engines to create 1:1 models of architectural heritage sites in VR [1], and the use of such data in performing user research and collaborative design among user groups not normally involved in the design process [2]. We expand on this research by looking at ways to facilitate an international, multiplayer design process inside of a virtual model. Various setups are tested by the design team with cutting edge technology in the alpha / beta phase before involving curators and artists. Artworks and positions of artworks are tested in various configurations within the model in order to simulate the spatial experience of the space. The model is then used to generate documentation and installation instructions, which are installed. We then perform studies to check the relationship between the digital VR model and the finished result. We conclude with reflections on how mixed reality can help facilitate multiplayer design across borders, levels of expertise, and design cultures, while elaborating on what the data may tell us about the relationship between spatial experience in digital and physical space.

Abstract: Background:
As one of the most important goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, social inclusion is recognized as a goal, process, and outcome that needs to be pursued urgently. Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) is a process that addresses improving the ability, opportunity, access to livelihood assets and services for ALL, including the women, poor, and excluded, to take part in society (Cooperation in International Waters in Africa n.d.; Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Working Group 2017; The World Bank n.d.). Many scholars and organizations stress that promoting such an inclusive social transformation process requires the active empowerment and participation of civics, especially marginalized groups, to build a more inclusive, sustainable, and just future (Alkire et al. 2004; Bai et al. 2016; Dugarova 2015; Milojević 2018; Sivaraman 2020; Wong and Guggenheim 2018).

In this context, the speculative approach and service design demonstrate their potential for addressing social issues and promoting systemic social transformation.

In this research, the speculative approach refers to the design approaches that feature future thinking and critical thinking, including Speculative Design, Critical Design, Design Fiction, etc. The approach of envisioning futures could help citizens reflect on complex problems and long-term challenges bottom-up, imagine ways to address them, and develop a goal to inform collective actions in the present (Pereira et al. 2021; Ramos et al. 2019; Rana et al. 2020).

In addition, the service design/service (eco)system design is an intentional pathway to promote the service system transformation (Patrício, Gustafsson, and Fisk 2018; Vink et al. 2021). Services and service ecosystems form a service society - from individuals, communities, businesses to governments; from individual service interactions to interconnections within the service (eco)system to relationships between systems in various domains at the social level. From micro to macro, the service of a single node impact and is impacted by different levels of service systems. Therefore, the social inclusive transformation of multiple service (eco)systems is the process of promoting the systemic transformation of the service society.

For service system transformation, there is a need from designing for incremental change to designing for higher levels of the paradigmatic radicalness of transformation, to enable the disruption of fundamental assumptions and beliefs, and the exploration of radically new service futures (Koskela-Huotari et al. 2021). However, how to integrate these two approaches to support the inclusive social transformation of society remains an unanswered question.

Purpose:
The ultimate aim of this research is to leverage the speculative approach to inclusively support actors within the service (eco)system to envision future services, reflect/back-cast to, and collectively co-create for current service innovation. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationships and possibilities between speculative approach and service design, in particular when focusing on GESI, identifying shared concerns, complementary contributions, and gaps that need to be considered.

Methods:
The study will involve a literature review in two levels and case analyses in different contexts.

First, through a literature review, this paper will explain why service (eco)system design should introduce a speculative perspective for critical anticipation. Also, to summarize the critical points that need to be considered when the speculative approach interleaves into service (eco)system innovation for inclusive social transformation. It will also illustrate the status quo of these design approaches in the context of social inclusion, especially in gender equality. Based on the literature review and analysis, the advantages and the knowledge gaps of the integrated approach and future research opportunities are proposed.

Moreover, it should be noted that when the speculative approach is applied and put into practice, it will be affected by various factors such as different cultural backgrounds, different social contexts, different ethics, etc. Different contexts will mediate different speculative futures. These futures may be complementary or conflicting. Therefore, in this paper, case studies from diverse cultural and social contexts will be analyzed to discuss how the anticipatory approach will influence and be influenced by and what similarities and differences there will be in different contexts when designing services (ecosystems).

Expected outcomes:
This paper aims to draw a visual knowledge map through literature review and case analysis mentioned above to show the state of the art of the application of relevant design approaches and anticipatory approaches to services and GESI, and to illustrate the relationship, gaps and overlaps among them. The visualization map aims to serve as a reference for future research directions for the speculative approach for services in Gender Equality and Social Inclusion, provide a basic knowledge network and open up related discourses and discussions. A critical reflection on how different cultures and contexts might influence the idea of future research agenda for service design research possibilities will also be suggested at the end of this paper.

Conclusion:
To sum up, this paper will focus on integrating speculative approach and service (ecosystem) design for supporting the social transformation towards gender equality and social inclusion. The integrated approach will also regard different social and cultural factors, works as a seed for reflecting a collective, speculative, inclusive, systemic, and intersectional service innovation process that aims to inspire and guide designers and actors in different contexts.




References:
Alkire, Sabina, Anthony Bebbington, T. Esmail, E. Ostrom, Margaret Polski, A. Ryan, Julie Van Domelen, W. Wakeman, and P. Dongier. 2004. “Community-Driven Development.” CDD Chapter of the PRSP Sourcebook.
Bai, Xuemei, Sander van der Leeuw, Karen O’Brien, Frans Berkhout, Frank Biermann, Eduardo S. Brondizio, Christophe Cudennec, John Dearing, Anantha Duraiappah, Marion Glaser, Andrew Revkin, Will Steffen, and James Syvitski. 2016. “Plausible and Desirable Futures in the Anthropocene: A New Research Agenda.” Global Environmental Change 39:351–62. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.09.017.
Cooperation in International Waters in Africa. n.d. “Gender and Social Inclusion.” Gender and Social Inclusion. Retrieved January 21, 2022 (https://www.ciwaprogram.org/gesi/).
Dugarova, Esuna. 2015. Social Inclusion, Poverty Eradication and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Working Group. 2017. A Common Framework for Gender Equality & Social Inclusion.
Koskela-Huotari, Kaisa, Lia Patrício, Jie Zhang, Ingo Oswald Karpen, Daniela Sangiorgi, Laurel Anderson, and Vanja Bogicevic. 2021. “Service System Transformation through Service Design: Linking Analytical Dimensions and Service Design Approaches.” Journal of Business Research 136:343–55. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.07.034.
Milojević, Ivana. 2018. “Gender and the Future: Reframing and Empowerment.” in Transforming the Future. Routledge.
Patrício, Lia, Anders Gustafsson, and Raymond Fisk. 2018. “Upframing Service Design and Innovation for Research Impact.” Journal of Service Research 21(1):3–16. doi: 10.1177/1094670517746780.
Pereira, Laura, Ghassem R. Asrar, Rohan Bhargava, Laur Hesse Fisher, Angel Hsu, Jason Jabbour, Jeanne Nel, Odirilwe Selomane, Nadia Sitas, Christopher Trisos, James Ward, Mandy van den Ende, Joost Vervoort, and Amy Weinfurter. 2021. “Grounding Global Environmental Assessments through Bottom-up Futures Based on Local Practices and Perspectives.” Sustainability Science 16(6):1907–22. doi: 10.1007/s11625-021-01013-x.
Ramos, Jose, John A. Sweeney, Kathy Peach, and Laurie Smith. 2019. Our Futures: By the People, for the People.
Rana, Sakshi, Daniela Ávila-García, Viviane Dib, Lemuel Familia, Leopoldo Cavaleri Gerhardinger, Emma Martin, Paula Isla Martins, Joao Pompeu, Odirilwe Selomane, Josefa Isabel Tauli, Diem H. T. Tran, Mireia Valle, Jonathan von Below, and Laura M. Pereira. 2020. “The Voices of Youth in Envisioning Positive Futures for Nature and People.” Ecosystems and People 16(1):326–44. doi: 10.1080/26395916.2020.1821095.
Sivaraman, Aarthi. 2020. “Five Things You Need to Know About Social Sustainability and Inclusion.” World Bank. Retrieved February 12, 2022 (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/09/02/five-things-about-social-sustainability-and-inclusion).
The World Bank. n.d. “Social Inclusion.” World Bank. Retrieved February 12, 2022 (https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/social-inclusion).
Vink, Josina, Kaisa Koskela-Huotari, Bård Tronvoll, Bo Edvardsson, and Katarina Wetter-Edman. 2021. “Service Ecosystem Design: Propositions, Process Model, and Future Research Agenda.” Journal of Service Research 24(2):168–86. doi: 10.1177/1094670520952537.
Wong Susan, and Guggenheim Scott. 2018. Community-Driven Development: Myths and Realities. SSRN Scholarly Paper. ID 3176323. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.

Abstract: Narratives are an essential ingredient of how we construct the future – the stories we tell as a society and the meanings they create build our visions of what may come and spur us to action (Godet and Roubelat, 1996; Liveley et al, 2021). However, we are currently experiencing a “deficit of social imagination” – this “matters because societies need a wide range of ideas and options to help them adjust, particularly to big challenges like climate change” (Mulgan, 2020, p3) Miller (2011) calls for “rigorous imagining” to help understand the ways in which we make sense of the present and become better at “inventing imaginary futures” (Miller, 2011, p25). We need not just extrapolation of data to make predictions, but also the ability to visualise possible futures and translate them into action (Poli 2021).

Businesses in the UK spend over £3bn a year on PR and communications (IbisWorld, 2021), which frequently involves creating stories about businesses, products and services (Holliman and Rowley, 2014). This practice has increased in recent years through the practice of digital content marketing (HubSpot, 2021), a strategy that allows organisations of any size to communicate directly with their chosen audience via digital channels (Koiso-Kanttila, 2004; Rowley, 2008).

Many of these narratives deal with speculative or uncertain futures (Beckert, 2016), and all are told with particular, generally commercial, objectives in mind, with facts typically selected (or suppressed), emphasised and re-presented in the service of these aims (Arora, 2020; Nelson and Park, 2015). In a blurring of boundaries between fiction and business narratives, many marketing communications professionals have brought expertise about creating fictional narratives to bear in the field of business communications, chiefly as a means of increasing the impact of their work by engaging audiences emotionally as well as rationally (Etzold 2013; Movshovitz 2015; Booker 2019; Campbell 1993).

The stories told by businesses also increasingly incorporate elements of social responsibility and sustainability (McDonagh, 1998; Hill and McDonagh, 2020; Prothero et al, 2010). Businesses wish their marketing to present them as having a social purpose beyond simply being profit-making engines (Content Marketing Institute, 2008). Nowhere is this more evident than in organisations whose technology products or services are designed to address sustainability and climate challenges.

My research aims to explore these business narratives from a narratological perspective, examining the myths and stories they create and the impacts they have on futures literacy and anticipatory practice.

This research includes dimensions of three of the conference’s themes: Public Futures, specifically the questions around obstacles to plural futures; Ethics of Anticipation, and Critical Anticipatory Capacities. I would appreciate feedback from conference delegates particularly on any previous scholarship on which my research can build, as well as thoughts about how to make the outputs of practical use.

Abstract: One of the aims of this conference and of the interdisciplinary field of Anticipation Studies is to investigate and improve the understanding of how individuals, groups, and cultures use ideas of the future to act in the present. In particular, this version of the conference raises the question of how different cultures and traditions anticipate. This paper aims to analyse the impact of national traditions and cultures on anticipation and foresight processes.

Culture and traditions are slippery concepts that are difficult to define and study. One approach could be to investigate differences in anticipation between the global north and the global south. As noted in earlier versions of the International anticipation conferences, the practices and methodologies of foresight and anticipation are often considered from Western models of futurism and future studies (Jones, 2019). This implies a distinction between the ‘West’ and the rest of the World. In the influential book on Foresight in Science the authors analysed foresight in Science, Technology, and Innovation policy in France, West Germany, the United States and Japan, which were, in effect, the World’s four largest economies at that time and maybe representative for both the Global North and the West (Irvine and Martin, 1984). A paper by Keenan and Popper discussed regional styles of foresight for six regions. The decisive context in their work is differences in political tradition (Keenan and Popper, 2008): established democracies (as found in Northwest Europe and North America), third-wave democracies (as seen in Southern and Eastern Europe and South America), and Asian democracies. Foresight and futures studies literature contains several analyses of the differences between anticipation in the ‘West’ and East Asia (e.g., Habegger, 2010; Park, 2013; Son, 2015; Cruz, Sweeney and Ghahfarokhi, 2016). However, geographical or political entities characterised a North and South, Europe and Asia, the West and the rest, are also multifaceted units of analysis. On some parameters of foresight and anticipation, France might be more comparable to Asian countries like Japan and Korea than to neighbouring Great Britain (Andersen and Rasmussen, 2014). Large countries, but also small countries (Bizikova, Nijnik and Kluvankova-Oravska, 2012), can comprise communities or minorities with different traditions for anticipation and participation.

As theoretical framework, we integrate two streams of literature. First, we draw on Hofstede’s definitions and dimensions of national culture (Hofstede, 1980; Hofstede and Minkov, 2010). In the original study, Hofstede presented four dimensions of culture: Power distance, Uncertainty avoidance, Masculinity versus feminism, and Individualism versus collectivism (Hofstede, 1980). In later works, Hofstede added a fifth dimension long-term versus short-term orientation inspired by Confucianism’s influence in China (Hofstede and Minkov, 2010; Minkov and Hofstede, 2012). Three dimensions are of special interest for this paper: power distance, uncertainty avoidance and long-term versus short-term orientation. These dimension of culture has at least five implications for anticipation (Andersen and Rasmussen, 2014). The first implication relates to the power distance dimension. The power distance dimension has implications for participatory elements of anticipation and foresight. Societies with lower power distances may prefer interaction-based approaches, such as Citizens Panels, and Conferences/Workshops. In high power distance societies, we might expect expertise and evidence-based foresight approaches such as Expert Panels, Interviews, Modelling, and Literature reviews (Andersen and Rasmussen, 2014). The second implication concerns the uncertainty avoidance dimension. According to Hofstede, the uncertainty avoidance dimension impacts the question of ‘‘how a society reacts on the fact that time only runs one way and that the future is unknown: whether it tries to control the future or to let it happen’’ (Hofstede, 1984). The third implication relates to the tolerance for deviant ideas. Countries with strong uncertainty avoidance maintain rigid codes of belief and behaviour and are intolerant of deviant persons and ideas. Related to this is the issue is probably also what in the description of the Long- and Short-term dimension is described as ‘Protecting your face’ (Hofstede and Minkov, 2010). The fourth implication relates to a society’s view on planning in general. In countries with more uncertainty avoidance, such as Japan, short-and medium-term scheduling and planning receive more attention than in countries with less uncertainty avoidance, such as Denmark. Finally, the fifth implication rely in the short- and long-term orientation and include issues as respect for tradition, adaptation and persistence. China and some other East Asian countries tend to score high on a long-time orientation, and continental European countries tend to score medium on this dimension, whereas Anglo, African and South Asian countries have a lower score indicating a short-term orientation (Minkov and Hofstede, 2012).

Second, we draw from the science and technology studies (STS) literature and in
particular, the concept of ‘civic epistemologies’ (Jasanoff, 2005). Civic epistemologies (CE) refer to the national styles in any given political culture of how experts and the public produce knowledge. As such, CEs describe the highly institutionalised and patterned forms of contestation and deliberation in Western liberal democracies, through which publics and their representatives make claims to their governments about technological trajectories and the kinds of knowledge states produce to justify their decisions (Miller, 2004; Jasanoff, 2005; Miller, 2015). The concept has been widely adopted by scholars in STS for studying technoscientific, legal and environmental controversies to illuminate key aspects of the relationships between science, technology, experts, citizens and institutions, and the national-level regulatory, political cultures in which they are situated (Miller, 2008; Felt and Ruth Müller, 2011). This critical body of work generally conceives CEs as stable, socio-institutional forms of producing, vetting and using policy-relevant knowledge between citizens and regulatory experts that exist and persist in political cultures and constitute distinct national styles of knowledge politics. National CEs differ in terms of the socio-political organisation of policy relevant expertise, how knowledge is represented as neutral and objective, what counts as authoritative expertise, the visibility and openness of expert bodies to public scrutiny, and the basis for public accountability and trusting the state (Jasanoff, 2005). Thus, national political culture, the situated histories of different expert groups, and the cultural work of science to bridge relations of mistrust and sustain liberal democratic governance (Porter, 1995) are all pieces of understanding civic epistemologies as a theory of political legitimacy, in terms of how the knowledges generated collectively by citizens and experts are produced, deployed, contested, consumed and upheld. This entails asking questions like: Who is considered an expert? What counts as good evidence for creating a public fact? Through what processes do different cultures vet knowledge? What kinds of questions are asked, and conversely, what questions are out of bounds? And in the context of foresight and anticipation, a civic epistemology framework asks questions such as how do different political cultures, instantiated through particular institutions, come to know and anticipate different futures in the face of (differently understood) uncertainty?

Hence, this contribution has two aims. First, based on Hofstede’s work on cultural dimensions and the concept of CE we strive to establish a framework to analyse anticipation in different national cultures and traditions. Second, based on the literature in foresight and futures studies (published in academic journals) we investigate different cultures’ approaches to anticipation through the established framework. We set focus on the East/Southeast Asia and Europe with illustrative examples from Thailand and Denmark. The two countries are chosen because they have opposing traits, with Denmark scoring relatively low and Thailand scoring relatively high on the two dimensions of power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Furthermore, we focus on anticipation concerning science, technology and innovation policy. The contribution is conceptual, and it aims to contribute to the literature on foresight and futures studies.

References:
Andersen, P. D. and Rasmussen, L. B. (2014) ‘The impact of national traditions and cultures on national foresight processes’, Futures, 59. doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2014.01.013.
Bizikova, L., Nijnik, M. and Kluvankova-Oravska, T. (2012) ‘Sustaining Multifunctional Forestry Through the Developing of Social Capital and Promoting Communities’, Small-scale Forestry, 11, pp. 301–319. doi: 10.1007/s11842-011-9185-8.
Cruz, S., Sweeney, J. and Ghahfarokhi, M. B. (2016) ‘Flavors of practice: Developing the Asia Pacific futures network’, Journal of Futures Studies, 21(1), pp. 93–104. doi: 10.6531/JFS.2016.21(1). R93.
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Habegger, B. (2010) ‘Strategic foresight in public policy: Reviewing the experiences of the UK, Singapore, and the Netherlands’, Futures, 42(1), pp. 49–58. doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2009.08.002.
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Jones, P. (2019) ‘Cultural-Historical Anticipation Perspectives’, in Program and abstracts of the 3rd International Conference on Anticipation, Oslo, 9 - 11 October 2019. Available at: http://anticipationconference.org/series/3rd-international-conference-on-anticipation-2019/programme/.
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Abstract: The anticipations of future events guide current actions and decisions. This becomes important when studying the development of new and emerging technologies, such as applications in the fields of robotics or machine and deep learning. The anticipations of how those technologies might change the world for the better form the vision of the development team and guide the development of the respective technology. In other words, the anticipative visions contain a - mostly implicit - ethical script for a future world, which is created within a specific value framework. Anticipation, thus, is not a neutral act but instead highly normative in the sense that it implicitly holds what it means to build a “better” world. It raises ethical questions like: Better for whom? Better under which premises? Better in which sense?

This creates a challenge, as emerging technologies come with the promise of having a high disruptive potential and their implications for societies and the planet are often unclear. As current developments show, negative and often unintended consequences include discrimination of already underpriveleged groups and raising inequalities. One cause, this paper proposes, is that the visions and the (implicit) ethical guidelines, which guide developers during the development process, are seldomly critically reflected nor are the developers biases challenged from outside perspectives during the development process of emerging technologies. One reason for that is the current paradigm of technology development, which is driven rather by feasibility and the curiosity to develop than by socio-ecological desirability. Thus, the reflection of a wider socio-ecological perspective or the explicit discussion of the inherent ethical values of the guiding vision often come to short; if done at all.

The question this paper addresses is how visions can be explicitly reframed to enable responsible technology development. In a combination of theory and practice, we examine approaches to a) make the guiding anticipations within a development team, such as implicit visions of imagined use cases, explicit and tangible for a joint reflection, and b) to include such a critical reflection on premises, worldviews and ethical implications iteratively at important milestones within the development process. This also entails c) going beyond the anticipations of the development team only and to create further interactions with potential (non-)users by including multiple stakeholder perspectives into the discussion.

The paper will, on a theoretical level, examine the interplay of anticipations, especially visions, their guiding power in the context of technology development, critical reflections and (participatory) opportunities for creating responsible visions. To do so, we draw especially on the work done in the field of Critical Futures Studies and participatory as well as integrated Technology Assessment, as well as on work in the realm of Responsible Research and Innovation and Value Sensitive Design. On a practical level, the paper elaborates on methodological approaches that enable such reflections and reframings. Here, we focus especially on speculative and creative methods that support imagining desirable futures, drawing on participatory future studies, Experiential Futures and practices of writing speculative fiction, such as worldbuilding or storytelling. Furthermore, we present a case study from our own work, done in the Berlin Ethics Lab at the Technical University in Berlin, on developing and researching these methods for ethical reflection within actual technology development processes.

We approach the paper from the angle of Futures Studies, and our methodological focus offers fruitful combinations of Critical Futures Studies and Experiential Futures with the aim of ethical reflection and using the anticipatory power for guiding actions and decisions for creating technologies for desirable futures. With that focus, our paper is positioned at the interface of three conference themes: It connects to questions on the ethics of anticipation (theme 2), and especially on the question of how to make the worldviews, principles and practices that shape anticipations explicit in order to develop ethical anticipations in the context of technology development. As the paper explores ways of integrating the critical reflection of guiding anticipations into the technology development process, we also connect to theme 4, critical anticipatory capacities. Our paper supports this discussion by highlighting both: methodological options for a critical reflection of visions and examples of integrating critical reflection into a technological development process. Furthermore, to engage with critical reflections, we propose to integrate multiple perspectives, connecting to theme 1, public futures. We discuss opportunities to create spaces for shared anticipation beyond the development team, empowering diverse stakeholders to challenge the guiding assumptions and to co-create technologies with regard to desirable futures.

By giving an insight into our work at the Berlin Ethics Lab, into the methods we developed and into a case study we conducted, we want to contribute to the discussions on how to open up the space for ethical reflection of anticipations with the aim to responsibly design emerging technologies.

Abstract: In 1976 Jean-Francois Lyotard, suggested the death of the grand narrative of modernism, and to term the new phase of modernity “postmodern”. Although full of issues, vagueness and contradictions, we find it reasonable now, more than four decades later, to acknowledge that Lyotard, Baudrillard, Derrida and Jameson, to name but a few, generally were correct in their diagnosis of modernity. If no one had invented “postmodernism” already in the 1970s, by now someone would. However, even though this (grand) narrative of a decentralized version of modernity essentially have come to prove correct, many actors are still constructing fundamentally modern narratives.

In this paper, we suggest understanding the travelling of models, by which to understand the future, as part of the powerful language games of postmodernity, but essentially presenting and relating to modern grand narratives. Especially, we suggest to make use of notions of postmodernity, for instance on the implosion of distinctions and boundaries (from Kellner), and the expansion of capitalism towards the society of the spectacle (byDebord), in order to analyze contemporary language games in regard to the organization of the future.

Specifically, we wish to present an industry, in which especially the technological grand narrative of modernity lives on. It is an industry attempting to package and sell the time to come. We term it the Future Industry (FI), selling products such as models, templates, games, indexes and courses for understanding and preparing for the future. We suggest seeing these products as tools, used for the production of the imaginaries of postmodernity, and possibly hypermodernity (Augé 1995).

To this end, this paper draws on ongoing fieldwork among futurists in two US-based think tanks. These organizations define themselves as think tanks, working in the interest of humankind, raising future competencies. We have followed them over time, doing interviews, participated in day-to-day activities and read their documents. The paper aims at conceptualizing their attempts to advance concepts, models and scenarios of the future, as part of postmodern political reflections of capitalism in the 21st century. Although not speaking in political ideological terms, the actors of the FI compose, design and disseminate visions and models for the future, in the Geertzian sense of the term (Geertz 1973), including future policy making. Drawing on the concept of anticipatory governance, as elaborated by Flyverbom and Garsten in 2021, they form parts of a machinery of prospects, based on grand narratives and bold visions, primarily on technological advancements.

Abstract: The purpose of applied research, development and innovation (RDI) activities in Finland is to support and develop the vitality of the region and wellbeing of people living there. Higher education institutions are significant drivers of regional development. The RDI activities of South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk) are focused on enhancing the vitality of the South Savo and Kymenlaakso regions. Currently, one of the key focus areas is sustainable wellbeing.

The concept of regional sustainable wellbeing is defined in relation to the global goals of sustainable and responsible development. According to the Brundtland Commission report (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) and Agenda2030, the primary goals for regions should be to ensure the premise for the wellbeing of future generations The main regional goal is to ensure premises of wellbeing for future generations, in line with the aims defined in the. At the same time, higher education institutions are enabling structuring individual experiences of sustainable wellbeing, and developing structures and services for sustainable wellbeing.

In this paper, we examines two questions to investigate. First, what is the regional strategic organisational-level vision of sustainable wellbeing for South Savo and Kymenlaakso, Finland? Second, how do the future-orientated visions of young people in the regions differ from or are similar to these regional strategic plans?

The paper examines the overall role of foresight information in regional development. While foresight information is a presentation of individual needs, hopes and requirements, it is also a consensus established as a strategic document. Foresight information is both tacit and explicit. Foresight information is understood as a source for future-oriented knowledge management (e.g. Grant, 1996) and it is seen as a process, where information is utilized in different phases for developing an organization (e.g., leading, managing, decision-making, evaluating).

We conduct a detailed analysis of the data. The data consists of the future-oriented documents from the regions. Specifically, the municipal strategies of the Kymenlaakso and South-Savo regions (N = 18), two provincial strategies, and two smart specialization strategies. To gain insight into the individual level, we also collect data from young people in the regions. It is about their possible visions about the future of regional sustainable wellbeing, and what it means to them.

The research reveals additional knowledge of using foreign information as a source for regional development. Based on the results, we propose a model for promoting regional sustainable wellbeing development. The model includes development aims, some guidelines for utilizing foresight information for regional sustainable wellbeing, and guidelines for assessing the longer-term effectiveness of sustainable wellbeing RDI activities.

The research will enable a framework for smarter local governance, and RDI activities that help to realise a more sustainable wellbeing in the future.

Abstract: Envisioning the future in entanglement with new technologies and technological progress is a key phenomenon of modernity. The problem-oriented and anticipatory research field of technology assessment has been dealing with such technological visions. In our research group we have created the anticipation approach of vision assessment to analyze and assess the role of technological visions in innovation and transformation processes and to give advice to policy-makers and society. However, there is the question about the position of vision assessment in relation to the technological visions it scrutinizes. Our presentation reflects on how vision assessment relates to the powerful technological future discourses and in which circumstances it supports, reflects or critiques the techno-visionary mainstream.

Today, even if the reference to the future is understood as a key-phenomenon of modern temporality, it is referred to in the political, cultural but also scientific debates with little critical view on the reference to the future itself as a meaning-giving reference. Rather, the critical questions go in the direction of, for example, questioning the representation of society as a whole in the future visions, that is, reflections on the content of the future reference. But what about the form of the reference itself? Furthermore, we ask, what other meaning-giving references exist and what meaning-giving references are possible?

We see future visions as cultural techniques of invention and innovation. Cultural techniques are media, which presuppose the network and become cultural techniques in the network-building process. They operate in networks as rule drivers. The modern cultural technique approach, following on from the findings of Actor-Network Theory, allows us to explain the role of future visions in networks. Furthermore, the reference to the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer and the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce provide a reflection space on the symbolization process within the technical symbolic order, in which future visions play a crucial role.

Seen through this lens, vision assessment is necessarily a part of a certain network and in different ways subject to its rules. In our presentation, through several research examples and cases, we examine how vision assessment can enable different forms of anticipation and under which conditions its critical capacities are nurtured. As a concept that further thinks the approach of vision assessment, the concept of future visions as cultural techniques discusses possibilities and limits of the vision assessment approach. Referring particularly to Peirce's inference theory, we will discuss the involvement of vision assessment in the culture it reflects, while also outlining why vision assessment can nevertheless approach critical reflection on visions.

Abstract: At what age is it useful to start promoting discourses about one's community, in terms of participation in the community life and personal contribution to desirable community futures? With this question in mind, we developed and tested a protocol of scenario building workshops tailored for elementary school students. The proposed scenario building in classroom consists of a sequence of on interactive and imaginative activities that aims at promoting future-oriented discourses and engagement of students for their community in their role of young citizens.
The premises of the workshop rely on recognition of importance of images of future in shaping reality: where the images of the future go, there the society goes (Polak, 1973). Images of the future are essential for the survival of a society; projections about the future of society are related to actions and attitudes supporting social change (Bain et al., 2013). Besides, the feeling connected to one's future self, or future selves, seems to lead to discount the future less and helps people to make better decisions for themselves, such as healthier dieting and exercising decisions, and for community, avoiding ethical transgressions or decreasing unethical negotiation strategies. On the contrary, the tendency to live in the here and now, and the failure to think through the delayed consequences of own behaviour, is one of the strongest individual-level correlates of delinquency (Hershfield et al., 2012; Le Morvan, 2009; van Gelder et al., 2015).
The mission of the school and the educating communities should be to train proactive citizens, capable of making their own choices and responsible for the qualities of their community in the present and in the future. This implies creating open futures of personal and collective fulfilment, connecting personal futures to collective futures, overcoming the dichotomy between optimism and pessimism, developing futures literacy and an anticipatory attitude (Bodinet, 2016; Miller, 2015). The promotion of futures literacy concerns the ethical development of society (Poli, 2011). Unfortunately, being proactive citizens is complicated, indeed increasingly difficult in times of growing uncertainty, in which society and individuals are tempted, or invited, to close themselves in “bubbles of the present” with poorly significant past, a fear of future and a present full of uncertainties.
The construction of the scenarios is inspired by the qualitative method of "scenario planning", disseminated by the Global Business Network (Schwartz, 2012). In the proposed protocol, the two most relevant uncertainties (forming the quadrant of scenarios) are predefined and related to two aspects of coexistence in a community, the basis of citizenship: rules and collaboration. Thus, the four scenarios emerge from the combinations of their possible extremes: lack of vs. respect for rules, individualism vs. collaboration. These four scenarios represent many real situations that we could distinguish between students’ microcosm (family, peer group) and macrocosm (country-municipality of residence, valley, province, nation). The workshop consists of about two hours of activity, with the following schedule:
• Polak’s game
• Visualizing the four scenarios
• Community positioning in the four scenarios
• Strategic conversation
Polak's game, inspired by previous experiences (Hayward & Candy, 2017), essentially consists of two questions: what the future will be like, what can we do, which are initially answered in silence only by moving in space. In the visualization of the scenarios, students are invited to represent the scenario assigned to their work group in a creative way, through drawings, improvisation sketches and short texts, freely chosen and shared in the plenary. In the community positioning, students place different coloured stickers in the scenario quadrant, referring to the position of their class group and their local community (neighbourhood or hamlet of the municipality) today and in 10 years from now. Strategic conversation consists of a collective reflection, drawing coloured arrows, on possible changes and actions, on which changes could change the position between the scenarios of students’ class or group and students' community, and which individual and collective actions could help push reality towards the most desirable scenario.
The initiative involved a total of 224 pupils and 16 teachers in 2020, 198 pupils and 28 teachers in 2021. The experience in the classrooms has allowed everyone to visualize a variety of scenarios, to contribute to a non-trivial discussion on individual choices and quality of local communities.
The results are interesting on several levels. The young participating citizens actively contributed to a shared reasoning on the variety of possible and desirable scenarios, they developed their own medium-long term vision, overcoming the horizon of the present, in which to satisfy only today's needs. The experiences in the classroom allowed everyone to carry out an exercise of participatory foresight and to define their own position and possible role for the future of the community.
References
Bain, P. G., et al., (2013). Collective Futures: How Projections About the Future of Society Are Related to Actions and Attitudes Supporting Social Change. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(4), 523–539.
Bodinet, J. C. (2016). Pedagogies of the futures: Shifting the educational paradigms. European Journal of Futures Research, 4(1), 21.
Hayward, P., & Candy, S. (2017). The Polak Game, Or: Where Do You Stand? * Journal of Futures Studies. Journal of Futures Studies, 22(2), 5–14.
Hershfield, H. E. et al., (2012). Short horizons and tempting situations: Lack of continuity to our future selves leads to unethical decision making and behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 117(2), 298–310.
Le Morvan, P. (2009). Selfishness, Altruism, and our Future Selves. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 87(3), 409–424.
Miller, R. (2015). Learning, the Future, and Complexity. An Essay on the Emergence of Futures Literacy. European Journal of Education, 50(4), 513–523.
Polak, F. L. (1973). The image of the future. Elsevier.
Poli, R. (2011). Ethics and futures studies. International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, 5(4), 403–410.
Schwartz, P. (2012). The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. Crown Publishing Group.
van Gelder, J.-L. V. et al. (2015). Friends with My Future Self: Longitudinal Vividness Intervention Reduces Delinquency. Criminology, 53(2), 158–179.

Abstract: ABSTRACT: Climate change scenarios used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports, such as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), depict a range of plausible global and regional changes of the global climate and economy into the future. While these scenarios are intended to inform decision-makers and their responses to climate change, much climate action - mitigation, adaptation, and system transformations - will be initiated in local contexts. Significant challenges remain in making global-scale projections legible and usable by local-scale stakeholders. Therefore, innovative methods are needed to bridge the gap between these spatial scales to support processes of imagining, anticipating, and planning for just and equitable futures. In addition to ongoing scientific efforts to downscale climate models and their results, story-based approaches can make substantial advancements in generating broader public understanding of and engagement in climate futures. This is partly because ‘scenarios as stories’ represent a more textured and vibrant representation of future worlds, allowing participants to explore how their daily lives, values, and habits can be mapped onto different scenarios. Thus, methods that integrate scientific modeling, downscaling knowledge about the future, collective storytelling and imagination contribute to efforts to make climate futuring not only a public good, but also help design spaces for public climate anticipation, and empower stakeholders to engage in the co-creation of their own futures.

FORMAT: This session will enable participants to develop local-scale understandings of SSP-RCP scenarios and generate shared local imaginaries of the future using participatory, story-based methods. Given the host city is Tempe, we will use the Phoenix metropolitan area as the focal point for the event. Participants will be divided into two groups, and each group will work with one specific SSP-RCP scenario. We will specifically draw from two integrated climate projections, using an optimistic scenario (i.e., SSP1-RCP1.9) and a less optimistic one (i.e., SSP4-RCP6.0). Both groups will begin with a discussion about the pre-prepared scientific evidence base for SSP-RCP scenarios for the Phoenix region, Arizona and the American Southwest. However, each group will use a different type of input - local-scale translations of global scale scientific information - for their discussions: one group will receive input based on scientific articles; input for the other group will be based on news reporting and public discourse online. These two sets of input will be prepared by the session organizers ahead of the conference. Next, we will employ a participatory futures method (a version of the three horizons method) to collectively imagine scenario-specific human futures. Using a book-sprint approach, the session will generate at least two prototype climate-fiction stories depicting a future Phoenix.

The session is designed so that all participants have the opportunity to experience and learn how to downscale insights from global and regional models through participatory story methods. Our hope is that participants can integrate these methods into their own research, e.g., using similar approaches to facilitate and study the effects of local stakeholder workshops, potentially leading to enhanced imaginative capacity regarding climate future among both researchers and political actors. Moreover, all the workshop materials will be made available at the end of the session, including the instructions for interpreting global-scale climate science for local use, the tutorials on story-based futuring, and any other additional materials we use or generate in the workshop.

ORGANIZERS’ CONTRIBUTIONS:
Patrick Keys inspired the session and provided most of the ideas and expertise regarding the workshop format and futures methods. Manjana Milkoreit drafted the abstract and will be physically present to co-facilitate the session with Patrick Keys. All three curators will collaborate to develop workshop materials and inputs, esp. the materials for downscaling SSP-RCPs to the local scale. All three will also collaborate after the session to support participants in their application of the methods used during the workshop.

The session is based on prior research, publications (see references below) and teaching practice of the three organizers related to imagining climate futures, storytelling, and participatory futures methods, including science fiction prototyping and serious gaming.

• Moore, M. L., & Milkoreit, M. (2020). Imagination and transformations to sustainable and just futures. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 8(1).
• Milkoreit, M., Kapuscinski, A. R., Locke, K., & Iles, A. (2017). Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 5.
• Keys, P. W., & Meyer, A. E. (2021). Visions of the Arctic Future: Blending Computational Text Analysis And Structured Futuring to Create Story-based Scenarios. Earth and Space Science Open Archive ESSOAr.

Abstract: In this paper, we show how ethics can be integrated with anticipatory systems theory. This requires that we reassemble existing ethical traditions and define their key concerns in terms that can be mapped into concepts that emerge from the anticipatory systems formalism. At the same time, we need to re-interpret Rosen’s model of anticipatory systems using ethical concepts. This interplay with ethics and systems theory casts both ethics and system theory in a new light.

Abstract: Given the unique contexts of foresight and futures practices, Anticipation 2022 provides an important opportunity to share and hear from researchers and policy makers in leading research funding strategies with innovative and evidence-informed foresight. This year’s focus on justice, new spaces, new voices and new approaches is conducive to interdisciplinary engagement, content and dialogue. SSHRC has a long history of futures thinking in research funding and public policy, going back to strategic themes and priority areas in the 1990s through to today’s Imagining Canada’s Future initiative. The proposed panel presents a unique Canadian perspective informed by our involvement in collaborations that bridge research, policy and practice to address global and future challenges.

Global challenges, such as those identified through SSHRC’s Imagining Canada’s Future initiative, are best addressed through proactive, interdisciplinary collaborations. The Imagining Canada’s Future (ICF) Ideas Lab* is an exciting, new two-year pilot program designed to encourage innovative research partnerships and projects. By breaking down methodological barriers and empowering participants to explore new approaches to research, the ICF Ideas Lab seeks to aid knowledge sharing and provide foundations for future interdisciplinary projects addressing an emergent global challenge.

In 2021 SSHRC launched and ICF Ideas Lab funding opportunity on “Canada and the Circular Economy” under its global challenge of “Living within the Earth’s Carrying Capacity”. The topic was identified in 2019 as a result of a knowledge synthesis grants competition in 2017 to address the future of Canada/UK Trade relationships.

Increasingly, Canadians are concerned about the environmental impacts of existing systems of production and consumption. The circular economy offers a sustainable alternative to the current, linear model of production-consumption-waste. Circularity focuses on getting as much value as possible from resources, while eliminating waste and greenhouse gas emissions at all stages of production. The circular economy also addresses deeper issues around consumption, human behaviour and our relationship with the natural world.

Ideas Labs create new research collaborations that transcend institutional and disciplinary silos and encourage different ways of thinking and are therefore well suited to addressing these challenges. This panel will examine the recent roles of how foresight informs research, knowledge synthesis and mobilization to address a global challenge, results of which may enable collective action and inform policy and decision-making across sectors. It seeks to demonstrate how a proactive futures-oriented research agenda addressing emerging and future challenges responds to this year’s themes of “How can futuring and anticipation be a shared public good?”, “What is the role of educational institutions in fostering capacities for anticipation and for critique of anticipatory work?” as well as “How do community and organizational infrastructures promote futures thinking and anticipatory capacity building?”

Abstract: When it comes to futures thinking, the role of technology usually gets all the attention. However, the future is about people – technology is a co-evolutionary helpmate – and this means that we will only experience generative futures if we actively promote a very different way of “being human.”

To this end, it is imperative that we work to “democratize the future.” This means that we must find a way to open the future to all voices and empower humanity with the tools to create aspirational change and transformation. It’s not enough to identify trends or alternative possibilities if we are going to truly design better tomorrows. We must actively promote an intentional evolution toward a collective futures-orientation in humanity - in our businesses, institutions, cities, governments, and individual lives. We call this evolutionary dance Holoptic Foresight Dynamics (HFD).

Originating from the a “many-eyed” vision that anticipates events before they occur, HFD is the development of collective and cooperative foresight mindsets to foster an intentionally fashioned evolutionary trait in humanity that naturally anticipates and co-creates emerging realities. Beyond a transformational change in human systems and activities, HFD is an organic movement away from mechanical mindsets that promote survival to thinking that fosters a unique, future-empowered “whole” capable of generating the necessary transformation for planetary regeneration.

With a M.A. in Strategic Foresight from Regent University and 20+ years of integrating foresight into complex systems across the world, Frank Spencer formulated the concept of HFD over 10 years ago to elevate robust and impactful futures thinking as a prominent feature of human activity. HFD draws on the fields of evolution, complexity science, anticipatory theory, sociology, regenerative design, organizational transformation, and consciousness studies to demonstrate the critical, organic, and participatory nature of foresight (see supporting research at the end of the abstract).

During the session, Frank will present the foundations of HFD, setting the stage for the other panelists to provide specific actions/applications related to their areas of expertise and impact.

Our first panelist, Ashley Bowers, will discuss HFD from the lens of ecological development – climate change, evolutionary biology, and environmental justice. Ashley will leverage her B.S. in Sustainability in the Built Environment from the University of Florida and M.S. in Agricultural and Environmental Sustainability Sciences from the University of Texas as well as her practical experience of integrating sustainability and foresight in organizational contexts.

Our second panelist, Bárbara Ferrer Lanz, will provide insight on the connection between HFD and social development, pulling from her convergence of her consultative experiences across Latin America and Europe in anticipatory thinking, strategy, psychology, systems thinking, and eco-social regeneration. Barbara holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Engineering and a Master’s in Organizational Psychology from Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile while also studying Ontological Coaching.

Our final panelist, Michael Compton, will speak to the impact that HFD will have on innovation across both commercial, economic, and governmental sectors. Michael holds a B.F.A. in Communication Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a M.F.A. in New Projects and Business Design Research from Columbus College of Art & Design. With 25 years of experience working with Fortune 500 and B2B brands, as well as launching multiple product development businesses which have achieved multi-million-dollar annual revenues, his passion lies in envisioning regenerative economies alongside public and private stakeholders to reduce and eradicate extreme poverty and despair for marginalized, immigrant, and refugee communities.

Once Frank arms the participants with an understanding of HFD and each of the panelists share their unique viewpoints, all attendees will engage in an applied exercise to explore the larger ramifications of HFD on people and planet. Using a scanning framework known as Point of Impact, attendees will gather in small groups to engage in discussions on how HFD and the perspectives they heard will impact how humans think, frame, connect, use, and produce in a future of cooperative evolutionary perception of emerging realities. The questions provide a repeatable framework that apply HFD to real world needs.

In summary, rather than simply being an external literacy and methodology for knowledge development, strategic formation, or problem solving, HFD promotes futures thinking as a cooperative evolutionary human trait that subsequently fosters the collective perception and co-creation of emerging realities. Such a distinction moves humanity beyond the practice of mechanically leveraging foresight for the modification of existing process to fertilizing a foresight noosphere for the recognition of novel and transformational systems in the face of large-scale shifts.

Supporting HFD research includes experts such as Fritjof Capra on holistic systems thinking; Anthony Hodgson on cosmic ecology; Otto Scharmer on personal and collective transformation; Roberto Poli and Robert Rosen on anticipatory systems; Illka Tuomi on ontological unpredictability and constructivist foresight; Beck and Cowan on Spiral Dynamics; Ken Wilber on Integral Theory; Gunderson and Holling on Panarchy/Complex Adaptive Systems; Ralph Stacey on Complex Responsive Processes; Daniel Christian Wahl on regenerative design; Callon, Latour, and Law on Network Theory; Cooperrider and Srivastva on Appreciative Inquiry; William Torbert on Action Logics; Beni and Wang on Swarm Intelligence; Wolfram and Hayek on Complexity Science/Theory; John Stewart on Evolutionary Directionality; Nora Bateson on Warm Data and Aphanipoiesis, Jaccaci and Greiner on Metamatrix/S-Curves/Natural Growth Curves; Bonnitta Roy on Complex Potential States and Collective Intelligence; et al.

Abstract: Ben Schoenekase is an artist, architectural theoretician, and PhD Student at Arizona State University. Schoenekase’s work intersects with design as an abnatural and robopological condition of near-future histories. Ruchita Arvind Mandhre is a graphic designer, former educator, and PhD student at Arizona State University. Her research interests lie in experiential design, design education and pedagogy, speculative design and the impact of emotions in design processes.

Mythologies of the East and West plague the biases of design logic as a form of perpetual dualism through: Aesthetic Craft vs. Functional Success. We exist in a world of perpetual change, where designers try to address unpredictable challenges of the future based on a limited, biased understanding of the past. This inherently is one of the biggest challenges for designers of the future. To break away from this loop we are calling for a novel design thinking manifesto that addresses adaptability, not as a Modernist critique of solutions, but as a recontextualizing of mythologies for future designers. The current ideas of change draw from memory and nostalgic ideas of the future that make the concept of change accessible. However, in reality, the unpredictability of change is what shatters this utopic comfort.

We propose ‘Play’, as a form of design thinking, where craft is a mode of inclusivity without the hesitations of graded evaluation. This may be addressed within the modes of Design Education that prioritize the false constructs of ethical value based-on actualized realities. Again, the burden arises of mythological constraints that bound the present to the past without allowing the future to develop. The potential of impossible flexibility is a powerful tool in decolonizing anticipation. Through new media innovations, designers are able to leverage varied ideas of change. Today, the designer is burdened with the canonical mythologies of their geographical heritage without an ability to embrace uncomfortable scenarios. Our manifesto speculates on futures with an ever present notion of change. Using design fiction as a tool, we compile a manifesto through oral histories, unmitigated images, and revised practices for design.

With the arrival of our manifesto, we are looking for critiques of the applicability to design thinking, design education, and the biases of design futures. The impossibility of “correct” speculation is at the heart of our discourse that attempts to break from the tropes of actual vs. fictional. Design is a platform for sociological change that cannot be clipped of its potential to inspire, imagine, and innovate.

Through the use of the manifesto, we are attempting to dismantle the paradigms around design education. Concrete ideals inherent in design histories that forge future practices. Design Education must embrace an amalgamation of the known and unknown without discernment for what is the “truth.” The designer, as with the student, must challenge their foundational assumptions around what is aesthetically perceptible and what can be unlearned empirically. ‘Play,’ as with Design Fiction, unlocks the capacity of infinite alternatives without begrudgingly addressing the world within which it is generated. This begins a pursuit of restructuring the agency of the “studio,” “practice,” and the “discipline” into a form of new mythology.

Abstract: What role might physical artifacts play as we anticipate living in an uncertain future? This question grew out of a collaboration between strategists at Sandia National Laboratories and the Altimeter Group following the creation of an exercise that explored emerging global dynamics. Drawing upon a catalog of peer reviewed trend cards, the exercise we created urged participants to imagine a future where various trends dynamically interact. As this project has evolved, it has created opportunities for our team to work with subject matter experts from a range of disciplines and backgrounds. Additionally, we have begun developing strategic artifacts and workshops that invite participants to anticipate and adapt to near future scenarios.

Early collaborators for this project helped articulate what a world with increasing competition in global commons, shifting alliances or a loss of US superiority might look like. These are themes that many of us might speculate upon or debate, based on our own assumptions, beliefs, and perspectives. When our team began to create artifacts that reflected what we might encounter in these possible futures, participants were suddenly anchored by something tangible and in some ways real. These objects serve as focal points that may be seen, touched and in some cases interacted with from almost endless perspectives. Unlike a written narrative that is linear and structured with a beginning and an end, objects can be generative, revealing new meanings or associations we might not have considered.

We are currently working with officers from the Naval Postgraduate Schools’ Applied Design for Innovation program from the Defense Analysis Department. Students will be interacting with artifacts and activities we’ve designed as we continue to develop exercises that help organizations anticipate and adapt to complex and rapidly changing environments. Our intention is to introduce new foresight tools to this community and to encourage participants to consider how potential future scenarios might impact their roles today.

Our team (which includes members from Sandia National Laboratories, the Naval Postgraduate School and the Altimeter Group) would be thrilled to host a 90-minute Technique Workshop at the 2022 Anticipation Conference. The theme for our approach could be most accurately placed within the Creativity, Innovation and New Media category of the convening. Our session could accommodate up to 15 participants and would include the use of artifacts and activities similar to the ones we are currently testing. Peer review and feedback about the effectiveness and potential for our activities would be incredibly valuable for our team. We are interested in developing inclusive techniques that invite diverse perspectives as we anticipate the future. This event would help us gain a better understanding of our methods and we look forward to the opportunity to share what we have learned.

Abstract: In an article on Camera Obscura, Sarah Sharma (2020) presents a Manifesto for the Broken Machine. She speaks of male-centered techno-cultural epistemologies that often frame broken machines as dysfunctionalities in the system, in need to be replaced or dismissed. Yet, it is precisely the notion of brokenness that causes acts of disruption from biased epistemologies (Taurino 2022), as much as acts of care and repair. This workshop will consist in an experimental method-a-thon, a framework that offers innovative exploratory and “anticipatory” techniques grounded in critical-making (Ratto 2011), future-making, speculative design (Dunne and Raby 2013), as well as in post-feminist, decolonial approaches to both acts of disruption and repair. It will introduce the participants to the practical applications of such approaches, particularly in relation to biases and errors found in contemporary algorithmic media. The aim is to foster critical, ethical, analytical reflection and methodological inquiry around the intersection between traditional knowledge, algorithmic dysfunctionalities, practices of care and how they might shape - or anticipate - alternative technological futures.

Abstract: Future Design is a new movement among Japanese researchers and stakeholders. The core of this movement is to know what types of social systems are necessary if we are to leave future generations sustainable environments and societies. To achieve this, we must design social systems that activate a human trait called futurability. This trait counts on the human nature of considering future generations to improve their living as this decision and/or action would ultimately bring happiness for human beings as a whole, even if the present benefit decreases. The imaginary future generation is one method to study which would produce futurabiliy. This workshop is designed to implement the concept of the imaginary future generation to deal with the increasing inequalities in our society. The workshop will take approximately 90 minutes and it can be structured in real-time based on the number of participants.

Abstract: Political processes of creating and contesting shared imaginations of climate futures are of growing importance in the ‘decade that matters’ for climate action and biodiversity conservation. Recent scholarship on climate and sustainability imaginaries has distinguished between techniques of futuring – processes that generate shared future visions in specific groups or publics – and the content or substance of imaginaries, i.e., the kinds of ideas about future societies that are shared, favored and fostered by different actors. While the relevance of imagination and futuring as a public good is undisputed in sustainability scholarship, little is known about the causal effects and comparative effectiveness of different attempts to engage in collective futuring. Here, I address the question of imaginary effects: What kinds of causal work do imaginaries do, what are different ways to understand effectiveness, and what renders one imaginary more effective than others? Drawing on a literature review of the concept of effectiveness from international relations, especially international regimes, and public policy, I distinguish four sets of factors that influence the causal potential of climate imaginaries: factors that relate to (1) imaginary content, (2) techniques/processes of futuring, (3) audiences and (4) political context. Describing and relating these four dimensions of causality to each other, I propose a framework for studying the effectiveness of political imagination. This framework enables the development of specific measurement approaches related to the effectiveness of imaginaries and could enable future empirical work. I illustrate this potential of the framework with a proposed measuring approach and related empirical guidance.

Abstract: In futures studies, it is difficult to generate plausible knowledge of what people might care about, how these cares relate to issues of need satisfaction at an individual level, and how these matters of individual need satisfaction might aggregate up to the level of future societal values—to move between big futures and little futures (Michael, 2017). In this technique workshop, we will draw upon the human-scale development approach (H-SD) (Max-Neef, 1992) to help participants (acting as imagined community members), “see” little futures in big futures--identifying future states and modes of need satisfaction. Once collected in this manner, our proposal is that such individual imaginings can be aggregated into “future social values”, which we define based on research in our project, KAITEKI: Future Social Value of Business, as justifiable claims about what may be important to a group of people, informed by an understanding of what people may have and do and how they may be and interact in order to satisfy human needs. Our aim is to experiment with Anticipations participants on the viability of this technique for use in community settings. As we pioneered this approach within our research team, this technique workshop will be a check of feasibility and a key, responsible approach to methodological innovation in the field (i.e., not experimenting with communities).

We invite participants to inhabit roles as community members with different socioeconomic, sociodemographic descriptors. After introducing four plausible future scenarios to participants, we will ask individuals to imagine ways in which their needs in their imagined communities may or may not be met in these divergent futures. We will conclude with plenary reflection considering how subsequent analysis based on this technique could work in practice with real community and stakeholder partners. The setting for our work will be a quartet of participatory, intuitive-logics-based scenarios of aging in smart environments in the U.S. in 2050 (Keeler & Bernstein, 2021), scenarios, in which we explored key uncertainties across dimensions of intergenerational relations; interpersonal and human-environment connections; information and sensing; potential need satisfaction; and policy and political driving forces.

The human-scale development (H-SD) approach seeks to empower people and communities to enhance need satisfaction in the pursuit of “living well” (Cruz et al., 2009). Pioneered in participatory action research for sustainability, the approach is highly focused on uncovering ways in which community needs in the present are systematically undermined (i.e., contributing to human impoverishment), systematically supported, and might systematically be enhanced through concerted action. Needs are asserted, ontologically, to be finite, few, and classifiable; change only slowly across time and cultures (of course, subject to variations by dimensions of identity, physical and psychological ability, group collective characteristics); and satisfied through more rapidly changing modes of existence (being, having, doing, and interacting) (Guillén-Royo, 2016). Our approach explores a novel way to involve communities in co-creating insight into how individual needs and collective social values may or may not be advanced in different plausible future scenarios. Our methodological proposal, explored first through thought experiment and, subsequently we hope, with Anticipations conference attendees attempts a community-driven, needs-based approach to future social value identification. Doing so would contribute to addressing a tendency in expert-driven foresight to uncritically or unreflexively “project” the values of the analyst onto futures and future people—a methodological “hampering factor”(Urueña et al., 2021)—in deployment of foresight techniques in support of responsible research and innovation and anticipatory governance.


References
Cruz, I., Stahel, A., & Max-Neef, M. (2009). Towards a systemic development approach: Building on the Human-Scale Development paradigm. Ecological Economics, 68(7), 2021–2030. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2009.02.004

Guillén-Royo, M. (2016). Sustainability and Wellbeing Human Scale Development in Practice. Routledge.

Keeler, L. W., & Bernstein, M. J. (2021). The future of aging in smart environments: Four scenarios of the United States in 2050. Futures, 133, 102830. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2021.102830

Max-Neef, M. (1992). Development and human needs. In P. Ekins & M. Max-Neef (Eds.), Real-life economics: Understanding wealth creation (pp. 197–214). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315258003-14

Michael, M. (2017). Enacting Big Futures, Little Futures: Toward an ecology of futures. The Sociological Review, 65(3), 509–524. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12444

Urueña, S., Rodríguez, H., & Ibarra, A. (2021). Foresight and responsible innovation: Openness and closure in anticipatory heuristics. Futures, 134, 102852. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2021.102852

Abstract: Young people are deeply concerned about the world they will inherit but for them the door to participation in decision-making is often closed, or only slightly ajar. In the best of light, youth are seen as potential beneficiaries of development aid, and not seen as true participants in the decision-making that will shape the nature, targeting, success, and sustainability of aid. Regrettably, the aspirations of today’s youth for a better, fairer, and more equitable world are not heard or acted upon, or sometimes even encouraged. International efforts on youth engagement are seen as ineffective and tokenistic by youth in plugging in their voices, perspectives, expertise and needs in decision making. Actively and intentionally engaging the planet’s 2.4 billion youth is critical to effectively supporting our common global development priorities, such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, while also stemming the rising tide of global youth disillusionment with the status quo. Locked out of programmatic decision-making, today’s youth are also unable to influence policies that are fair from an intergenerational standpoint. That is, those policies that allow people of all ages to meet their needs in a way that does not short-change or undercut the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Call it a “double whammy” in that youth voices are stymied in today’s aid decision-making process and, as a consequence, are locked out of decision-making on vital issues like climate change that will have a disproportionate impact on their own future.

This topic is a priority for 2022: The UN secretary General has committed to “Listen to and Engage with youth” as one of his twelve priorities in “Our Common Agenda”. Ideas to address the current lack of effective youth engagement mechanisms include a Youth Office, Special Envoy for Future Generations and measuring an index of youth engagement. This provides an opportunity for the development of a meaningful youth engagement mechanism in decision-making and policy processes (for national, regional and global contexts). "Nothing about us, without us!"

The authors will: (1) elaborate on six troubling trends in youth engagements; (2) outline concrete steps and ongoing networking both organizations are taking to engage youth and to advance the practice of foresight; (3) map current endeavours, identify opportunities and propose policy recommendations for promoting foresight and youth engagement in the multilateral system; and, (4) describe a pioneering framework to assess intergenerational fairness as to whether a policy decision might be considered “fair” to different generations, now and into the future.

Existing research:
https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/2021/07/trust-public-institutions/
https://changingchildhood.unicef.org/stories
https://soif.org.uk/igf/
https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/oped/comment/Young--African-climate-champions-cry-out/434750-5485512-11ie2c4z/index.html

Field practice: Public Engagement, Capacity Building
Conference themes: Intergenerational Dialogue, Intergenerational fairness

Abstract: The contemporary environmental crises of the Anthropocene involve an array of ongoing processes that are compromising the ability of eco-social systems around the world to support flourishing life in the future. However, amid these processes of harm, many communities are experimenting with ways of cultivating new or renewed life for the humans and nonhumans inhabiting damaged places, basing the actions they take in anticipatory collective understandings of more desirable futures that might be brought about through their work. This paper will refer to these anticipatory constructs as future imaginaries of regeneration.

Future imaginaries are one of three analytical levels of human anticipation proposed by Groves (2017). More grounded in day-to-day experience than abstract anticipatory assumptions, future imaginaries are simultaneously less clearly articulated than representational future images. This makes future imaginaries somewhat challenging phenomena to research although their content is rich, as they integrate discourses, practices, and materialities to make anticipatory collective action possible.

The literature surrounding future imaginaries is still emerging in many respects, especially in how it deals with future imaginaries of eco-social rather than sociotechnical change. The approach described in this paper explores how to make future imaginaries a more coherent and effective analytical tool, especially for thinking about more-than-human futures in the Anthropocene. It teases out the diversity of future imaginaries of regeneration by eliciting their varied logics, which formalize how anticipatory conceptions of regeneration are translated into programs of action in the present.

A goal of this research is to strengthen the ability of anticipation to inform and contribute to regenerative sustainability, an emerging paradigm that envisions a shift from sustainability understood as preserving what we still have left, to sustainability as rebuilding our capacity to uphold what we value (Reed 2007).

In order to effectively and ethically support efforts to foster regeneration, research on anticipation needs to consider several important issues. It would benefit from both broader and more precise ways of conceiving of how future imaginaries of regeneration operate, who may be able or expected to participate in bringing regeneration about, what kind of contributions different human and non-human partners could make to this shared effort, and what might be at stake for these partners because of their involvement.

This paper explores the diverse logics of future imaginaries of regeneration across a variety of contexts. It does this by examining how these future imaginaries are embodied in projects of eco-social intervention, deliberate human efforts to improve the environmental conditions of specific places through coordinated action.

Logics of future imaginaries of regeneration were identified through diffractive reading of 94 feature-length news articles published in English-language newspapers and magazines from 2000-2021. Each article was chosen because it describes one or more projects aiming to improve some aspect of a degraded eco-social situation.

Diffractive reading is a way of working with qualitative research material that is intended to coax a particular phenomenon into displaying its varied (and even potentially self-contradictory) aspects. The metaphor of diffraction, which is taken from optical physics, refers to an experimental technique for eliciting complex patterns of identity and difference that are more nuanced than oppositional binaries in characterizing a phenomenon. By taking a diffractive approach to reading diverse projects of eco-social intervention through a selected set of pre-existing theoretical concepts, this research aimed to elicit as many meaningful differences as possible in how regeneration "works" in each of them.

The findings suggest that future imaginaries of regeneration exhibit a variety of logics of regeneration as a process. Each future imaginary holds together diverse practices informed by specific anticipatory assumptions about environmental change. Thus, the term regeneration can stand for many different aspirations potentially achievable by very different means, each with its own ethical implications and dilemmas. Rather than representing specific desirable future states, future imaginaries of regeneration create a shared space for weaving together practices and relations that it is hoped will rebuild context-specific but as-yet-undetermined possibilities for flourishing life in the future.

Connections with the conference themes

This paper relates most directly to the Anticipation 22 conference themes "Politics, Justice, and Ethics of Anticipation" and "Public Futures."

"Politics, Justice, and Ethics of Anticipation" can be seen here in that different future imaginaries of regeneration capture ethical positions about how to respond to past environmental degradation and future eco-social change by contesting and enacting what communities see as the pre-conditions for hoped-for more-than-human wellbeing.

In relation to "Public Futures," this work examines community-led efforts to take collective action in the interest of future human and nonhuman life, through shared anticipatory understandings of what kinds of practices and relations may be fostered now to achieve desired futures through regeneration. The research findings suggest that futures that orient coordinated work toward sustainability do not have to originate in policymaking to have an impact.

Abstract: Depopulation, demographic imbalances, structural underdevelopment and a decaying sense of community are problems that many peripheric regions in Europe are confronted with. Sicily started to address this problem with the pioneering “1 Euro house” project which is based on a very simple premise: buy a house in one of the Sicilian villages for 1 Euro and become part of the local community. Frontloaded by extensive international media coverage many Sicilian municipalities started to put property on wholesale.

The Sicilian “Casa a 1 Euro” phenomena is an ongoing process that merits analysis on several levels. From an audience study point of view the question of media sense making and effects are enhanced to the maximum level of audience participation: the foreigners who decide to move to Sicily literally change their lives. The newly developing communities in the 1 Euro villages can be analyzed according to new forms of identity creation in a (post-) Covid 19 era with enhanced smart-working options and a growing sense of mobility. What kind of new life narratives and micronarratives in Jerome Bruner’s definition and what kind of narrative identities in the Ricoeurian sense are created in these new communities?

Through in-depth interviews with mayors and foreigners residing in Sicily we have examined how media stories can possibly create life stories and what shortcomings and unexpected spill-over effects narratives can have in reshaping realities in the periphery. The Sicilian 1 Euro house projects can thus be studied as cases for applied storytelling with the potential to create new “possible futures” in the understanding of Bertrand de Jouvenel. At the core of our examination is the question: Is the Sicilian 1 Euro house project an example of effective storytelling that has the potential to become a template of narrative reshaping of other peripheric regions?

Through a narratological perspective and the understanding that storytelling is fundamentally intertwined with the political process (see: Sachs 2012, VanDeCarr 2015, Ricci 2016, Fernandes 2017, Seageant 2020) our project is aimed at exploring the interstices between political storytelling and practical community formation as a way of opening up spaces for new public futures. The Sicilian “1 Euro house” projects with all its inconsistencies, frictions and open-ended processes have the potential to create empowered communities and therefore also spaces of possibility.

Abstract: In this era of great changes, the fourth industrial revolution represented by artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, and blockchain is leading the global wave of innovation, rapidly changing the structure of the world's economic and social development. With the rapid development of science and technology, the double-edged sword power of technology is accelerating the tearing of human society tradition and the future from all dimensions, and also creating and aggravating the uncertainty of the future. Where should human society go? The future led by the humanistic trend of thought, or the future led by technology? The refutation of "humanities" and "technology" has become a topic of extensive debate between critical reflection and visionary anticipation. People are more and more eager to find the balance point of science and technology in complex systems from a new perspective, and are eager to find the subtle but real "digital well-being". In a world where carbon-based civilization and silicon-based civilization coexist, reconstruction is suitable for human beings. Humanistic and ecological environmental order for sustainable development.
The interdisciplinary nature of design is a powerful tool for exploring this meaning-giving and order-building. Think about technology from a critical and anticipatory perspective, integrate the desirable future we want to achieve with the future foreseen by technology, and explore the humanized application of digital technology in human society, that is, future-oriented digital well-being design. More precisely, people should realize that technology is a tool we use to improve our lives and support justice, and its development is also to serve the sustainable development and well-being of human society. People should not blindly focus on developing technology. itself. "Digital well-being" emphasizes how to realize science and technology for good, and guide human beings into a new era of integration of "high technology" and "high humanities" led by ecology.


Design for Future Digital Wellbeing is one of the key research areas of the Design Future Academic Team of Tsinghua University (the team that applied for the Session). The team has been working on academic research and project practice in the field of "Design Futures" from 2016 to 2021. In 2018, through the construction of AI City, an AI city installation integrating virtual and reality, the impact of the application of AI on human survival in future cities was discussed. In the future of diversity, find and build digital survival and socialization scenarios where humans and machines are in harmony. In 2020, the research theme of "New Space Economy", explores how human beings can transcend the constraints of the earth's environment and achieve sustainable survival in the universe when space technology matures and interstellar settlement becomes possible in the future. Through the expression of digital scenes, we can speculate on the challenges that human space survival may face in the future. In 2022, the reshaping of the metaverse scene of cultural heritage will be launched, and the integration of historical civilization and emerging media, ecological situation and virtual experience will be explored to establish a new cultural space for the next generation.

The design of future digital well-being urgently needs more dimensions of action subjects, incorporating complex cognitive skills, such as creativity, speculative and criticality into design strategies, balancing the complex impact of digital technology, and improving the “well-being” in design. "The weight of thinking. Through the integration of art and science, it explores how to transform the needs of human psychological, emotional and physical health into the well-being of the intelligent age, and map it into the digital social well-being of industrial development, regional balance and group justice.

The group's proposal seeks to explore the complexities of future digital well-being design and to engage in critical dialogue on relevant research questions:

1. From physiology to ego, from motivation seduction to personality attachment, from human enhancement to post-human beings, how can human beings return to human nature in digital existence, and explore the design and sustainability of complex systems that are suitable and beneficial to human nature?

2. In the context of globalization, how to explore the delicate balance of multiple changes, how to bridge the digital divide that may be brought about by new media, cross-regional limitations, and design a more equal, more just, and more inclusive digital connection?

3. The sustainability of human civilization depends on the virtuous circle of people, society and ecological environment. How can use digital new media to structure a more diverse context, a more sustainable ecology, and seek higher-dimensional digital well-being with a new identity?

4. The future is here, but unevenly distributed. When designing for the future of digital well-being, how to use design foresight to seek out new frameworks, new models, new approaches, new products, and ways of coping with possible unintended consequences?

The Session will be divided into three parts: keynote speech, point-of-view sharing, and open-ended discussion. In the first part, Prof. Zhiyong Fu will deliver a 20-minute keynote speech, with the theme of future digital well-being, introducing the criticism, expectation and innovation of future digital well-being. The second part, Viewpoint Sharing, will invite 4 academic papers around 4 major topics, and invite 4 paper authors to give a 10-minute paper presentation and sharing, to provide heuristic views and cause discussion topics. The third part, the discussion, will invite two experts in related fields to lead four authors and participants for a 30-minute discussion and dialogue.

The Session is supported by the design future academic research team of the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University. The academic leader is Professor Zhiyong Fu.

Zhiyong Fu, Associate Professor, PhD, Supervisor of Information Art and Design Department, Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University. He is associate dean of the China-Italy Design Innovation Hub. Member of the "Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems" (GIAHS) Expert Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Director of China-Europe Humanities and Arts Education Alliance, vice-director of China Innovation & Entrepreneurship Education Research Center.

Abstract: Following the codesign in 2020 of the Capacity to Decolonize (C2D) - an audacious action research initiative based upon an innovative articulation of decolonial studies and futures studies - in 2021, we launched a foresight journal Special Issue on “Re-conceptualising Foresight and its Impact: Experiences in Decolonising Futures from the Global South” to be printed in September 2022. Our goal with the Special Issue was to work further into an enquiry into using futures literacy as a basis for reexamining and cross-learning between both disciplines (futures and decolonial studies) having recognised the disturbing reproduction of oppression in (or in spite of) the way societies have been using the future.

We were also specifically grounding our enquiry in the global South for three reasons. First, we made the assumption that solutions to system autopoiesis (or self-referentialism) cannot be found within the system itself. Decolonising futures requires purposefully opening up to different languages, different ideas and different framings from the disciplinary norms. It is therefore in locations (both temporal and spatial) that have alerted the world of such limitations that we seek out avenues for the evolution and transformation of the discipline of anticipation as a whole. Second, reaffirmed claims on ‘Whose futures matter?’ have recontextualised the central role of power in the formation, negotiation and display of futures. Foresight has predominantly been articulated as an instrument to set particular voices forward. Change in both representation and ideation can only be intentional. This special issue has therefore purposely sought out less heard voices, perspectives and epistemologies on the issues. Third, to advance the field, we were also looking into profiles that were not necessarily trained futures scholars or practitioners, but some who have come across the diversity of futures to advance their respective works and what it meant for knowledge creation to push for more contextualised futures.

These key lenses were motivated for the Special Issue on the basis that current and emerging theorisation on foresight and futures literacy have continued to be dominated by the global North, while the global South also has important and unique perspectives to share with the world to present alternative praxis and advance action research for decolonial theory and futures studies (Siam, Desai & Ritskes, 2012; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Sriprakash & Krishnan, 2020; Santos, 2014; Odora-Hoppers, 2002). The importance of context in authentic anticipatory systems was also being recognised (Sardar, 1993; Appadurai, 2013; Miller, 2015), and foresight impact was posted as lying in the inclusion of the margins to collectively build and systemically renegotiate the shape and content of pluriversal futures (Feukeu et al, 2021; Paradies, 2020).

In this session, we will review, as guest editors, the nature of response we got from prospective and confirmed authors. We were awakened to the conceptual and instrumental tensions in the use of the frame. We believed that we had offered an open understanding of decoloniality considering its different accession in Latin America and Africa for instance. However, it was interesting to see how the term ‘decolonial’ itself was tripping coauthors in coming to their own conclusions in their own contexts. It was not only the concept of ‘decoloniality,’ but also the difficulty to root claims within a specific discipline. What it means for the future of foresight will also be explored through the panel.

The panel session will explore the opportunity of the decolonial turn to explain the transition from futures studies to the discipline of anticipation. It is about more voices, more transdisciplinarity, but also new ontologies and teleologies (the valorisation of more reasons for using the future). It will also help define and contrast the different forms of decoloniality in futures through 3 sections: the people/voices in postactivism (repurposing futures), the languages in futures (re-articulating futures) and a revised history of futures (re-telling the history of futures). These three sections will also contemplate methodological implications for futures.

Proposed Panel Session: In order to prevent the common occurrence of a collage of monologues, we wish to engage in a creative participatory panel circle facilitated by Eva & Geci. We acknowledge the core team’s various origins and facilitation styles and propose to build from that with a provocation from both Riel Miller and Bayo Akomolafe. This opening will be followed by engaging and facilitating the group of invited Panelists* (mostly authors from the Special Issue) in conversation under 3 synthetic themes:
- Repurposing futures: postactivism
- Rearticulating futures: language/culture
- Revising the history of futures: the evolution of a discipline

*The Panelists have been identified and will be invited upon acceptance of the proposal

Abstract:

From futures thinking to what I have been calling ROOTS-ESSENCE thinking, a process, methodolgy that explores the system past and ancestry, aiming to inspire a sense of critical and creative thinking about its strengths and weaknesses, installing the kind of disobedience that allows us through the assessment of core, structural challenges, the co-creation with unheard, silenced voices, the effort to understand the system uniqueness and its real history, to unlock the birth of viable alternatives for decolonized world views. Changing the flows of knowledge on anticipation from the outside-inside to the inside-outside.

The thinking about futures must be more about essence, the system roots, ancestry, and less about collecting and reflecting about foreigners trends!

Abstract: Creative practitioners are increasingly using anticipatory techniques to explore questions of sustainability. In addition to creating works on sustainability-related topics (e.g. climate change in Galafassi et al., 2018a), artists, designers and social change-makers are working with sustainability as a set of conditions, that can open ‘a conversation... [about] what to conserve and what to change’ (Dubberly and Pangaro, 2015: 74). Creative practitioners tend to link social and ecological crises, arguing that these demand a more radical rethinking of relations between humans and with earth systems (Dolejšová et al., 2021). We refer to this orientation as ‘eco-social’– because it recognises that people’s values, worldviews, and relationships will need to shift as we encounter planetary boundaries (a position shared by many anticipations scholars, e.g. Vervoort et al. 2015, O’Brien, 2016).

So how do creative practitioners create new, eco-social conditions? In sustainability and futures research, there is agreement that the experiential qualities of creative works are centrally important in helping people to imagine and to create more sustainable worlds (Galafassi et al. 2018b). The field of experiential futures has probed this topic deeply –
recognising that human cognition is situated, i.e. that humans make sense of things as bodies within ‘socio-material’ worlds (Suchman, 2007). Experiential futures ‘exploit the continuum of human experience, the full array of sensory and semiotic vectors, in order to enable a different and deeper engagement in thought and discussion... than has traditionally been possible through textual and statistical means of representing scenarios’ (Candy 2010: 3).

Indeed, working on the EU action-research project CreaTures (Creative Practices for Transformational Futures), the authors have had similar experiences. We have found playing animals in online and in-person roleplaying games to be a compelling change from formal meetings (Light et al., forthcoming). However, taking Suchman (2007) and other theorists of situated action seriously, does it really make sense to call out some experiences as being more experiential than others?

In exploring this friction, our paper starts from the somewhat idiotic question: what is experiential about experiential futures? The figure of the ‘idiot’ (originally from Isabelle Stengers’ work) has been used productively by design and environmental scholars (e.g. Michael, 2012; Gabrys, 2016) to slow us down; to collectively deepen central but overlooked concerns (and in the process creating shared spaces of understanding across disciplines). After all, Bendor has aptly called experience ‘a notorious catchall term’ and asks, ‘is anything excluded from it?’ (2018: 96).

The figure of the ‘idiot’ (as used by Michael) is illuminating here, since it takes seriously ‘overspills’ that happen in public engagement events where people ‘misbehave’ by not acting according to the logic of what has been planned (2012: 529). Michael’s ‘idiot’ helps us to keep track of the messy reality of how change happens, rather than relying on tidier propositions.

In this paper we respond to this provocation firstly by gathering accounts of transformative techniques within the existing literature on experience. Simulation, for example, is seen as central to the idea of experiential futures, which ‘create ‘what ifs’ real enough to trick the body into taking them seriously’ (Lockton and Candy 2019: 39). Stripple et al. suggest that this needs to be combined with imaginative capacities: ‘when responding to imaginary worlds, we engage both abstract thought and emotion, to vividly simulate what is not but might be’ (2021: 89).

Reporting from the CreaTures project, we will also add new perspectives that emerge from our interdisciplinary and co-creative entanglements, particularly focussing on insights from the creative practitioners inside our consortium. These will include thoughts on the role of reflection in the process of experiencing – as a way to deepen and to draw collective insights across a shared happening or event. We will also explore processes of creating intimacy in inviting people to open themselves up to new ways of experiencing and working collectively on eco-social challenges.

Abstract: Why do individuals work? Should society impose hardships that promote work? How do we determine which kinds of work are valuable? These questions have had myriad answers over the course of human history. In our modern, global capitalistic system, the advent of technological automation and the emerging transitions to carbon neutrality have raised unanswered questions regarding how to handle the anticipated reduction or transformation in overall work. More recently, the pandemic has contributed to the urgency of the discussion as some individuals were restricted from work, some were required to continue work despite hazards, a fiscal social response was enacted to mitigate the consequences of these conditions, and underlying issues regarding work satisfaction and equality were exacerbated.
These concerns and the trends they reveal have highlighted conceptual and methodological deficits of standard, neo-classical economics. Yet, most attempts to forecast economic trends and societal transformations are still predicated on those standard assumptions and models, not to speak of the quasi-religious fervor that these beliefs instill in large parts of the political and media elites. And these beliefs have consequences as they inform policy decisions which solidify the status quo, rather than support much needed transformations of labour markets and address structural deficits that have led to inequality and injustice. In order to either accurately predict future social trajectories and to imagine alternatives, we must understand the reality of work in all its complexity, as well the underlying social beliefs and narratives that determine the persistence and formation of those structures. In this curated session we will tackle the issue of anticipating the future of work from several different perspectives.
In order to either accurately predict future social trajectories and to imagine alternatives, we must understand the reality of work in all its complexity, as well the underlying social beliefs and narratives that determine the persistence and formation of those structures. In this curated session we will tackle the issue of anticipating the future of work from several different perspectives.

Abstract: In our session, we will focus on utilisation of deliberation in building a just future, particularly in the context of a transition to carbon-neutral societies. Crucial to successfully designing socially fair and economically viable transition plans is involving future visions of the most vulnerable parts of the society throughout the policymaking process.

In recent years approaches to deliberative democracy - through the use of mini publics, citizen panels, and citizen assemblies - have been applied to formulation of climate policies in several European countries, such as Ireland, France and the UK.

Emerging literature suggests that deliberation is best suited for complex, long-term value issues, such as climate change, that can otherwise be costly for politicians to act on (OECD 2020). Yet, climate deliberation has so far been inadequately future-oriented while also failing to make citizens emotionally engaged with the issue. Furthermore, lack of future-orientedness is especially problematic from the viewpoint of intergenerational justice, as it results in short-termist interpretations of just transition that favour adaptation over mitigation.

The Horizon Europe-funded TANDEM project (Transdisciplinary And Deliberative equity appraisal of transition policies in Energy and Mobility), in which Demos Helsinki is a consortium partner, will be utilised as a case study of these ideas. The project aims at designing an anticipation and deliberation methodology for just transition pathways by involving potentially affected citizens across five countries in Europe. It focuses on transition policies in energy and mobility affecting urban and rural populations.

The project will employ a future-oriented model of deliberation called deliberative visioning that employs art-based methods, allowing citizens to better imagine desirable climate futures and contextualise the transition from the perspective of future generations (Pernaa 2017). Introducing art-based deliberative visioning makes the pathways to fair transition more concrete and ‘emotinable’ to participants, and helps with polarisation by crafting a shared, motivational and positive narrative of the future between citizens. Visioning is in its nature an inclusive and participatory process that motivates collective action for long-term goals (Baxter & Fraser, 1994, 4–5).

Deliberative visioning aims to tackle the problems that have plagued some previous participatory experiments: exclusivity, top-down agenda-setting, and insufficient knowledge. It also works on issues of justice, empowering groups that are commonly marginalised to voice their concerns, while still maintaining diversity within the deliberation.

Deliberative visioning does not merely mean a facilitated process of inclusive deliberation over desired futures (Weisbord & Janoff 1995), but also backcasting pathways to achieving this common goal. Backcasting scenario approaches are useful in creating long-term sustainable pathways towards ambitious societal goals, as they involve the creation of a desirable future image including specific parameters, such as greenhouse gas emissions, inequality, etc.

This long-term approach will allow us to firmly place the focus of our collective planning and action on a sustainable future. Not only will this approach aid long-term thinking, but as it promotes the idea that our actions today shape our future tomorrow, it also includes a sense of agency and empowerment in constructing a just future, as it is our actions that are responsible for what the future looks like, and nothing is predetermined.

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Questions to be addressed in the session

What kinds of methods (of producing data, co-creation, creating synthesis) would be relevant when planning and conducting deliberative visioning?
How (through what kinds of mechanisms) deliberative visioning could shape anticipatory beliefs and underlying anticipatory systems regarding implementation of just transitions?
How should deliberative visioning be adjusted to different cultural and geographical contexts (acknowledging that so far exercises in climate deliberation have taken place primarily in Western Europe)?

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SESSION FORMAT

The format of this curated session will be a round-table discussion preceded by a presentation on the background of our approach to anticipatory planning and the TANDEM project case study. After the presentation we will host an open discussion, with other session curators being invited to present their own ideas on our project, and the use of deliberation and backcasting scenarios in anticipation more broadly.

The session strives to foster interdisciplinary discussions, with the curators bringing perspectives from the fields of future studies, urban planning, transition studies and theories on long-term policymaking. Session participants will be encouraged to contribute ideas and comments from within their own expertise.

We are flexible regarding hosting our session and participating in the conference either virtually or in person.

The only technical requirement is that there is an opportunity to have a powerpoint presentation, and for the space requirement a seating arrangement (circle) that encourages discussion would be preferable.

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CURATORS

Aleksi Neuvonen (co-founder of Demos Helsinki), will be the primary curator of this session, potentially joined by other members of the Demos Helsinki team.

We would be interested in inviting other conference participants to act as co-curators once everyone’s abstracts are available, so that we can encourage diverse views, and potentially connections to the discussions and ideas shared across different sessions at the Anticipation conference.

Alternatively, we can also bring in guest speakers from across different disciplines in order to spark interesting discussions, if this is preferable.

CONTACT PERSON

Aleksi Neuvonen
aleksi.neuvonen@demoshelsinki.fi
+358 50 534 4241

Abstract: Incorporating failure analyses into the development and implementation of future-oriented proposals, policies, and goals should allow their creators to discover potential weak points, anticipate negative response, and consider what could go wrong. Unpleasant as the experience might be, the result will improve chances of realizing these futures. Large entities with resources already engage in scenarios, gaming, “murder boards,” and other ways of anticipating future failure. After examining contemporary modes of failure analysis, this paper explores how to provide and promote “failuring” to future-oriented smaller groups, non-profits, and the public.

Abstract: Our work asks “What are ways that we can foreground lived experiences to invite people from historically marginalized groups into technology-oriented design conversations and critiques?” This session is a proposal and a demonstration of ways to include new voices in anticipatory conversations while paying attention to the tensions of inclusion and agency in these discussions. The session curators will briefly discuss two projects that engage historically marginalized groups in agential, anticipatory work. During the session, participants can participate in an interactive workshop and discussion on designing for future memory as an experiential demonstration of our approach.

Abstract: Curated Session Proposal: Theme 2: Politics, Justice and Ethics of Anticipation.
In this panel, we will discuss scenarios for how notions of liberal and constitutional democracy must change (in fact, they are already changing) in response to changes in constitutionally exogenous factors such as:

• Climate change
• Advances in technology
• Wealth creation and increasing economic inequality
• Population growth and increasing urbanization
• Access to education
• Increased social alienation from and mistrust in governance institutions

The factors are clearly interrelated. For example, liberal education led to technological advances that precipitated climate change and disrupted education in the wake of COVID. Wealth, education and technology have radically increased the power of private actors vis a vis the power of government. All of these factors are precipitating changes in how democracy functions, forcing nations to rearticulate the scope and definitions of rights and liberties, and, we contend, require a reconsideration of how constitutional government can and will function in a world that will be more populated, more crowded, more unequal, and more digitally interconnected.

Our inspiration for this proposal draws upon our current research:

Bryan Alexander’s ACADEMIA NEXT explores how technology, demographic change, and wealth disparities will affect the functioning of higher education. Given the close relationship between liberal education and liberal democracy, any disruption of the former will result in disruption of the latter. His forthcoming work, UNIVERSITIES ON FIRE, will be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Ran Hirschl’s CITY, STATE contends that the increased power and role of cities in global politics and economics warrants a reconsideration of their constitutional status within their nations and as independent political actors

Carissima Mathen’s writing on the challenges governments face in regulating speech and social media demonstrate the complexities of balancing powerful actors’ speech rights with the privacy rights of the potential victims of trolling, revenge porn and so forth.

Mark Rush’s work on representative government and his contemporary work on the impact of science and technology on the relationship between citizens and government demonstrate the need for scholars to rearticulate or modernize their conceptions of individual rights, collective action, and the referee role government must play among increasingly powerful private actors.

Together our work suggests that scholars must draw upon and from across the spectrum of disciplines to reconceive the role of government. While our work is rooted in the present, it is unquestionably forward-looking. In some ways, science fiction anticipated or addressed the questions we raise.

In futuristic visions of government across galaxies, governments are tiny compared to the populations they oversee. This contrasts to current calls to increase the size of bodies such as the U.S. House of Representatives or the European Parliament.

In futuristic visions, spacecraft and societies are essentially high-tech company towns in which the means of surveillance are pervasive and clearly at the governments’ disposal. Yet, this has not been a pervasive issue in science fiction despite contemporary scholarly concerns about digital and terrestrial surveillance.

Hirschl’s vision of a globe dotted with densely populated cities compares to a federation that spans an empty galaxy or universe and is dotted with dense population centers called planets. On the one hand, people live in close proximity in city or planetary “centers” that are distant from one another. Yet, they are connected ever more closely by technology.

In our panel we will look to engender discussion not only about how we must reimagine governance under such conditions, but how quickly we must do so because the future that was once the realm of science fiction is undoubtedly upon us. Worldviews about individual rights and liberties and the role (and capacity) of any government to protect those liberties while maintaining the trappings of democratic accountability. The exercise of rights and liberties must be different under crowded, technologically-connected conditions than under much less crowded, connected conditions. Under the former, clashes of rights will proliferate and require a more active, powerful governmental role in conflict management.

Our aspiration for this panel proposal is to engender a truly cross-disciplinary discussion of what is, indeed, the near-future of liberal and constitutional democracy. With the benefit of crowdsourced, cross-disciplinary input, we hope to generate an agenda to acknowledge and address:

1. the tension between liberal constitutionalism’s emphasis on individual liberties and the clear need for stronger states (or at least stronger governance) to address the challenges we note; and
2. the looming tension between national constitutions, national sovereignty etc. and the need for coordinated collective action at the global level to address the issues we identify.

Abstract: Narrative foresight and allied programs have rightly brought attention to and promoted an array of lay narratives of desirable futures to give voice to marginalized, silenced or under-represented communities and individuals (Milojević and Inayatullah 2015; Bishet 2017). According to most of these approaches, these voices (whether Western or non-Western, indigenous or not) favor expressing their visions of desirable futures in narrative form over crafting logically valid arguments to justify what makes those futures desirable (Banks et al. 2006; Sand 2019). Therefore, these approaches highlight non-argumentative functions of narratives—from self-expression to resistance, community-building, and sensemaking—but neglect cases in which narratives are meant to be persuasive. Yet, anticipatory storytelling can be used to persuade others of the desirability of a future when consensus on desirability is absent, or the imagined future is new or unexpected.
In this paper, I argue that some lay narratives of desirable futures should be viewed and engaged with as arguments nested into a wider dialogue in which reasons are exchanged, doubts raised, and critical comments made. To do this, I first make the case for the idea of arguments in narrative form. I next show why failing to critically engage with narrative arguments can produce epistemic injustice. This paper reflects on the ethics of anticipatory practices (epistemic injustice) and shows why argumentation capacities are essential for futures literacy and public debates on desirable futures.

The view that narratives sometimes function as arguments has gained increased support in recent argumentation theory (Olmos ed 2017). For instance, Christopher Tindale (2021) explains why the supreme court of British Columbia accepted a Tsilhoqot’in Nation creation story as evidence to ascertain their territorial rights, irrespective of archeological evidence of prior settlement. In the same vein, the concept of narrative argument sheds light on non-Western philosophers who, like Chinese virtue ethicist Mencius and Persian philosopher Sohrawardi, tell stories that work as vivid reasons (irreducible to a collection of dry propositions) in support of a normative claim (Tindale 2021, 116). Argumentation theorists have shown that most inferential relationships between reasons and the claims they support cannot be captured with the tools of deductive and inductive logic. They have so far identified roughly one hundred "argument schemes" of this sort (neither deductive nor inductive but plausible) that can be dialogically assessed using "critical questions" (Walton et al. 2009; Baumtrog 2021). Argumentation theorists committed to epistemic pluralism about justification (Coliva and Pedersen 2017) are probing the wider space of reasons and identifying informal rules of debate in concrete argumentative contexts, inspired by anthropological work on the ubiquity of argumentation in many communities with or without connections to Western Europe. The perspective I defend is thus argument-focused but not Eurocentric. In this paper, I identify narrative argument schemes used in lay narratives of desirable futures and propose critical questions to initiate discussion on their strength, without excessively reducing their complexity, richness, and ambiguity.

My second claim is that failing to engage critically with others’ narrative arguments for desirable futures is morally objectionable. Unlike what is often assumed, commitment to epistemic pluralism about justification does not entail incommensurability between modes of justification (or “ways of knowing”) or giving up the view that truth is the primary goal of knowledge. And, ontologically, this approach is compatible with social constructivism about futures. Not engaging with others’ narrative arguments leads to committing what feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker calls an “epistemic injustice” (2007), that is, a wrong done to a person as a knower. This is because the narrator’s dialogical capacities as an arguer responsive to reasons would not be acknowledged and their conceptual and narrative resources for collective self-understanding would be undermined if their reasons are left internally and externally unchallenged. If narratives can be used to engage with the future in the justification mode (Mandich 2020), merely giving voice to them for the sake of inclusion is normatively insufficient. The difference is between deliberating with someone and showcasing them. Although it is doubtful that we deserve to be called “homo sapiens”, all of us are at the very least argumentative forward-looking storytellers (homo argumenticus-prospectus-narrans).


References:

Banks, Sarah, Jackie Leach Scully, and Tom Shakespeare. 2006. “Ordinary Ethics: Lay People's Deliberations on Social Sex Selection.” New Genetics and Society 25 (3): 289–303.

Baumtrog, Michael D. 2021. "Designing Critical Questions for Argumentation Schemes." Argumentation 35(4): 629-643.

Bisht, Pupul. 2017. “Decolonizing futures: Exploring storytelling as a tool for inclusion in foresight.” OCAD University Open Research Repository.

Coliva, Annalisa, and Nikolaj J. L. L Pedersen. 2017. Epistemic Pluralism. Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mandich, Giuliana. 2020. "Modes of engagement with the future in everyday life." Time & Society 29(3): 681-703.

Milojević Ivana, and Sohail Inayatullah. 2015. “Narrative Foresight.” Futures 73: 151–62.

Olmos, Paula, ed. 2017. Narration As Argument. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Sand, Martin. 2019. “On ‘not having a future’.” Futures 107: 98-106.

Tindale, Christopher W. 2021. The Anthropology of Argument: Cultural Foundations of Rhetoric and Reason. New York: Routledge.

Walton, Douglas N, Chris Reed, and Fabrizio Macagno. 2008. Argumentation Schemes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Abstract: The narrative of prisons as necessary reformatories and corrective facilities is well established in modern society. Prisons represent a "humane" way to discipline and punish, and a useful institution providing security and justice. Moreover, prisons are generally considered an adequate mechanism to turn misconduct into productive behaviour. On the other hand, the incarceration is critized because of its entanglement with exploitative social structures and for being entangled in discriminatory practices, within a "justice industry". Alternatives to incarceration including restorative and transformative justice, rehabilitation, and social programmes have been claimed (Zoellick, 2018).
According to the Council of Europe prison capacities in 51 European countries are almost exhausted with a median 90 inmates per 100 places and almost one third of prison administrations already experiencing overcrowding (Aebi, Tiago, & Burkhardt, 2021, p. 10). The public ignores this problem, if not directly involved, while the prison system involves thousands of people, huge public costs and affects respect for fundamental human rights. This, coupled with the consequences of the recent pandemic and accelerating digitalisation, makes the debate for reform even more urgent and necessary. In an increasingly interconnected world, does it still make sense to think that people's punishment should be isolation?
An informal group of futurists-lawyers and social innovation activists with a variety of competences and experiences (named Spoiler) is elaborating and proposing alternative visions in Italy, to be respectful of human rights and inspired to the framework of restorative justice.
The group began by promoting of a broad and transversal debate in the country, through creative and cultural initiatives, in collaboration with a national newspaper, and strategic interviews.
The first initiatives, created in collaboration with the staff of newspaper “Il Dubbio” (the doubt, www.ildubbio.news) interested in guaranteeing the rights of prisoners, was "sui pedali della libertà" (on the pedals of freedom, www.suipedalidellaliberta.it). It is a bicycle tour (14 days, 2000 km) from one end of the country to the other through Italian prisons, along which the cyclist-journalist collected the voices of those who live in prisons every day: institutions, associations, and prisoners, publishing them daily on Il Dubbio.
The initiative is repeated from 2020, with different themes every year ("Beyond prison 2020", "beyond prejudice 2021", "beyond obstacle 2022") and with an increasing involvement of associations and citizens. For the end of 2022 it is also planned the creation of a theatre piece, based on the testimonies and interviews collected.
Alongside the cultural initiatives to raise awareness on the issue, the group is conducting transdisciplinary research (Lang et al., 2012) through strategic interviews based on the “seven questions” approach (Ratcliffe, 2002), participatory foresight exercises (Faucheux & Hue, 2001) and system analysis through the identification of systems archetypes (Wolstenholme, 2004).
The research started in June 2020 and is still ongoing. The first results are emerging from the interviews carried out in 12 Italian cities (until February 2022), involving architects, managers, volunteers, prison officers, law professors, lawyers and guarantors of prisoners, psychologists, museum curators, entrepreneurs. At the end of summer 2022 the results of these interviews will provide the knowledge base for the participatory construction of strategic scenarios at 2040, identifying plausible futures and, among these, the desirable futures for the Italian national incarceration system.

Abstract: Part of the Prototyping Social Forms "Un altro mondo è possibile" Stream
(see submissions 197 and 195)

“Detourning” the notion of anticipation, we offer a workshop on enacting alternatives to what is the case. Supplementing techniques for extrapolating from the present to the future, the interdisciplinary and international collective Prototyping Social Forms (PSF) develops platforms, tactics, and technologies to make locally generated knowledge transportable and transformable, forming such knowledge into “germs” that can "sprout" in disparate learning and research environments.

This 90 minute Techniques Workshop focusses on experiential experiments on rhythm and joint intention ranging from analog to wearable hybrid cyber-physical musical instrument, and different kinds of time-sense.

Germ #1 - Rhythm: We conduct a sequence of rhythm games that can be played in a hybrid setting with participants in both zoom and in live space: breathing, countups, comings-and-goings, foraging rhythm, …. These etudes are one step toward a multi-scale and multi-valent sensing of the dynamics of hyper-complex biosocial phenomena, like cities or languages. Duration 45 mins: three rounds of progressively more elaborate rhythm games, physical room | outdoors + streaming videoconference or good cell reception. (Rhythmanalysis, Lighting and rhythm).

Germ #2 - Time Zone: Interrupted Reading and the Voice of Time: Attending to “unbidden” thoughts and images while reading aloud together, without eschewing intellectual or critical reflections. As conscious and unconscious (or explicit and tacit?) reflections bloom into the group space, the reading time thickens and a new voice can be heard; neither author nor readers, a surplus vocality. We call this the voice of time. Participants then listen together to this voice of time and record it together as a response to the interrupted reading.

Some of these can (should) be played both in-person and via video-conference. We checked Flexible, meaning some of the workshop etudes are designed to be activity co-ordinated between local in-person and telematic remote participants (e.g. Rhythm games), whereas others need to be done in-person (e.g. Recipe meal).

http://synthesiscenter.net/projects/alter-economies/

Abstract: It has always been clear that various disciplines in AI draw on science fiction stories to help imagine and project what the future of the field might look like. In AI ethics in particular, this often starts (and ends) with Isaac Asimov and the Laws of Robotics. In the metaphysics and ontology of cognitive science, we often find just as much fiction bolstering our images of what the future holds in the quest for artificial minds. But the narratives that recur within these fields radically limit what we understand AI to be, and what we’re really pursuing when we claim to be building AI. If AI theorists were to shift away from trying to implement Asimov’s Laws of Robotics (for example), we might undertake a project that more fully captures what human-like minds and human-like ethics actually are. This paper draws on and expands a recent publication that offers the work of Stanislaw Lem as an undervalued and underused model, in both AI ethics and AI metaphysics. I look at a number of important texts in AI, with a focus on AI ethics as a kind of case study (Lin, Abney, Bekey 2012; Lin, Jenkins, Abney 2017; Wallach and Allen 2009). I trace the usage of Asimov’s recurrence across many of those texts, and analyze what that means for how we make sense of our future prospects. On the other side, I look to Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem to show us a better vision of what human-like AI actually means, and therefore what kind of future we’re actually trying to bring about in our quest for that kind of artificial mind. I argue that Lem’s robot stories in particular (many of which have long been translated into English) are an overlooked but valuable source of philosophical reflection on the nature of minds, cognition, and emotion, along with a more realistic picture of what truly human-like AI will look like. I take up Shannon Vallor (2016) and John Sullins’s (2016) idea of artificial phronesis, and read it against Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis (1994) to demonstrate that in both ethics and ontology, humans are not rule-following machines as Asimov imagines, but more like habit-using instinct animals. With a focus on the robot stories from The Cyberiad (1974) and Mortal Engines (1977/1992) alongside evidence from both the philosophy and cognitive science of AI, I show how shifting our frame of reference away from something like Asimov’s fiction to something like Lem’s can help us first imagine, and then build, a more human centered, ethical, and scientifically accurate AI project.
Works Cited:
Lem, S. (1974) The Cyberiad. Kandel, M. (translator). Avon Books.
Lem, S. (1977/1992) Mortal Engines. Kandel, M. (translator). The Seabury Press/Harvest-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Lin, P., Abney, K., and Bekey, G. (eds.) (2012): Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics. MIT Press.
Lin, P., Jenkins, R., and Abney, K. (eds.) (2017): Robot Ethics 2.0: from autonomous cars to artificial intelligence. Oxford University Press.
Sullins, J.P. (2016): Artificial Phronesis and the social robot, in Seibt, J. Nørskov, M., and Schack Anderson, S. (eds.) What Social Robots Can and Should Do, IOS Press, 37-39.
Vallor, S. (2016): Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting. Oxford University Press.
Wallach, W. and Allen, C. (2009): Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. Oxford University Press.
Connection with conference themes:
This paper seems to overlap strongly with both Theme 2 and Theme 5:
Theme 2: Politics, Justice and Ethics of Anticipation: which worldviews, principles or practices are involved in ethical and unethical anticipations?
I’m arguing here that while it may be value-neutral to use fiction to help anticipate AI futures, the choices which are made about which specific stories, narratives, and authors we let guide those futures is extremely value-laden. In fact, proceeding from a narrative like Asimov’s is both dehumanizing to us and dangerous to the routes we take to pursue human-like AI.
Theme 5: Creativity, Innovation and New Media: what media and IT systems are being used to creature future narratives, and what types of affordances, limitations, and trade-offs do they enfold?
I’m arguing that the narratives we rest our AI projects on (even when these are not explicitly known by the researchers) are radically limiting what we understand in the present to be the AI project and are driving us to more harmful AI futures because of the misunderstanding they encourage about the nature of humanity itself, and therefore what human-like AI not only could look like, but ought to look like, assuming the project should be pursued at all.

Abstract: ABSTRACT

‘Strategies of preparedness’ is a research project that examines alternative
methods of risk assessment to imagine uncertain futures. It considers historical and
contemporary responses to uncertainty while exploring possibilities to act out futures. With a focus on anticipatory actions such as the design of scenario exercises, physical models and embodied simulation experiences the work considers experimental alternatives to calculative practices. The logic of algorithms has shifted the notion of the disaster as an event that is rendered through insurance technology and terminology to consider possible financial losses rather than the threat to individuals. The objective of my work is to reconsider experts and to propose alternative strategies that perceive preparedness through the design of experimental experiences. The work draws on the technologies and logic of military and defence planning, Architectural models and the design of exercise techniques as suggested by non-governmental actors.



PROPOSAL: TECHNIQUE WORKSHOP / ENACTING CATASTROPHES AS A METHOD OF PREPAREDNESS

This proposal explores methods of preparedness to perceive future catastrophes by acting out responses and risk scenarios through performative simulations. For the Anticipation conference in Tempe, Arizona, I am proposing a workshop that invites participants to explore a catastrophe scenario in form of active field exercises that are based on the logic of wargames and military training.
Anticipatory Actions - also known as measurements of pre-emption, precaution, and preparedness (Anderson, 2012) - are methods that ideally reduce the impact of disasters by performing futures through bodily experiences. Widely used by RAND Corporation, military simulations have been developed in civil defence planning to test out a particular strategy and train responses of individuals to uncertain events. Often performed by small teams of 10 members and played out over several days or weeks these simulation exercises are used to further control possible risks and generate new forms of knowledge.
Hermann Kahn, futurist of RAND who extended the possibilities of models and simulations as a foresight method, referred to the mode of capturing future uncertainty as “thinking the unthinkable” (Kahn,1962). In the 70ies Pierre Wack, oil consecutive for Shell, build upon Kahn’s methods and further developed simulation techniques into narrative scenarios that would act as a business strategy. (Matejova; Briggs, 2019).
Today risk assessments have shifted towards a practice of designing new risks by deriving from the past while ignoring the possibility to imagine unknown scenarios. Future uncertainties are defined by so-called experts, participating in classical formats such as the round table discussion or developed by algorithms and computer simulations. Can we pre-enact future uncertainties through more just, participatory, and experimental methodologies? Drawing on the design of military field exercises as a possibility to physically act out and rehearse disasters and catastrophic events I will use the setting of Tempe, Arizona to experiment with the possibility to pre-enact a fictional scenario. Further extending the concept of Anticipatory actions the workshops will ask participants to respond to fictional catastrophe scenarios by strategizing and enacting their individual answers of preparedness. The catastrophe will be pre-defined and presented at the beginning of the workshop. Either as a collective or as individuals and with the option to strategize against each other or alternatively to develop collective responses, participants are asked to design methods to prepare, prevent and rehearse through real-life actions. While the workshop will be based on a pre-written script, responses and outcomes are unknown.
I understand the workshop as an experimental medium to extend our idea of enacting future uncertainties, but also to generate a debate about forms of risk scenarios while opening up the possibility to trigger the imagination of events that have not yet happened. Not only the conceptual framework of the conference but the geographical and environmental conditions of Tempe, Arizona, and the nearby desert – a space often used for field exercises – offer an ideal base and starting point for these explorations.

Max number of participants: 25 (flexible)
Space requirements: Ideally, an exterior space if possible (flexible)
Participant experience: participants may develop responses individually or in a small team. Just as in real life they are allowed to observe and strategize against each other or develop a response as a collective.
Workshop Format: 90minutes (minimum)


References

Anderson, B. (2010) Pre-emption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies. Process in Human Geography 34(9) 777-798 \

Aradau C and Van Munster R (2011) Politics of Catastrophe, Oxon, Routledge

Collier, Stephen J. (2008), ‘Enacting Catastrophe: Preparedness, Insurance, Budgetary
Rationalization’, Economy and Society 37(2)

Kahn, Herman (1962) "Thinking About the Unthinkable," Naval War College Review: Vol. 15: No. 8, Article 7. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol15/iss8/7

Briggs, C. and Matejova, M (2019) Disaster Security, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019




BIO
I am a Designer and Researcher examining existing systems by tracing geographical, political, and cultural changes and their often unseen impact on society. Shifting between fact and fiction, past and future events, projects may result in a variety of media including text, models, film, events, and architectural interventions.
Next to my practice, I am teaching across Architecture and Design programmes, most recently at Goldsmiths University and The Open University.

Past exhibitions include ‘Another Land’, Kingston Museum (2019), ‘Three Models of Change’ Grand Union, Birmingham, (2018), ‘Virtualities - Realities’ kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga (2017), ‘All’s One’ Room Service Gallery, NY (2016), ‘Of The Sea’, Historic Dockyard Chatham (2016).
Forthcoming projects include the delivery of workshops with BG Reach and the community of Blaenau Gwent in Wales where we will reimagine the local mining history through Map Exercises (May 2022).

I was awarded an MA in Design from the Royal College of Art (2014), an MA in Scenography from the School of Arts and Design Kassel (2010) and a DAAD Fellowship in Art and Design (2013).

Abstract: Social instability and economic inequality in Latin America, clearly manifested in political agendas, can be interpreted from understanding the uses of time and temporality imposed by chrono-politics. The official uses of time, such as time zones, the regulation of work schedules, schooling, vacations, retirement, are all state devices that condition the social uses of time and the right to time, that is, the temporalities of the citizens affected by such regulations.
By analyzing the link between governance imaginaries and their regulatory dynamics of the uses of time in terms of cultural rhythmics, it is possible to characterize social groups beyond the geopolitical limits of cities, countries or organizations and to detect a common problem: the presence of the past.
In this context, this paper proposes to reflect on modes of anticipatory governance that consider designing and implementing public policies on the social use of time considering the value of the presence of the future in any decision-making process.

Abstract: This session seeks to connect temporality studies with future studies and recent developments on anticipation and the ‘use of the future’ (Miller, 2018; Poli 2019). Contributions from sociology and anthropology of time enriched with a futures literacy framework to address the 'use of the future' based on anticipatory systems and complexity, deepens the understanding of the uses of temporality and its relation on anticipatory capacities and competencies. This session is framed in the UNESCO Chair on Sociocultural Anticipation and Resilience at the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies, that contributes to the development and diffusion of Anticipation and Futures Literacy (FL) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) working as a ‘hub’ for conducting cutting-edge action-research, training trainers, and engaging with civil society to support the development of anticipatory capacities, from inter and transdisciplinary approach.
This session is an opportunity to broaden the understanding of how people, groups, institutions, systems and cultures involved in governance ecosystems use the ideas they have about the future to act in the present.

Abstract: Many have described the current era as a historical turning point, an age in which existing arrangements are no longer working. Writing in the 1950s, Fred Polak also saw himself as living through “a literal breach in time.” Polak proposed cosmological and macrohistorical constructs for thinking about "the meaning of time and its flow in history,” most notably in his invocation of an “image of the future.” He indicated: “The kind of images that we discuss are shared public images of the cosmos, God, man, social institutions, the meaning of history, and others of similar scope.” In Oliver Markley and Willis Harman’s working definition, an image is “the set of assumptions held about the human being's origin, nature, abilities and characteristics, relationships with others, and place in the universe.”

Polak’s hypothesis was that cultures rise or fall based on the vitality of their images. If one accepts both his diagnosis of a historical turning point and hypothesis about images, the challenges are daunting. One’s deepest assumptions, the presuppositions that can collectively unify and motivate societies, are not easily identified, let alone interrogated. Scholars have approached such questions in various ways. With regard to today’s dominant “Western” culture, some have pointed to ideological presuppositions such as human species exceptionalism; othering based on gender, race, and so on; a predominantly linear or progressive time consciousness; and dependencies on objectivity and rationality that exclude other modes and cultures of cognition. Some have presented and discussed cosmological questions from non-Western standpoints, in both fiction and nonfiction. Concurrently, scientific understandings are also evolving, and some have proposed readings that bring contemporary cosmological thinking into closer alignment with pluralistic and/or non-Western approaches.

Motivated by these and related interests and concerns, we engage in a critical and appreciative enquiry into futures literature on the image. While Polak’s writings have been judged as erratically uneven, they have also been enormously influential, as evidenced by widespread references to Polakian images among futures scholars. At the same time, perhaps stemming from the ambiguities in Polak’s writings, his ideas have been and can be developed in divergent ways. Wendell Bell emphasized the study of images as a social science, an investigation of people’s presently held images and expectations of the future. Jim Dator developed a framework of “generic” futures images. Some followed Polak in looking to the strategic influence that a discriminating few or creative minority might have in shaping the future. More recently, some have drawn from a broader group of theorists to incorporate a sociopolitical analysis of “social imaginaries” into futures research. Similarly and in the previous paragraph’s litany of presuppositions, we synthesized from a wide range of theorists in decoloniality, feminist theory, cybersystemics, and so on.

At the heart of Polak’s image writings are questions about meaning. He proposed multiple constructs for meaning-making and formulated two dimensions of human optimism and pessimism: the eschatological and the utopian, or essence and influence. Peter Hayward insightfully conceived these dimensions as the basis for a facilitated exercise, the eponymous Polak Game. Since then, several variations of the game have been published, and practitioners have no doubt experimented with additional ones, as have we. By experimenting with variations, the Polak Game can enable further explorations of meaning. In this way, the game can be used to bring Polak’s ideas into dialogue with the types of ongoing scholarship described above.

There is much to appreciate in the image writings of Fred Polak and those who followed him. Polak did not shy away from big questions about his post-war era. As outlined above, his diagnosis and hypothesis can be framed as starting points for enquiries that aim to decolonize our images, our anticipations, and ourselves. In Polakian terms, the capacity to thrive is a sociocultural capacity and the capacity for renewal requires reflexively psychosocial examination. Through critical reassessment, retrospective and prospective, we seek to bring futures writings on the image to bear on current potentialities, straddling this time between worlds.

This presentation is based on work initiated with students Ameenah Carroll, Inbar Sharon, and Madeline Silberger-Franek in the 2021 Strategy+Foresight course in the Collaborative Design MFA / Design Systems MA programs at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Willamette University. This research is pertinent to the conference themes of Decolonizing Anticipation and Time & Temporalities.

Abstract: Design, among many other disciplines, has contributed towards promulgating colonialist and capitalist ways of relating to each other and to the land. Over the last two hundred years, industrial growth has led us to dominate Nature at a speed that has decimated earth’s critical life systems and has led us away from what it means to be fully human on a sentient planet. Planet Earth operates in circular and closed-loop systems and these natural systems ensure that all materials can be reused indefinitely without waste [1]. Human designed systems, in contrast, approach “making” from a linear perspective where objects have a quantifiable beginning and end [2]. It is no surprise we have become completely disconnected from humanity’s original ways of knowing where the human soul is so alienated from the cues of our communities, habitats and localities[3]. In order to responsibly anticipate our future, we must look back to proven strategies found in nature and to thousands of years of Indigenous approaches that are following nature’s lead.

At this pivotal moment in time with growing social issues and inadequacies of racism, climate change, accessibility, wellness, inequity, and lack of access to education, we must find systemic approaches and tools to consider the natural system anew and consider usually forgotten factors such as place-based traditional knowledge. Over the past few centuries, humans have created knowledge systems that brought positive change and evolved human life. This knowledge system is nonetheless failing us when measured by its impact on social and environmental systems as well as when drastic and mindful changes are needed to avoid extinction of all life on this planet due to climate change [8]. The systems thinking approach must shift to include all living organisms' needs as well as traditional knowledge approaches in order to help us gain insight into possible consequences of our actions [4].

First Nations communities see the connectedness of ecosystems and how they relate and interact with each other, how they are continually shifting and changing and shaping the systems as a whole. When people look at the world through a systems lens, it can enable them to see how each step and action has an impact on the system as a whole and each of its interrelated parts. “This extends beyond linear time, to impact generations in the past, our Ancestors and future Ancestors as well” [7]. Indigenous peoples possess an Inherent intuition and sense of everything that is human and non-human in their surroundings. The slightest shift in wind currents, the way a fish moves in a stream, the pace at which their sustenance and crops grow. “For Indigenous peoples, pasts, presents, and futures involve living and being in reciprocal, consensual, and sustainable relations with the natural world, which includes human relationships to each other as well as with lands, waters, landscapes, atmospheres, and plant and animal nations. In this interactive session, we imagine a world that fosters stronger human relationships with each other and with the land—the world that we need.” [11]

Our conventional approach to solving wicked problems through systems thinking are rooted epistemologically in the “Western scientific method that pursues ‘knowledge’ in an analytical way, whereas Indigenous ways of coming to know, as practiced by Elders, is the pursuit of ‘wisdom-in-action’...They have [been] described… in a variety of ways, as braiding (Kimmerer, 2013), as bridging (Aikenhead & Michell, 2011), as a circle of relationship (Cajete, 2000), as encompassing holism (Kovach, 2009), as grounded normativity (Coulthard, 2014), as Resurgence (Asch, Borrows, and Tully, 2018), as regeneration (Simpson, 2011), as Insurgent (Gaudry, 2011), as regenerative (Tuck & Yang, 2019), and ultimately as an exercise in humility (Wildcat, 2009) [9].

Systems thinking can be a pivotal tool to bridge western and Indigenous approaches to design. “[Indigenous knowledge systems] place each individual within a web of interactions that have evolved through time, impacted by lived experiences and changing environments throughout the course of history” [10].

In order for life to be viable, humans must see their surroundings as kin [5]. Our species’ survival is dependent on the survival of all life because of the mutual roles each plays. “There is a misconception that those born in a globalized consumerist culture, “Westerners” or “moderns”, are inherently devoid of the capacity to connect, relate, and belong in healthy ways, and hence they must “borrow” from “elsewhere” – that is, often, Indigenous worldviews” [5]. Alternatively, as Van Horn points out, “beginning where we are” might be an important step to take as we decolonize our thoughts, while also learning from and paying respect to how others from other places have lived [6].

Our focus of this session is to establish new connections and context in which we return to biodiversity and life on Earth in a capacity that no longer depletes but regenerates living systems that are needed for humans and non-humans to not just survive but to thrive. “Anticipating the Future by going Back to the Future'' is an interactive session where we explore Indigeous Knowledge and place-based insight through a 30-minute outdoor walk that connects the participants with the Sonoran Desert. After this (re)connection, the session will transition to introduce the paradigm of approaches from Indigenous knowledge (10-minutes) leading into a systems thinking practice that helps participants reframe design problems (50-minutes).

Maximum numbers of participants: 30


References

1. Baumeister, D. (2013). Biomimicry resource handbook: A seed bank of best practices (First public printing, February 2013.). Biomimicry 3.8.
2. McDonough, W., & Braungart, M. (2002). Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things. North Point Press.
3. Roszak, T., Gomes, M. E., & Kanner, A. D. (Eds.). (1995). Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind (pp. xxiii, 338). Sierra Club Books.
4. Benson, E., & Fehler, M. (2021). Hidden Connections: Holistic Approaches to Design for the Common Good. Design as Common Good: Framing Design through Pluralism and Social Values, 1166. https://tinyurl.com/53nj544n
5. Salmon, E. (2000). Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Perceptions of the HumanNature Relationship. Ecological Applications - ECOL APPL, 10, 1327–1332. https://doi.org/10.2307/2641288
6. Van Horn, G. (n.d.). The Kinship Project. Center for Humans & Nature. Retrieved February 14, 2022, from https://www.humansandnature.org/the-kinship-project
7. First Nations Systems Thinking. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2022, from https://www.commonground.org.au/learn/first-nations-systems-thinking
8. Fazey, I., Schäpke, N., Caniglia, G., Kendrick, I., Lyon, C., Page, G., Verveen, S., Leicester, G., Linyard, A., McCurdy, A., Ryan, P., Sharpe, B., Abson, D., Alvarez-Pereira, C., Anderson, L., Augenstein, K., Bent, D., Bina, O., Bradbury, H., … Young, H. R. (2020). Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth: Visions of future systems and how to get there. Energy Research & Social Science, 70, 101724-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101724
9. Goodchild, M. (2021). Relational Systems Thinking: That’s How Change is Going to Come, From Our Earth Mother. Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change, 1(1), 75–103. https://doi.org/10.47061/jabsc.v1i1.577
10. Heke, I., Rees, D., Swinburn, B., Waititi, R. T., & Stewart, A. (2019). Systems Thinking and indigenous systems: Native contributions to obesity prevention. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 15(1), 22–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118806383
11. McCoy, M., Elliott-Groves, E., Sabzalian, L., & Bang, M. (2020). Restoring Indigenous systems of relationality. Center for Humans & Nature. Https://Www. Humansandnature. Org/Restoring-Indigenous-Systems-of-Relationality.

Abstract: Session Participants:

In addition to the organizers and Anticipation 2022 conference attendees, we propose to invite additional outside participants to join the conversation, including community leaders and organizers, energy futurists, writers, artists, and designers.

Session Description:

The energy future is the human future. Throughout history, human societies and their energy systems have been co-organized in tightly coupled arrangements: energy husbanded to serve human survival and thriving; societies and political economies organized around the production and consumption of energy (e.g., gathering of food and wood, growing and harvesting of grains, husbandry of draft animals, extraction of fuels, generation of electricity). Yet, modern tools for anticipating, modeling, and designing energy futures exclude consideration of human futures, with all of their social and cultural complexities and entanglements, their historical trajectories, and their politics and divergent ways of knowing.
In a recent survey of the research literature on projected solar futures, for example, ASU researchers found only estimates of the size of solar deployments, with no attempt to anticipate or explore how future deployments of solar energy might be laced into the social, economic, ecological, or political arrangements out of which future societies might be built. Perhaps the most egregious example of this lack is encapsulated in the US National Academies study America’s Energy Future (2009), which offers in its 800 pages no insight whatsoever into the future of America. Yet, despite their abject failure to engage with the human, energy futures nonetheless tell us much about both the sheer scope and scale of humanity’s energy needs and the vast systems created—and necessary in the future—to satisfy those needs.
Against this gap, two other forms of imaginative work can be contrasted. Among writers and artists, a diverse and growing international community of creatives has formed around the concept of Solarpunk, a neo-utopian exercise in envisioning “what the future might look like if humanity solved major modern challenges like climate change, and created more sustainable and balanced societies” (Solarpunkmagazine.com). The stories and imagery of the Solarpunk movement attempt to call into being, in the first instance, narratives of potential human futures powered by alternative, less destructive forms of energy than our current fossil fuel systems, organized in less destructive and more humane ways. By their very nature, Solarpunk writes and paints pictures of energy grounded in the peculiarities of particular places and the lives of particular people—and of the kinds of futures energized in those places.
Solarpunk stories share this grounding in place and people with community-based solar initiatives, yet they are often visionary, fictional, written about the distant future, and thus at best loosely connected to people living in concrete places today. Community-based solar initiatives, instead, are rooted in the concerns of groups of people who ask what can be done, here, now, today, with the limited sets of capabilities, resources, and imagination available, to set in motion a different course for the future. In that practicality is the power to make change real, to create alternative futures for energy systems and the energy-people hybrids who will inhabit them. And yet that very practicality is often deeply constrained by funders, solar system designers, government leaders, local electric utilities, and community members who all operate within deep-seated paradigms that draw clear boundaries around “what is possible,” thus limiting the full exercise of imagination at the heart of community-based initiatives.
Our goal in this curated session at Anticipation 2022 is to create a space for diverse participants to explore the possibilities for bringing together these three sets of capabilities to, on the one hand, enable richer, more diverse, and more fully considered visions of human futures powered by solar energy that can, at the same time, provide robust and valuable guidance to the design of future solar projects at all scales, from the community to the planet. The three organizations submitting this proposal are all committed to innovating and institutionalizing novel, profound, and more methodologies for exploring and engaging visions of solar-powered human futures. ASU’s Center for Energy and Society and Center for Science and the Imagination have collaborated, over the past three years, to explore strategies for integrating energy engineering, research, and imagination in novel futures methodologies, captured in the books Cities of Light (2021) and The Weight of Light (2019). For the past decade, the Land Art Generator has hosted design competitions that explore the use of renewable energy as public art, in collaboration with a diverse array of iconic global cities, generating fascinating pictures of potential alternative energy and human futures, e.g., Land Art in the 21st Century (2021), Powering Places (2016), and Regenerative Infrastructures (2013). Solarpunk Magazine is a new publishing venue for fiction and non-fiction writing about solar futures that has just published Issue #1, as well as hosting an exciting podcast, Solarpunk Futures.

Our plan is:
* To invite one or two participants from each of the following categories to join the organizers for a curated conversation: writers, artists, designers, community leaders and organizers, futurists, and energy modelers and developers.
* To use the 90-minute session to host a conversation among about how to bring together diverse imaginative modalities to create rich, new possibilities for crafting sustainable and resilient human futures.
* To use the process of inviting participants, planning the session, and developing post-conference work plans to ensure both that the Anticipation 2022 event we curate is a productive and engaging experience for conference participants and also that it helps nucleate and curate a persistent community, conversation, and capacity to transform how energy futures get imagined and implemented.

Now is a critical moment in the energy transition, as the pathways set in place in the next few years will inevitably gather momentum and shape extensive financial investments over the next few decades. It is crucial to take this moment, therefore, to leverage all of our creative talents in the search for futures that are worth inhabiting for all people everywhere.

Abstract: Virtually everybody dreams. Ask a scientist or shaman about the function of our dreams, and each in their own terms may describe dreaming as anticipatory thinking and practice. From an evolutionary standpoint, dreams provide safe space for rehearsing survival scenarios. In utero, infants spend most of their time in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, when the highest concentration of dreams occur. The electrical activity of REM sleep supplies the building blocks for the nervous system, anticipating a lifetime of cognition by seeding the brain’s neural circuitry. Throughout our lives, dreams facilitate memory integration and emotional processing, thereby bolstering our capacity for the next day's mental and social demands.

Beyond their psychophysiological purposes for the individual, dreams have figured centrally in collective cultural practices of anticipation for many centuries. Through dream sharing and rituals, communities have long looked to dreams to discern portents about the future. Even in modern Western societies, wracked as they are by a cognitive dissonance about dreams cast by Freud’s long shadow, the anticipatory nature of dreams is well-documented.

Today, emerging tech is pushing past the boundary of consciousness with neurotechnologies that seem to interact directly with the dreaming mind. Dream tech includes wearable devices that induce lucid dreams, dream recording, VR therapy for PTSD nightmares, and even dream advertising. This curated session anticipates the future roles of technology in our lives from the place where dreams and tech collide. What do the goals of dream tech reveal about how we value our dreams as a society? Who can afford to sleep and dream soundly? How can we protect our creative, personal, and intellectual property against surveillant dream tech? What does ethical dream tech even look like?

The Black-led Radical Rest movement will provide a central lens for examining these questions and understanding the power of dreaming and dream technologies beyond the global north. The Black activists and artists leading this movement uplift physical and emotional rest as a powerful tool for healing trauma, fighting racism, and refusing the oppressive demands of capitalism.

Sleep tech is growing rapidly into a multi-billion dollar industry of products for a sleep-deprived society. Dream tech is a near-future iteration of sleep tech, with many startups already successfully raising millions for their products through crowdfunding and venture capital. Advancements in brain computer interfaces are leading national governments to anticipate irreversible impacts to data privacy and surveillance. Some are beginning to draw up the first laws to name and protect neurorights. 2021 saw the first dream advertisement - from a beer company - at the 2021 Superbowl. That same year, 77% of 400 marketing firms surveyed by the American Marketing Association said they plan to use dream tech for advertising in the next three years. Only 32% of them are opposed to the idea of dream advertising.

How will we reckon with the consequences of technology that grafts directly onto the interface of our minds? Perhaps no other part of ourselves is as private, personal, and mystifying as our dreams. When fixed in the crosshairs of consumer tech, perhaps no other part of ourselves reveals how high the stakes really are for the future. When embraced as a site for healing, restoration and liberation, perhaps no other part of ourselves offers such a vast space of potential and possibility.

The format of this curated session will combine presentation and interactive audience engagement to introduce dream neurotechnology and how this frontier tech space intersects with ethics and the Radical Rest movement. An overview of the historical emergence and anticipated future developments in dream neurotechnology will be followed by a guided audience exercise to facilitate deeper connection to attendees’ own personal stake in anticipating the future of dream tech in their lives and communities. The presentation and audience engagement activities will draw from the curators’ backgrounds in media studies, dream neuroscience, Radical Rest, Black liberation, and dream tech neuroethics.

Curators:
Aleena Chia is lecturer in media, communications, and cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she researches creative cultures in game development and computational wellness. She is co-editor of Reckoning with Social Media (2022, Rowman and Littlefield) and co-author of Technopharmacology (Forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press). Her work has been published in Television and New Media, Internet Policy Review, and American Behavioral Scientist. Her previous positions include assistant professor at Simon Fraser University, postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland’s Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, and PhD intern at Microsoft Research New England.

Adam Haar Horowitz
Adam Haar Horowitz is a PhD student at MIT, where he is project leader of the Dream Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab focused on dream science at MIT’s widely renowned Media Lab. Adam has served as a neuroscience researcher at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, a research affiliate at Harvard, and as an artist-scientist at the Marina Abramovic Institute. His work has been presented at the Cannes Film Festival, GoogleX, SXSW, the National Academy of Sciences, 60 Minutes, and the Boston Museum of Fine Art.

Mia Imani interrogates the ways that disenfranchised communities can heal individual, communal, and societal trauma by creating works that live in-between the worlds of art and science. This “third-way” mixes unconventional methods (dreams, rituals) and science (ethnography, geography, psychoanalysis) to dream new potential ways of being. Her creative and collaborative work has lived in the Northwest Film Forum, Seattle Art Museum Lab, Savvy Contemporary, and is expanding into the digital and other interdisciplinary spaces. Her written work lives both digitally and in print within publications Cultured Magazine, Contemporary And, Daddy Magazine, Frieze, Hyperallergic, Vice, and more.

Saelyx Finna
Saelyx Finna has over a decade of experience as a film nonprofit CEO, creative media producer, and dream tech researcher. She has presented on the neuroethics of dream tech at the Interaction Design Association and International Association for the Study of Dreams. Saelyx is the co-creator of Under the Dream, a set of creative media projects about the emergence of dream tech. Previously known as Courtney Sheehan, Saelyx is the former artistic and executive director for Northwest Film Forum (NWFF), the most comprehensive nonprofit film center and art house theater in the Pacific Northwest. She is a member of the Guild of Future Architects.

SCHOLARSHIP/REFERENCES
“Dreaming Black Futures” by edna bonhomme and Mia Imani Harrison
https://amlatina.contemporaryand.com/events/dreaming-black-futures-by-edna-bonhomme-and-mia-imani-harrison/

Virtual Lucidity: A Media Archaeology of Dream Hacking Wearables by Aleena Chia
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=cpo

“Dream Tech: Designing the Gateway to Infinity” IXDA Interaction20 Conference Presentation
https://vimeo.com/groups/8950/videos/389879594

Prisoners of the Dream: Inception and Coors, capitalism and pandemic dreaming
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/kiosk/spellberg_matthew_8_february_2022.php

Inside your dreamscape: Dream-hacking techniques can help us create, heal and have fun. They could also become tools of commercial manipulation
https://aeon.co/essays/dreams-are-a-precious-resource-dont-let-advertisers-hack-them

MIT Dream Engineers
https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/theme-engineering-dreams/overview/

Abstract: Participatory and critical approaches to futuring have a rich tradition within the field of Futures Studies (Andersson 2018; Seefried 2014). This continues today in calls for the democratization and decolonization of futures and Futures Studies (Gidley 2017; Larsen 2020), the rise of futures education and literacy (Miller 2018; Facer and Sriprakash 2021), and the embracing of art and design approaches to make the future more experiential, tangible and accessible (Candy and Dunagan 2017; Light 2021). However, participation is not a magic solution to issues of power and deficits of representation and often opens up as many questions and challenges as it seeks to solve. Given that more and more futures work is being done under the banner of ‘participatory’, it begs the question of how attentive this field of participatory futuring is to the issues of power that accompany this sort of work? This paper reports the findings of a systematic literature review of academic texts in the field of participatory futuring. It seeks to contribute to a more structured understanding of how current participatory futuring processes may live up to their democratic and emancipatory potentials.

Abstract: Simply stated, counterfactual histories use the technique of modifying the outcome of a historical event and then extrapolating a new version of history. In literature, imaginaries based on a poignant counterfactual history can offer thought-provoking insights and perspectives on contemporary life:

It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan. (Dick, 1992)

The Man in the High Castle describes the consequences of one of the popular starting points for counterfactual histories, Germany winning World War II. From a historian’s perspective, this theme offers a rich source of potential for re-imagining how the world might have evolved under these alternative circumstances. Typically, historians tend to focus on military "decision points" - a battle lost instead of won, a war avoided instead of launched - at which events could have taken another path (Bernstein, 2000). Alternatively scholars imagine the absence of powerful individuals from specific events to speculate on how things might have played out differently. Since history is “often written by the victors, it tends to ‘crush the unfulfilled potential of the past’, as Walter Benjamin so aptly put it. By giving a voice to the ‘losers’ of history, the counterfactual approach allows for a reversal of perspectives.” (Deluermoz & Singaravélou, 2021)

A counterfactual approach offers much potential as a methodology for practice-based design research and pedagogy - whilst it is possible to develop projects based on key historical or political events, outcomes can also emerge from more subtle or surprising factors that are particularly relevant to the act of designing. The benefits of this approach are numerous and timely.

Designers typically design for the world as it is rather than as it could be (Dunne & Raby, 2013). Design happens within entrenched systems whose foundations in many cases were laid centuries ago. Systems of economy (capitalism and growth), infrastructure (energy, transport, manufacture, food, etc.) and popular culture inform and constrain design methods, motivations and beliefs. Technological advances are applied via these rules, facilitating the iterative development of products and providing a neat lineage both from the past and into the future (redacted, 2017). This version of design, however, is increasingly being revealed as fundamentally flawed – highly successful in placating the demands of shareholders, it is not fit for purpose where ethical or environmental issues are concerned.

Counterfactuals provide an almost surreptitious method of combining design theory with practice. Through a more rigorous analysis of history, as it relates to a specific subject, the designer can identify the key elements that are problematic when viewed through a contemporary lens of practice. The approach can expose dominant structures of power and the influence these have on design culture and metrics: for example, the influence of legacy systems and how they limit the imagination and also reveal the hidden or unexpected historical events that influenced the timeline of the subject.

Here is a rough summary of counterfactual tactics described in the paper:

1. The approach begins with the choice of subject – what is to be designed and the creation of a detailed and diverse timeline of its history.
2. The identification of key moments or general observations that have led to the contemporary state of things; in particular the elements that could be critiqued from alternative value systems.
3. The creation of a counterfactual timeline based on numerous possibilities - this is the key difference in method between historiography and design. The approach essentially facilitates the creation of new value systems, motivations, rules and constraints that can be applied in practice; it is not simply an intellectual exercise.
4. The design of things along the new timeline; it can be furnished at key moments with artefacts informed by the alternative rules.

In A New Scottish Enlightenment, for example, Mohammed J. Ali poses a different outcome to the 1979 Scottish independence referendum (Debatty, 2014). In his version a “yes” vote leads to the creation of a new Scottish government whose ultimate goal is the delivery of energy independence for its citizens, paving the way for a future free from fossil fuels. The project was first exhibited three months before the last Scottish independence referendum in September 2014. This starting point (a simple yes or no vote) resonates because it vividly presents to the audience a life that could have been. It makes us think about the power of our vote and the potential implications or missed opportunities of a “bad choice”. The second aspect that gives the project wider relevance is the agenda used to drive extrapolation from its fictional starting point – a simple paradigm shift on energy generation and distribution. By defining citizen energy independence as a national goal, it becomes possible to begin outlining the ways through which this might happen. Important earlier examples of a counterfactual approach to design projects include Pohflepp and Chambers (redacted, 2012; Dunne & Raby, 2013).

In a recent first-year Master’s project at (redacted), themes included the creation of a feminist timeline of 20th-century design. With its focus on underrepresented groups and unrealised possibilities (and knock-on effects for the present and future), this concept resonates with Deluermoz and Singaravélou’s statement (quoted above), as well as a broader discourse about decolonising design. What alternative value systems and approaches to design might have emerged if 20th-century design history had not been defined by the works of Morris, Dreyfus, Bel Geddes, Gropius, Rams, Starck, Ives, Dyson, and the rest?

Taking up the point made by Benjamin, that alternative histories make room for “the unfulfilled potential of the past”, perhaps the most vital use of counterfactuals in design is to allow different voices to emerge that were drowned out by the dominant, hegemonic, or “standard” narrative(s). As we will explore in this paper, recognising alternative histories can open up valuable future paths and create space for rich new possibilities and new imaginaries to flourish.

Works Cited

(Redacted, 2012)

(Redacted, 2017)

Bernstein, R. B. (2000). Review of Ferguson, Niall, ed., Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. H-Law, H-Net Reviews. Accessed 8 February 2022: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3721

Chambers, James (2010). Artificial Defence Mechanisms. Accessed 29 January 2022: https://jameschambers.co.uk/artificial-defense-mechanisms

Debatty, Régine (2014). A New Scottish Enlightenment. We Make Money Not Art. Accessed 4 February 2022: https://we-make-money-not-art.com/a_new_scottish_enlightenment/

Deluermoz, Quentin & Pierre Singaravélou (2021). A Past of Possibilities: A History of What Could Have Been. Yale University Press.

Dick, Phillip K. (1992). The Man in the High Castle. Vintage.

Dunne, Anthony & Fiona Raby (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT Press.

Pohflepp, Sascha (2009). The Golden Institute. Accessed 16 February 2022: http://cargocollective.com/saschapohflepp/Work/The-Golden-Institute

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is considered a key technology in contemporary societies. Political and economic stakeholders in many countries have mobilized considerable resources to its development, particularly in leading economies like China, Germany and the US. At the same time, the technology has been the object of extensive public debates. Although some of these debates have been criticized for using the concept of AI vaguely and inconsistently, for over-hyping its promise, and for oscillating between naive hopes and dystopian fears, these debates are nevertheless important. They are a crucial part in societies' negotiations of the future they envision for themselves, and the shape and place that the technology should take therein. In this paper, we conduct a cross-national analysis on how industry stakeholders shape the public debates about AI and the implications for its further development in the three countries.

Analyses from Science and Technology Studies (STS), Social Studies of Science (SSS), Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), reflexive technology assessment and other interdisciplinary fields have demonstrated that technologies are socially (co)constructed. They show that technological development and institutionalization are not driven by an inherent, instrumental logic of a given technology, but shaped by political, economic, cultural, legal and other social forces. In consequence, technological fields such as AI feature high levels of contingency and “interpretative flexibility” (Pinch & Bijker, 1984; Meyer & Schulz-Schaeffer, 2006) with different possible trajectories. In retrospect, technology always “might have been otherwise” (Bijker & Law, 1992:. 3). Jasanoff and Kim (2009) have introduced the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (SI) to define “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures [or of fears of either not realizing those futures or causing unintended harm in the pursuit of technological advances], animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology" (Jasanoff & Kim, 2016: 4). Coined to comparatively capture both the high relevance of shared narratives and imaginations for collectives and the role and contingency of technology in building and ordering different societies, SI is a highly productive concept for studying the institutionalization of AI in contemporary societies.

Recent research has identified a strong dominance of industry representatives in media reporting about AI (Brennen et al 2018, Zeng et al 2020), and, at the same time, remarkably different imaginaries in the national Al strategies in these countries reflecting their cultural, political, and economic differences (Bareis and Katzenbach 2021). It still remains unclear, though, in which ways major industry stakeholders effectively interact with national agendas and public imaginaries of AI technologies by pushing their own favorable imaginaries and future visions into the public sphere. We investigate this through a comparative discourse analysis of corporate stakeholder communications, reports, industry analysis, and social media presence from major AI companies in the three countries. In the analysis, we particularly seek to understand the similarities and differences in their visions for AI’s future, and how a globalized market negotiates political tensions and cultural differences in the context of such emerging technologies with potential impact beyond national borders. For example, while industry stakeholders have been promoting the narrative of “tech for good” across China, Germany and the US, what are their visions of the good society, how AI can meet public needs, and who are the relevant publics? How do they anticipate the “bad” and prepare to mitigate the risks associated with AI? How do industry stakeholders across the three countries interpret “sustainable AI” and steer their policy efforts to achieve that? What can the similarities and differences in these most powerful stakeholders’ imaginaries tell us about the opportunities and pitfalls for the global governance of AI?

Science and technology related future-making through discourse and practices have been studied by scholars using diverse and yet closely related concepts, “socio-technical imaginaries” and “anticipation” being the two. While these two lines of research share the focus on future representation and their performativity, this paper hopes to better the understanding of tech industry’s influence on the making of public goods associated with AI, the cultural variations of this phenomenon, as well as academia’s role in intervening and ensuring the future of socially beneficial AI.

References

Bareis, Jascha, and Christian Katzenbach. “Talking AI into Being: The Narratives and Imaginaries of National AI Strategies and Their Performative Politics.” Science, Technology, & Human Values, July 2021.

Bijker, W. E., & Law, J. (Eds.) Building Society, Shaping Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1992.

Brennen, J Scott, Philip N Howard, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. “An Industry-Led Debate: How UK Media Cover Artificial Intelligence,” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, December 2018.

Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. Containing the Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Nuclear Power in the United States and South Korea. Minerva, 47(2), 119–146. 2009.

Jasanoff, S, and Kim, S.-H. eds. Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Meyer, U., & Schulz-Schaeffer, I. Three Forms of Interpretative Flexibility. Science, Technology & Innovation Studies, 2006.

Pinch, T. J., & Bijker, W. E. The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14, 399–441, 1984.

Zeng, Jing, Chung-hong Chan, and Mike S Schäfer. “Contested Chinese Dreams of AI? Public Discourse about Artificial Intelligence on WeChat and People’s Daily Online: Information, Communication & Society.” Information, Communication & Society, June 12, 2020.

Abstract: Abstract:
Inspired by the suite of methods put forth by anticipatory governance (Barben et al. 2008; Guston 2014) our project aimed to integrate expert and public deliberation as key inputs into governance discourse on the future of human genome editing. Expert scenario workshops were held in the Fall of 2020, followed by public deliberations in the Fall of 2021, as part of a three-year project funded by the NIH to use an anticipatory and deliberative approach to the governance of human genome editing. This paper will analyze the role of social empathy (Segal 2011;2013;2017;2018) in the anticipatory process and public participatory technology assessment (Kaplan et al 2021) of human genome editing.

Supporting material:
The project employed a novel method for expert input into public deliberation by using future scenarios, generated in the first year of the project with an interdiciplinary and global group of experts, as input for public deliberation materials. In year one of the project, the team interviewed 30 interdisciplinary scholars and experts, and fed key information from the interviews into a card deck, which was used in a scenario workshop with experts to create four scenarios, or plausible future worlds, that feature human genome editing. This suite of methods revealed how different future states could evolve under a set of artificial constraints based on a limited number of “critical uncertainties,” reflecting social, technological, economic, environmental, and political issues, which have pivotal effects on the development and future use of human genome editing (Selin et al. 2022 in progress).

During the second year of the project, science museum educators adapted these scenarios to a lay public audience, in a translational effort to integrate the information derived from the expert workshop into the public deliberations. Additionally, the team created unique character cards to stand in the deliberations as stakeholders, as unfolding and evolving stories, to faciliate public deliberation (Boston, Phoenix, Houston, and online). Over the course of a six-hour deliberative workshop, diverse publics encountered the characters a total of three times, including once in relation to one of the four future scenarios.

Using the social empathy construct, the analysis presented in this paper details survey results, as well as qualitative coding of participant workbooks and interviews with 30 randomly sampled participants, conducted after the deliberations to better understand how our method invoked deeper contextual understanding of systemic barriers and macro perspective taking of social “others” when deliberating upon present values and the future of human genome editing.

Key questions this paper seeks to address are as follows:
- How do you stage conversations with publics, with technologically and scientifically complex topics like CRISPr?
-What is the role of social empathy in public deliberations around ethically important topics like CRISPr?
-How is social empathy constructed or deconstructed in small group public dialogues about the future?


Key works cited:

Barben, Daniel, et al. "38 Anticipatory Governance of Nanotechnology: Foresight, Engagement, and Integration." The handbook of science and technology studies 979 (2008).

Guston, David H. "Understanding ‘anticipatory governance’." Social studies of science 44.2 (2014): 218-242.

Kaplan, Leah R., et al. "Designing Participatory Technology Assessments: A Reflexive Method for Advancing the Public Role in Science Policy Decision-making." Technological Forecasting and Social Change 171 (2021): 120974.

Segal, Elizabeth A. "Social empathy: A model built on empathy, contextual understanding, and social responsibility that promotes social justice." Journal of Social Service Research 37.3 (2011): 266-277.

Segal, Elizabeth A., et al. "A confirmatory factor analysis of the interpersonal and social empathy index." Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research 4.3 (2013): 131-153.

Segal, Elizabeth A., et al. Assessing empathy. Columbia University Press, 2017.

Segal, Elizabeth. Social empathy. Columbia University Press, 2018.

Selin, Cynthia et al. “Researching the Future: Scenarios to Explore the Future of Gene Editing” 2022 in progress.

Abstract: At the present moment, natural history museums around the world are in the process of digitizing their collections of millions of objects (such as insects, mollusks, herbaria), for example by taking high definition photographs of specimens. Making historical collections of natural objects digitally available is presented as essential to understanding the state of biodiversity in the past, and by comparing that to the present, to identify changes in biodiversity over the past two hundred years. By digitizing large numbers of natural history specimens, museum directors and researchers are stressing we can furthermore gain insights into possible futures, as these collections are believed to hold the potential to answer to oncoming challenges posed by the effects of climate change.

In the discourse around specimen digitization, acceleration and speed come forward as central notions. On the one hand, the world is said to face the ‘rapid’ decline of biological diversity, with biodiversity being lost at ‘accelerating rates’. This loss is presented as an ongoing emergency that is gaining momentum, that must be ‘slowed down’. In order to slow it down, to keep climatic catastrophe at bay, digitization efforts need to speed up, or so we are told. With the rapid, industrialized digitization of objects, researchers and museum directors hope that knowledge on changes in biodiversity will grow, offering ‘solutions’ to our catastrophic times.

Adopting the analytical lenses of temporality and speed, this paper investigates the politics of digitization. Seeing that digitization is presented as a means of mobilizing natural history collections towards providing insight into possible futures, the paper asks how these imaginaries of (un)desirable futures are given shape. Who are in- and excluded from these? Who is in a position to imagine futures radically different? Taking the Entomology Conveyor, at the Museum of Natural History (MfN) in Berlin as a case study, this paper takes issue with speed and time to politicize the mass digitization of natural history collections. This conveyor belt system, advertised as the first of its kind, offers an ‘industrial and automated’ approach to specimen digitization. Additionally, the Entomology Conveyor is not just aimed at digitizing the collection of insects, but is set up in a public exhibition, offering insights into digitization as a spectacle, a performative demonstration.

Abstract: This paper confronts the overall research question of what is the nature and quality of the contributions of experts, stakeholders, and the wider public in detailed techno-economical input to scenario analyses used for debating and policy decisions on the sustainable transition.

Empirically, the paper considers the case of the ‘Danish Technology Catalogues’. There are multiple techno-economic pathways for the transition to a sustainable energy system (Rosenbloom, 2017). In this sense, there are plural sustainable futures. To address this, like other countries, Denmark employs a range of foresight and anticipatory approaches to establish a platform for debate on possible ways to a sustainable future that meet international targets for CO2 reductions. The Danish Energy Agency uses model-based scenarios to analyse different techno-economic pathways to achieve the sustainable transition of the energy system. The scenarios describe alternative futures and their implications. Possible consequences of these alternative futures are examined using an energy systems model based on the TIMES model framework. The scenarios and their consequences are used as a foundation for discussions and policy decisions on the sustainable transition.

All modelling is based on a range of input and epistemic assumptions about the future including whether it can be predicted in any useful modelling process (Silvast et al., 2020). In the Danish case, some inputs are based on internationally recognized forecasts provided by international organizations like World Energy Outlook from IEA. However, the Danish Energy Agency also develops the ‘Danish Technology Catalogues’. For each technology (e.g., large wind turbines offshore), a description of the present state of the technology and future prospectives are described, including assessments of future techno-economic data (e.g., cost and performance data) for time horizons of 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050. The techno-economic data typically contain technical issues (e.g., average unit size, outage percentage, technical lifetime, regulatory ability) and economic issues (e.g., CAPEX and O&M). If relevant, the assessments also contain environmental impact (e.g., emissions of SO2, NOx, and particles). The methodology used for establishing the data sets includes traditional foresight methods such as defining the technology, finding and selecting experts and stakeholders, expert reports, extrapolations, stakeholder workshops, wider public consulting, and dissemination of the results. The Danish Technology Catalogues are not only an exemplar of energy policy planning in Denmark. The data and the methods behind the data have become international influential and utilized as a more detailed and updated alternative to projections by international actors, e.g., IEA/OECD. Similar energy technology catalogues were developed for India in a governmental India-Denmark Energy Partnership.

The theoretical framework behind this paper draws from two coherent and established theoretical fields that are of relevance for addressing the research questions. First, we consider Science and Technology Studies approaches on public engagement in science and technology (Rowe and Frewer, 2005; Stirling, 2008; Stilgoe, Lock and Wilsdon, 2014; Kern, 2015; Selin et al., 2016), which we bring into the field of anticipation research. A sizable literature on this topic has documented that involving stakeholders and citizens in debates and research about science and technology is generally seen as crucial to secure an impact on actual policymaking and produce positive societal outcomes. However, Chilvers and Kearnes have recognized two different and potentially incompatible research and policy interests: one a normative interest in increasing participation and democracy, another a constructivist approach on a situated description of how the concept of the public is produced in different interventions (Chilvers and Kearnes, 2020). As both these lines show, the concepts of experts and stakeholders are contested and debated (Stirling, 2008; Freeman et al., 2010; Colvin, Witt and Lacey, 2016; Miles, 2017), both as concerns who is a participant in democratic processes and as concerns how these participants are constructed, and several studies have pointed at the blurred distinctions between experts, stakeholders, and researchers (Andersen, Hansen and Selin, 2021). Second, we draw on the extensive literature on foresight, scenario planning and stakeholder involvement in scenarios. Scenarios are here considered as a method to engage stakeholders in a strategic conversation on exploring uncertainties, plotting alternative futures, and devising resilience policy and strategy options (van der Heiden, 1996; Cairns et al., 2013; Ramirez and Wilkingson, 2016).

Bringing insights from these two literatures together allows us to produce novel contributions considering how ideas of the future inform action in the present, especially by relying on assumptions about stakeholders and expertise that have implications for fairness and equity and should hence be opened up to critical inquiry and practical development. There exist a wealth of studies on stakeholder involvement in scenario planning in the domain of energy and sustainable development (Chilvers, Pallett and Hargreaves, 2018; Sovacool et al., 2020; Andersen, Hansen and Selin, 2021; McGookin, Ó Gallachóir and Byrne, 2021). Furthermore, the asymmetric distribution of resources and power relations in scenario planning is an extensive research topic in scenario planning literature (Wright, Cairns and Bradfield, 2013; Cairns, Wright and Fairbrother, 2016; Bourgeois et al., 2017; Cairns and Wright, 2019). However, recent literature has tended to focus on engagement, particularly as public deliberation (Sovacool et al., 2020) and everyday engagement with energy technologies (Ryghaug, Skjølsvold and Heidenreich, 2018). Only a few studies exist on the very front end of the scenario process, where experts and stakeholder representatives are often involved in identifying assumptions about future trends and providing basic data (Andersen, Hansen and Selin, 2021). Although – or because of - the predictive nature of the assessments of techno-economic futures of the energy technologies, uncertainty is a key issue. Processes leading to plausible and reliable techno-economic data for future energy technologies are not trivial. There is a lack of studies of such data, particularly for emerging technologies (Fodstad et al., forthcoming). This situation makes the normally hidden data and methods underpinning energy futures, including their production, of interest to all those engaging with anticipation.

Abstract: We are living in times of insecurity and risk. We are also living in a media society, where we need the media to help us make sense of our times. However, the contemporary media landscape is weird and illusive. It is argued that technology and the media are bringing us into an age of “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff 2019), or even into a “dark new age” (Bridle 2018). However, it is important to not fall into the trap of painting too simplistic portrayals of extremely complex processes; we should not fall into too simplistic true/false, reality/illusion dichotomies.

British cultural theorist Mark Fisher (2016) reminds us that the “weird” may a be sign of that we are in the presence of the new, and a signal that the concepts and frameworks which we have previously employed are obsolete. In other words, a weird media landscape contains possibilities for making sense not only of the present but also of the future. But in order to make these possibilities real, we need new ways of thinking, and conceptualizing.

The purpose of this presentation is to discuss possibilities of rethinking and reconceptualizing the relationship between the current media landscape – its content and processes – and its inherent potentialities for helping us in thinking the previously unthought, and in seeing the previously unseen.

The concept of imaginaries, social and sociotechnical, will be central. As Jasanoff writes, these are “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures” (2015:4; cf. Castoriadis 1975/1987; Taylor 2003). To a great extent it is in the media we find the impulses and inspirations for these imaginaries.

We will also turn to the figure of the monster. Recent years have seen a turn to this figure and to the concept of the monstrous when it comes to popular depictions of digital technologies and creations. Examples are depictions of the development of AI as potentially overthrowing their creators, as in films such as “Ex Machina” and “I am Robot”, and the creation of Twitter bots pretending to be humans. We argue that the turn to the monster in popular – scientific and artistic – depictions of digital technologies indicate cultural anxieties concerning technological developments, which it is crucial to take seriously and address, but also to challenge. In popular culture, the monster is normally regarded as a negative boundary-creature that threatens to undo the structures we rely on to understand our surroundings. Yet, this undoing of normative categories can also be regarded as promising (Haraway, 1992), even hopeful (McCormack, 2015); taking the figure of the monster and its fraught relationship with its creator seriously may open up for other imaginaries. In the upheaval caused by the monster lies the potential for change and transformation.

We will furthermore use the concept of hauntology. Coined by Derrida (1994), the concept is a play on the words ‘ontology’ and ‘haunting’. Hauntology applies the figure of the spectre in order to rethink ontology through haunting, thereby accommodating the aspects of reality that are not straightforwardly present and immediate, but instead have a haunting present absence; we are always haunted – both by the past and by the anticipated future. Derrida argues that communication technologies produce such present absences as they replicate and circulate images, sounds and text. Despite intriguing hints, Derrida did not theorize the internet through hauntology, and though some scholars have since attempted to do so (Fisher 2014; Blackman 2019), the full extent of how hauntology can help us conceptualize and theorize what it means to live in times of spectral, digital systems is yet to be explored.

In the presentation we will discuss ways in which the proposed conceptual framework may help us to rethink our relationship to the media and the future, but we will also discuss how such a framework may be relevant for the field of Anticipation Studies. We will furthermore propose new methods based on creative writing for rethinking and retelling stories of future co-existence and companionship with techno-monsters (Henriksen et al. 2021).

References
Blackman, Lisa (2019) Haunted Data: Affect, Transmedia and Weird Science. London: Bloomsbury.
Bridle, James (2018) New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. London: Verso.
Castoriadis, Cornelius (1975/1987) The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York: Routledge.
Fisher, Mark (2014) Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books.
Fisher (2016) The Weird and the Eerie. London: Repeater Books.
Haraway, Donna J. (1992) “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others”, pp. 295-336 in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula A. Treichler (eds.) Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.
Henriksen, Line, Katrine Meldgaard Kjær, Marie Blønd, Marisa Cohn, Baki Cakici, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Pedro Ferreira, Viktoriya Feshak, Simy Kaur Gahoonia and Sunniva Sandbukt (2021) “Writing Bodies and Bodies of Text: Thinking Vulnerability through Monsters”, Gender, Work & Organization, 1-14.
Jasanoff, Sheila (2015) “Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity”, pp. 1-34 in Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim (eds.) Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McCormack, Donna (2015) “Hopeful Monsters: A Queer Hope of Evolutionary Difference”, pp. 154-173 in Somatechnics 5/2.
Taylor, Charles (2003) Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.
Zuboff, Shoshana (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books.

Abstract: This is a work-in-progress multipart videogame titled Night Walks. It is a series of interconnected software objects that are intended to explore expressive, environmental entities (AI "minds" that exist on the level of the landscape). On a private server, the players' actions are recorded, and Night Walks, in its various client instances, calls up this memory data and responds to it.

Night Walk 1 is a virtual reality landscape, where the player is on a balcony surrounded by and isolated from silhouetted neighbors. The environment records certain actions the player performs, currently the act of grabbing animated forms out of the landscape with their hands and placing them. This data is sent to the private server, to be interpreted by Night Walk 2, 3 and 4.

Themes are not explicit, but the design choices come from feelings related to anticipation of future collapse and instability, the overwhelming power of nature, and grief from memories of imagined alternate futures. Readings related to post-human worlds inform the work as well. The data on the cloud serves as a form of environmental memory. The game reacts in abstract and unpredictable ways to the players' behavior.

This project is a place to process and reflect on these feelings. However, indirectly, art like this can be a part of action. Panu Pihkala's article "Climate Anxiety" (2019) argues that the process of feeling one's grief and related emotions leads to empowerment.

Night Walk 2 applies the data from the server to the reconfiguring of vignettes in a non-interactive 2D space. These are composed of images traced from my own photography. The act of tracing, rather than cutting out the images, anonymizes and disassociates them. This iteration is non-interactive, a form of electronic dreaming influenced by the gameplay of others. In an installation environment, the player is invited to move between these different software mediums and contexts, returning to the lived world in between.

In Night Walk 3, the sound of rain activates a non-visual landscape. The player wanders through 3D spatialized audio of a city-turned-forest. Audio events are triggered by network data: ambiguous sounds, memories that assume the scripted and complex behavior of wildlife entering and exiting the player's world.

Night Walk 4 is the least realized, and might not be discussed.

Night Walk 5 is a self-playing, text-based game. The word scroll on the screen follows an artificially-intelligent "player" in a forest environment. Irrational movement and choices are inspired by Robert J. Koester's search and rescue manual, Lost Person Behavior. These behaviors will trigger new data to be uploaded to the server which other software objects in the series will use.

I'm looking for impressions of and responses to this work.

Sources:
Koester, R. J. (2008). Lost person behavior: A search and rescue guide on where to look for land, air, and water. Charlottesville, VA: dbS Productions.
Pihkala,P. (2019). "Climate Anxiety". Helsinki: MIELI Mental Health Finland.

Abstract: == ABSTRACT ==
The Challenge:
The term ‘decolonization’ appears to now have become a victim of the buzzword machine. It is generously peppered in documents and discourses loosely and ambiguously across sectors and spaces, including in the futures community. As buzzwords often do, this rampant misuse runs the risk of diluting its critical mission.

The way we see it, decolonization reminds us to actively question and reflect on the origins of the ethos and epistemology underpinning present day fields of study, economic models, ways of doing, and - arguably the crux of it - our very imagination. But decolonization does not just stop there as a concept. It further asks us to actively identify and nurture a diverse way of thinking and doing, rooted in indigenous, place-based inspirations and plural worldviews.

When thinking about our futures- this becomes critical. We create what we can imagine. Our imagination is one of the most powerful tools we have as individuals and as a society.

There is a long list of global challenges that must be met by our collective imaginations of alternative futures. We must question the technological-based hegemonic narrative being imposed on our futures. We must alleviate the bifurcation of and polarization among different social and cultural groups. We must reimagine our exhausted, yet still dominant, economic models and even the very centrality of the economy in contemporary societies.

The Response:
Given the urgency and magnitude of the many issues that surround us, we seek to contribute to their potential reframing and rethinking and ultimately, innovative addressal that draw from the wider imagination of communities around the world.

In our research we have come to realize there is no singular place we can find an inspiring collection of foresight methods from around the world. We would like to change that by making it a bit easier for stand-out global futures methods to connect to an interested audience.

Our “The Futures methods from around the world” initiative is that attempt. Beyond what we may even be able to find, we realize most such applied methods will not be tagged or categorized as “foresight”, or even documented formally at the moment, let alone documented in English, so our initiative will be an iterative project that in each phase is part discovery, part support, part recognition and amplification.

Our first milestone is to identify 10 methods from around the world, and then sharing this collective wisdom more widely and amplifying the voices of the people behind them - such as through this curated session.

This initiative is spearheaded by Prateeksha Singh, a NGFP 2019 winner for her Lotus framework (a framework for practitioners who want to do equity-based anti-colonial, culturally sensitive and inclusive work in diverse communities) with members of the NGFP Sensing Network and support by the School of International Futures (SOIF). (The NGFP’s Sensing Network is one of the largest global networks of future-alert activists and practitioners globally.)

Outputs for the Curated Session:
The curated session will be a space for us to amplify foresight practices and their authors that are emerging and unfamiliar to dominant strands of the foresight academia and foresight practitioner communities. The curates session will generate discussions around Public Futures and Decolonizing Anticipation.

== Session Participants ==
1. Session Curators
1A. Prateeksha Singh
Thailand
(Consultant, UNDP)
Prateeksha Singh spearheads the “The Futures methods from around the world” initiative and is responsible for bringing together members of the NGFP Network and other partners to drive the initiative forward.

1B.Daniel Riveong (Indonesian, based in Spain)
NGFP Practice Lead and Foresight Advisor at School of International Futures
Provides organizational support for the initiative at the School of International Futures

2. Other Participants
To be confirmed. Within the NGFP network, we have several new foresign practitioners who are actively contributing new frameworks and tools to the futures space in regions like Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In the next six months, we anticipate identifying several others, including outside our immediate network, which will shape the final participants list.

== Session Format: Curated Session ==
A full 90-minutes session on “Foresight methods from around the world” initiative and select foresight tools identified as part of the initiative. The session focus is in creating space for the people behind the foresight tools to speak.

A. Introducing the Initiative (15 minutes)
-- Introduction: An introductory overview of the initiative in relation to the conference themes and introduces the participants. (5 minutes)
-- Prateeksha Singh and Daniel Riveong, co-minutes for this session and leads for the “Foresight methods from around the world” initiative, shares lessons and insights of identifying new methods from around the world, including criteria and governance process. (10 minutes)

Amplifying Voices (60 minutes)
As part of our mission to identify and amplify voices in foresight, we will invite two speakers from the identified foresight tools to share their work. Our intent is for this part of the session to be interactive, and where possible, participatory (simultaneously engaging both virtual and in-person).
-- Two participants (to be named) are to present introductions on their tool: what it is, how it contributes to decolonization of our imagination, approach and case studies, future artefact creation (30 minutes each, 60 minutes total)

Moderated Discussion and Q&A (15 minutes)
Co-Conveners will chair a moderated discussion, which will also encourage and invite questions from the audience, connected to the following themes:
1. Public Futures:
- How can futuring and anticipation be a shared public good?
- How do different communities around the world create and act on their own futures?
- How could these diverse ways of imagining the future support us in exploring the possibilities of how we might rethink certain global yet interconnected issues?

2. Decolonizing Anticipation:
- How do different cultures, religions and traditions anticipate?
- How is anticipation connected to emancipation, revolution, activism and social movements?

== Main Contact ==
Main Contact
Prateeksha Singh
prateeksha.singh@gmail.com

Secondary Contact
Daniel Riveong
daniel@soif.org.uk

Abstract: Development finance seeks to capitalise on development opportunities to which traditional sources of finances do not flow owing to one or more perceived risks. The articulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has focussed the flow of funding to development opportunities that are poised to deliver social and environmental benefits; the confluence of which is encompassed within the just energy transition.

COVID-19 has eroded gains made in the eradication of poverty and reduction in inequality espoused in the SDGs; more so in developing countries (Stiglitz, 2020). This necessitates reorientation of investments by financial actors, including development finance institutions (DFIs), into initiatives that are necessary to sustain lives and livelihoods. This raises the questions of whether investment by DFIs in energy transitions can support socio-economic recovery post the COVID-19 crisis and if so, what recoding of institutional governance is required to enable DFIs to respond to social equity considerations in renewable energy finance into the future.

This paper reflects on how COVID-19, as a moment of rupture, provides an opportunity for a community of development finance practitioners and researchers to come together and collectively reimagine and recode (Hoffman, et. al, 2021) the institutional milieu of DFIs that have committed to working together to advance social justice within the context of energy transitions. Following the definition of anticipatory governance by Muiderman, et. al (2020:1), as “governing in the present to adapt to or shape uncertain futures”, this paper draws on interviews and workshops with development finance actors as it explores the experiences and responses of development finance actors in terms of the COVID-19 crisis in relation to decision making in financing the just energy transition and how the perception of COVID-19 as a crisis enables and constrains development finance actors to bolster the finance-equity nexus in the energy transition through the recoding of decision-making.

This paper relates to existing research, literature and / or practice in the fields of anticipatory governance and just energy transitions in that existing research focusses on anticipatory governance in relation to energy transitions as a response to climate change generally (Muiderman, et. al, 2020) and specifically focusses on anticipatory governance frameworks for local government regimes (Boston, 2016 and Serrao-Neuman, et. al, 2013), where empirical work is concentrated in the developed regions of the Global North and Oceania.

Fuerth (2009), while focussing on the Global North, does pose the question whether foresight required to respond to challenges in countries in the Global South is similar or different to foresight applied in the Global North, but does not provide a response to this question. This is a gap in existing literature and necessitates a response, particularly in relation to the disproportionate adverse impacts of COVID-19 on social equity in the Global South (Stiglitz, 2020). Other literature focusses on anticipatory governance in relation to energy technologies (Davies & Selin, 2012), but not the institutional work that needs to be recoded to reconfigure finance for a just energy transition / energy futures.

To the authors’ best knowledge, no literature exists that focusses on anticipatory governance for development finance institutions in relation to financing just energy transitions; both in terms of what is required to recode development finance institutions to bolster the finance-energy nexus and the process by which this may be achieve. In terms of the latter, the methodology of collaborative enquiry, a transdisciplinary research approach that foregrounds co-production of knowledge generated through iterative interactions, is employed.

Thus, the research seeks to develop a participatory process, together with development finance actors, to empower development finance institutions to reimagine and recode institutional governance to better respond to crises, based on learning from the COVID-19 crisis, with a specific focus on financing the just energy transition. This is necessary as it is well established that DFIs have played, and will continue to play, a significant role in financing energy transitions (Lam & Law, 2018) and Quay (2010:496) employs public institutions to “…embrace new methods that explore uncertainty and that provide strategic guidance for current and future decisions” in a context where “the resilience of… individual public institutions… is far from straightforward (Boston, 2016:16).

This paper responds to the conference theme of politics, justice and ethics of anticipation in that it focusses on the question of how anticipatory regimes produce and / or reimagine governance, with a specific emphasis on reimagining and recoding (Hoffman, et. al, 2021) decision-making in development finance institutions in relation to just energy transitions. The paper explores the required recoding of decision-making and decision-making frameworks of development finance institutions, as a key element of anticipatory governance and employs a participatory methodology to determine the recoding required.

Importantly, this paper integrates development finance institutions, and the finance community more broadly, into anticipatory governance discussions, with a specific emphasis on generatively reimaging and recoding finance institutions’ governance to bolster just energy futures.

Abstract: Smart Cities call for Responsible Futuring

This workshop invites participants to engage with an immersive web experience called ‘Future Frictions’ to reflect on and debate about smart city futures. We aim to gather reflections on how tangibilizing futures by using a web experience stimulates ethical reflection and debate about the impacts of technology on cities, to activate desirable smart city futures.

Smart cities use technology to collect, analyze and apply data of activities with the intention of improving urban life (Vanolo, 2016). Although technology offers opportunities for optimization like an improvement of traffic flows or more efficient waste management, it also impacts urban life and society in (sometimes) unintended ways. Often, smart cities give rise to societal challenges. For example, how to safeguard citizens’ privacy and freedom in increasingly surveillance-led smart city projects? How to launch initiatives that ensure a fair and transparent control of technology? In essence, smart cities can be controversial (Baibarac-Duignan and de Lange, 2021). The responsible development of smart cities requires forms of engagement that support ethical reflection on the impacts of technology, and bring together a diversity of stakeholders to establish constructive dialogues about desirable smart city futures. This way, controversies can come to the surface to explore how prioritizing certain values in smart cities can ultimately impact our everyday lives, now and in the long term.

Smart cities, therefore, pose societal challenges that call for transdisciplinary collaboration, to engage stakeholders in processes of ‘Responsible Futuring’. Responsible Futuring is an approach developed at the DesignLab of the University of Twente to address societal challenges and co-shape responsible futures. Starting from societal challenges, Responsible Futuring offers an approach to establish dialogues to reflect on the social implications of our actions, putting at the center transdisciplinary collaboration, ethical reflection, and the exploration of potential futures to make informed decisions in the present.

Tangibilizing smart city futures with Future Frictions

Imagining and ideating potential futures is one of the main pillars of this approach, having ‘tangibilizing’ at its core. Tangibilizing or ‘visibilizing’ (Matos Castaño et al., 2020; Schoffelen et al., 2015) revolves around making abstract concepts (like the impacts of technology on society) tangible to support reflection and constructive transdisciplinary collaboration. In this context, speculative design (Dunne and Raby, 2013) or experiential futures (Candy et al., 2017) provide tools and techniques to bring abstract notions of potential futures to the present to provoke and reflect on our current practices and choices.

In this context, our workshop proposes ‘Future Frictions’ as a creative means of engagement. Our goal is to activate desirable smart city futures by stimulating ethical reflection, becoming aware of a diversity of values, and debating about the impacts of technology on society. Future Frictions is an interactive, digital, and scenario-based tool developed as part of the ‘Designing for Controversies in Responsible Smart Cities’ research project. This 15-minute web experience immerses participants in a neighborhood where they can interact with residents and witness relatable urban activities. At different points of time, participants encounter smart city technologies, and they are asked to decide on the use of the data collected by these technologies. These decisions are controversial, provocative, and intentionally ambiguous to make participants doubt their initial choices and thus become more open to other values different than theirs. After making decisions on the use of these technologies, participants experience the effects of their choices, by watching firsthand how the neighborhood has changed, as well as the interactions between and with residents.

Format of the session

Our 90-minute workshop invites participants to engage with Future Frictions to reflect on and discuss how it supports responsible futuring for smart cities. We invite a diverse group of a maximum of 20 researchers and practitioners that have an affinity with creative forms of engagement to engage multiple stakeholders in futuring processes. The workshop consists of the following steps:

1- Intro and experience Future Frictions (30 min)
After introducing the context of the project and the main goal of the session, participants will experience Future Frictions in groups of a maximum of 5 people. While engaging with Future Frictions in groups, participants will negotiate the choices they make regarding the use of smart city technology and discuss the outcomes in groups.

2- Ethical reflection (20 min)
This step focuses on stimulating ethical reflection. To this end, participants will individually reflect on a set of reflective questions to process the experience and synthesize the type of thoughts that originated from it.

Did the web experience raise any controversies for you? If so, what controversies?
What type of ethical considerations does Future Frictions make you think of?
In what way does the format of Future Frictions help you to reflect on ethical issues that you did not consider before?
What aspects of urban life that you consider important do you think were affected?
Do you recognize these in your city or around you? How?
How does FF make you think about technology in cities?
What other, alternative urban futures does FF make you think of?

To answer the questions, we will provide templates so participants can individually reflect on the questions to share in step 3.

3- Group discussion: from reflection to debate (20 min)
In this step, participants share their reflections from the previous step. In particular, they discuss the type of ethical reflections Future Frictions stimulates, and in what way its format contributes to stimulating those reflections. After discussing in groups, participants will be requested to come up with a group narrative describing the most striking thought that Future Frictions brought up.

4- General reflection and wrap up (20 min)
In this step, we will invite participants to reflect on two main aspects the role that tangibilizing activities through creative media (like Future Frictions) play for transdisciplinary collaboration and ethical reflection.

The outcomes of the workshop will help us to further develop the Responsible Futuring approach, as well as further test Future Frictions to explore its role in stimulating ethical reflection and debate.

References:
Baibarac-Duignan, C., & de Lange, M. (2021). Controversing the datafied smart city: Conceptualising a ‘making-controversial’approach to civic engagement. Big Data & Society, 8(2), 20539517211025557.

Baibarac-Duignan, C., Matos-Castaño, J., Controversing Datafication Through Media Architectures (in press, to be published inData (as) Media, Art and Performance (to be published in 2022, from the Media Architecture Biennale).

Candy, Stuart, & Jake Dunagan. 2017. Designing an experiential scenario: The people who vanished. Futures, 86, 136-153.

Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT press.

Matos-Castaño, J., Geenen, A., and van der Voort, M. (2020) The role of participatory design activities in supporting sense-making in the smart city, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.133

Schoffelen, J., Claes, S., Huybrechts, L., Martens, S., Chua, A., & Moere, A. V. (2015). Visualising things. Perspectives on how to make things public through visualisation. CoDesign, 11(3-4), 179-192.

Vanolo, A. (2016). Is there anybody out there? The place and role of citizens in tomorrow’s smart cities. Futures, 82, 26-36.

Abstract: Abstract
This paper proposes a reflection on a participatory process to codesign urban commons as a form of public anticipation. Our reflection builds upon a specific case study named ‘Rival(u)ta Rivalta’ (that can be translated as ‘Re-value Rivalta’), a multistakeholder codesign process carried out by the authors with the objective to imagine the future of an important urban commons for the Italian city of Reggio Emilia: the Rivalta Ducal Palace and its park. As service design scholars with expertise in design for social innovation, and in codesign methods and tools, we received the mandate from the Municipality to ideate and develop the process. It was an opportunity to experiment with the design of a context for public anticipation, empowering a community to imagine different scenarios for the future of the complex of Rivalta and, in so doing, starting up a commoning process.
We combined codesign methods with scenario building techniques, as a strategy to: engage multiple and diverse stakeholders, allow their temporary alignment, create a common ground on which to discuss and exercise a form of public imagination, win over their commitment while sustaining a convergence of collective creativity and innovation.

Background knowledge
As a fundamental background knowledge for our discourse, we wish to highlight that here we connect the notion of ‘codesign’ to ‘participatory design’ as formulated by the Scandinavian School of Participatory Design (Ehn, 1988; Greenbaum and Kyng, 1991; Ehn, 2008): acknowledging the different roots of the two concepts, their different degrees of political-ethical load and their different emphasis on designers-stakeholders engagement, we also recognise that they blur into broadly defined ‘participatory codesign approaches’ that become relevant when design has a social purpose and aims to impact (Binder and Brandt, 2008; Sanders and Stappers, 2008). Therefore, participatory design and codesign are both used here to refer to collaborative creativity applied across the entire span of a design process that aims to produce a positive social impact, through and beyond the outcome of the solution. This is connected to another crucial concept for our discourse: an idea of commoning as a form of participative and active citizenship that takes place in a specific local space and is continuous in time (Linebaugh, 2009).
When talking about the scenario building methodology we refer in particular to Ogilvy (2002) who intends scenarios as plots characterised by distinctive factors, forces and values that shape a set of narratives. Scenarios are neither predictions nor forecasts: they are projections of possible futures and we used them as part of a creative process to trigger design conversations about what could happen in the Rivalta area. In the same vein, Manzini and Jégou (2004) developed the methodology of 'DOS - Design Orienting Scenarios': this defines a set of visions for the future that are motivated, illustrated and visualised through specific solutions, representing the different perspectives that the scenario-builder aims to discuss with the scenario-users, so to create a framework for the design of new concepts.


The case study Rival(u)ta Rivalta
The project ‘Rival(u)ta Rivalta’ was initiated by the municipality of Reggio Emilia in 2018 and involved six design researchers of our institution for around one year. It was an actual process of strategic codesign of scenarios for the future of Rivalta, a huge area of 26ha in total comprising the Ducal Palace and its park. The project started with a set scoping activities between design researchers and policy-makers (phase 0), then individual interviews to selected social parts were conducted to collect relevant information about the place (phase 1). The core part of the process consisted of a programme of codesign workshops with diverse stakeholders (actors in the cultural and associative field as well as among experts in technical sectors) to explore multiple service areas. The results of these workshops were enclosed in a report to inform the international landscape design competition concurrently launched by the municipality (phase 2). Once the winners were selected, they were engaged in specific codesign activities to converge towards a consistent spatial and service proposal which worked as the basis for actually guiding the final implementation of the project (phase 3).

Connection with conference themes
We think that the combination of codesign methods and scenario building was an effective way to share projections of possible futures and we used them as part of a creative process to trigger design conversations about what could happen in the Rivalta area.
Scenarios were the actual boundary objects (Star, 1989; Johnson et al, 2017, Zamenopoulos and Alexiou, 2020) of our workshops: they were presented as stories about the future conceived in a narrative and visual form. They allowed the temporary alignment of participants cooperating for a precise length of time, sharing common ground on which to discuss and explore different futures. It is important to highlight that both at the beginning and at the end of the programme we dealt with a multiplicity of scenarios: as Ogilvy (2002) very well expresses, there is not a singular future, but a hierarchy of values and beliefs instead and in the Rivalta process scenarios worked precisely to explore different futures while having imaginative and coherent conversations about what might be.
We believe that the whole codesign programme we conducted represented the beginning of a commoning path and process of empowerment: developing ‘public imagination’ by scenario building was an activity of sense-making (more than problem-solving) that seemed to be a good strategy for empowering participants who became more aware about their role and their possibility of contributing in designing things.

References
Binder, T. and Brandt, E. (2008). The Design: Lab as platform in participatory design research, Co-Design, 4:2, 115-129

Ehn, P. (2008). “Participation in Design Things”, PDC '08 Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Con-ference on Participatory Design, pp. 92-101

Ehn, P. (1988). Work-oriented design of computer artifacts. Arbetslivscentrum, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey.

Greenbaum, J. and Kyng, M. (Ed.). 1991. Design at work: cooperative design of computer work. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale NJ


Johnson, M.P., Ballie, J., Thorup, T. and Brooks, E. (2017). “Living on the Edge: Design Artefacts as Boundary Objects”, The Design Journal, Vol. 20, Sup1, S219-S235

Linebaugh, P. (2009). The Magna Carta manifesto: liberties and commons for all. University of Cali-fornia Press

Manzini, E. and Jégou, F. (2004). “Design degli scenari”, in Bertola, P. and Manzini, E. (eds), Design multiverso. Appunti di fenomenologia del design, Edizioni Polidesign, Milano, pp. 177-195

Ogilvy, J. (2002) Creating Better Futures: Scenario Planning As a Tool for A Better Tomorrow, Ox-ford University Press, New York

Sanders, EBN and Stappers, PJ (2014). “Probes, Toolkits and Prototypes: Three Approaches to Making in Codesigning”, Codesign, Vol. 10, 1:5-14

Star, SL (1989). “The Structure of Ill-structured Problems: Boundary Objects and Heterogeneous Problem Solving”, in Gasser L and Huhns M (edited by), Distributed artificial intelligence, Pit-man, London, pp. 2-37

Zamenopoulos, T. and Alexiou, K. (2020). Collective design anticipation. Futures, 120.

Abstract: Futuring draws on many facets and acts of creativity and imagination, including world building as transformational politics. This proposed workshop is a deep, but brief dive into the joys and challenges of producing counter-narratives for our current world, to foster contemporary imaginings of futures and 'sites' of cultural construction.

This workshop aims to harness the powers of collaborative imagination within our communities by working to envision multiple possible futures.

The work of considering possible alternative futures is an act of resistance, it challenges the injustices, and inequitable systemic power structures. The co-creation of possible futures is an active exercise of imagining a world which aims to transcend the oppressive ideologies that prevail. By seeking to shape or steward directions of futures, we are no longer passive but make the most of our agency.

Overview
In June 2020, the presenters were asked to develop a workshop format for the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA), based in Melbourne, Australia, to explore preferable feminist futures in post-Covid 2030. The workshop had to be easily understood by non-futures-expert participants, adaptable across different cultural and language contexts, and produce relevant, actionable insights.

Our goal was to shift perceptions away from perceiving uncertainty as only about risk mitigation, then employing uncertainty as a way to explore new opportunity spaces for imagining more effective policies, services and products. We developed this workshop format incorporating Futures Wheels as its main mode of engagement.

This workshop utilizes a set of twenty-four trends as focus content, as well as defining a set of Privileging Forces, and setting out a range of Guiding Principles to provide sufficient content to frame conversations and help guide participants to actionable results.

Using a Futures Wheel canvas the teams select one trend then work outward suggesting possible impacts (both positive and negative) which may emerge from this trend over the next ten years. Reflecting on their wheels, each team chooses a “thread” of impacts to consider how a more preferable and equitable future might be achieved.

This workshop is designed to help non-futurists become more adept at thinking about possible futures, even in times of high uncertainty.

Schedule
Introduction 5m
Trends Discussion 15m
Privileging Forces Discussion 10m
Introduction to Futures Wheels 10m
Futures Wheel Exercise in Teams 15m
Develop a “Future Snapshot” 20m
Shareback and Q&A 15m

Requirements
Trend cards, Futures Wheel canvas, markers, whiteboard, chairs and tables or wall space for canvases

Outcome
The objective of this workshop is to help participants imagine culturally-relevant futures in a post-COVID world. We firmly believe that radically imagining a more just and equitable world requires approaches that are diverse, inclusive and non-normative.

This exercise in exploring multiple, possible futures should not be understood as a consensus-building process for deciding a singular future. The intention is to demonstrate how the visionary dimensions of futures practice could be articulated in various forms to open up space for rich debate on envisioning preferable futures.

Presenters
Susan Cox-Smith
Drawing on over twenty years experience as a writer, designer, creative director, interactive producer, and researcher Susan seeks to enrich public engagement with possible futures.

She has consulted on futures projects for ADCB, AXA, BBC R&D, Comcast, IFRC, National Lottery Fund UK, Nesta, and several Silicon Valley tech companies. She contributes to trend research and scenario development looking at futures of urban environments, arts & culture, health & wellness, and new media in entertainment.

Susan oversees the design of and co-leads capacity building workshops, and the development of related instructional materials, developing futuring skills in leaders from organisations ranging from Microsoft to Netflix to Wells Fargo to NASA JPL. She was the contributing editor on How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange.

Susan has presented and facilitated strategic foresight, design futures, and scenario planning workshops at A/D/O in Brooklyn, Sibos in Geneva, ThingsCon Amsterdam and at UXLondon. She has co-facilitated How to Future courses at the Dubai Future Academy, and for organizations in the US, UK, Abu Dhabi and Malta, and to online participants around the globe.

Bridgette Engeler
Bridgette is a pracademic working across strategic design, innovation and foresight at Swinburne University in Australia. With over 25 years' experience in brand, design and innovation strategy, Bridgette's focus is the potential of design and futures to tackle challenges intersecting people, community and systems. Bridgette has presented and facilitated strategic foresight, design futures and scenarios workshops at academic and industry conferences globally, and her work has been published in The Design Journal.

Bridgette holds a BA and MA from Monash and a Masters degree in Strategic Foresight from Swinburne University, Australia. A PhD candidate at Swinburne University, Bridgette’s research explores the use of strategic foresight tools in design practice and the capacity for anticipatory thinking in design.

Recent projects include strategic advice on ‘futures of work’ for federal and state government and other agencies in Australia; public participatory futures installations in Melbourne and Hong Kong; the development of VR and AR wearables for people with early-onset dementia as part of Swinburne’s Future Self Living Lab; investigating the challenges of digital credentialling and self-sovereign identity, and exploring ways to use technology and new materials in designing condoms and other devices to support sexual and reproductive health. She regularly collaborates with industry and organisations on futures-oriented projects and programs spanning strategic foresight and design innovation, experiential and critical futures, and transition design.

References
Candy, Stuart, and Cher Potter, eds. Design and futures. Taipei: Tamkang University Press, 2019.

Conway, Maree. "An integrated frame for designing conversations about futures." Futures 136 (2022): 102887.

Duggan, James R., Joseph Lindley, and Sarah McNicol. "Near Future School: World building beyond a neoliberal present with participatory design fictions." Futures 94 (2017): 15-23.

Engeler, B. (2017). Towards prospective design. The Design Journal, 20(sup1), S4591-S4599.

Glenn, Jerome C. "The futures wheel." Futures research methodology—version 3 (2009)

Hines, A., & Zindato, D. (2016). Designing Foresight and Foresighting Design: Opportunities for Learning and Collaboration via Scenarios. World Future Review, 8(4), 180-192

Lauttamäki, Ville. "Practical guide for facilitating a futures workshop." Finland Futures Research Centre (2014): 2-11.

Lockton, D. Transition Lenses: Perspectives on futures, models and agency.

Kim Piaget, Clare Coffey, Sebastián Molano, Maria José Moreno Ruiz. “Feminist Futures Caring for people, caring for justice and rights,” Oxfam Discussion Papers, 15 September 2020

Abstract: In this presentation we will present some preliminary ideas about how a case of renaming public landmarks both reflects and engages assumptions about the past and future. In October 2021, the city of Tempe, Arizona began a process of renaming city parks and streets that were named after prominent figures in the city’s early history after city employees discovered they were (allegedly) members of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK). City staff also informed the leaders of the elementary school district located within the city of their findings that three schools were named after possible KKK members. As a result, the school district’s governing board initiated a separate process of renaming these schools. Both the city council and the school district’s governing board are attempting to engage the community in their parallel processes of renaming these landmarks by holding public meetings and surveying the community. In the initial meeting the city council held about the renaming of city landmarks, descendants of those who had up to this point been lauded as founding citizens of the community objected to the proposed name changes, while members of the Indigenous communities from the lands that are now Tempe and their allies described how their histories have been erased. Other community members have invoked other racist policies and practices in the city’s past in arguments for and against renaming. The public debates about these landmarks raise important questions about equity, justice, how we memorialize and reckon with the past, and the vision the city and school district wish to project for future residents. We hope to use Anticipation 2022 as an opportunity to explore how these debates might be informed by future studies. How do we address present and past racial inequality while also envisioning a more equitable multiracial future? Can a future studies lens provide novel insights into this case that a more traditional social science perspective might miss? What anticipatory methods might be employed to analyze this case?

Abstract: We discuss adaptations of the design pattern methodology to domains of participatory anticipation. We are cautious that the pattern method is used primarily to build local knowledge, and thereby aim to contribute to “Decolonizing Anticipation”. This constrains the way we think about patterns in order to shape “Public Futures” and build “Critical Anticipatory Capacities”.

Abstract: To establish a position of maximum leverage, our aim is to anticipate the future of anticipation together with participants in a 90 minute Technique Workshop at Anticipation 2022. Our submission blends across the conference’s “Critical Anticipatory Capacities” and "Creativity, Innovation and New Media" themes. Participants will use design patterns inspired by a design-based futures game, and will develop new patterns to improve their Critical Anticipatory Capacities.

Abstract: Ageing has become a focal point for major research investments across a range of disciplines. Meanwhile, due to the complexity of issues connected with ageing societies, from pressures on social care to increasing health inequalities and questions of ageism, there are calls for interdisciplinary working around present and future concerns. One of the ‘problems’ of interdisciplinary working is that each discipline frames its own imaginary around ‘ageing futures’. Often these disciplinary imaginaries are built on ‘old’ images of the future created by ideas in the present (Pinto et al, 2021).

This paper explores and reflects on a process that set out to open up new conversations about ageing research across disciplines in our HE institution. We worked with a writer to run two speculative fiction workshops. By using creative thinking and speculative design methods, we aimed to create a space for researchers to meet, explore and imagine dystopian and utopian ageing futures. We asked researchers to bring their disciplinary understandings of ageing to the workshops but also to engage with their own fears, anxieties, dreams and desires concerning the kind of later life they would like/not like for themselves, their families and friends.

Our paper explores how intentionally provoking emotional responses (fear, anxiety, delight, wonder) in anticipating ageing futures might move people to imagine, across disciplines, different possible responses, supporting our capacities to develop anticipatory thinking and practice.

NB Discussion doc included as PDF below

Abstract: Anticipation needs capabilities for creating, analyzing and evaluating possible, probable, desired and undesired, plausible and feared futures. Model-based approaches have been developing to the favorite and widespread approach for integrating empirical data and scientific insight for providing knowledge-based pictures of the future. Model-based anticipatory reasoning has gained high influence on political decision-making as well as on public debate, e.g. in the Covid-19 pandemic, in discussions on climate change and for transforming the energy supply system.
Models establish temporal relations in two directions: while they are (1) based on data of the past and knowledge of the present time, they are (2) used for creating anticipations orientating society’s future, e.g. in scientific policy advice provided to parliaments and authorities by technology assessment (TA). In the first relation, the models are models of something, e.g. of parts of the energy system or of the health insurance system in a country. Their epistemic quality can be scrutinized by familiar validation procedures and criteria, e.g. consistency and compatibility with data of the past. However, as soon as these models are used for creating anticipations, e.g. energy scenarios for a TA study, their status changes: then they serve as models for something, in particular for serving needs for orientation and decision-support. This shift involves a lot of premises and presuppositions, which often can be questioned and drawn into doubt. In particular, often there will be a continuity bias: the assumption that the system under consideration will not undergo larger change but will remain more or less stable. In this manner, model-based anticipation is, in a sense, conservative and shows tendencies to simply prolong the past to the future.
While this problem already has been discussed with respect to data and causal relations included in models, I will extend the consideration to narratives included in models. Repeatedly it was stated (e.g. Roßmann 2020) that models, including mathematical and data based ones, are more than the representation of data composed according to empirically validated facts. There is no logical necessity or force to build a model based on a set of data and knowledge in a particular manner. Rather, there will be several alternatives for composing the ingredients into a consistent and coherent model – modellers nilly willy have to make choices how to organize the material. Facing this ambiguity, the function of narratives in composing the ingredients is to close gaps and to bridge heterogeneous inputs in order to create a coherent model. Consequently, the model-based anticipations are not only data- and knowledge-driven but also involve traces of the underlying narratives. These narratives may be shared among modelers’ communities, may include elements of Zeitgeist, may be hidden or contested. By giving them a role in modeling, these narratives influence the resulting model-based anticipations as well as the conclusions drawn for policy advice.
Here, specific questions emerge, e.g. regarding models’ and modelers’ power for influencing decision-makers and shaping the future of society, regarding the transparency of the models and the ‘philosophies’ behind them, regarding the narratives behind the models and their consequences for creating pictures of the future. In its extreme form, even self-fulfilling prophecies could be created by narratives included in modeling. Therefore, in scrutinizing the role of models for anticipation and exploring their role for decision-makers, it becomes an urgent task to shed light on the role of narratives in general and on the specific narratives governing modeling in certain areas.
In this paper, I will propose a model hermeneutics as a critical procedure operating on the borderline of data-oriented and model-based representation of parts of the real world (models of), of narratives underlying the processes of modeling, and of the anticipations created by extending the models to the future for providing orientation (models for). Seeking improved understanding as basis for sound criticism must, in accordance with an Augustinian view on futures, focus on the present ingredients and the processes of modeling. In line with the hermeneutical turn of technology assessment, this shift takes model-based futures as expressions of the present time into consideration.

State of the Art
Pursuing this aim requires referring to temporal structures of modeling which opens up the door to applying a hermeneutic view on modeling which is subject to an ongoing project by the German Volkswagen Foundation (Erdbeer et al. 2022). Turning the perspective from regarding model-based futures as knowledge about times to come to considering them as contemporary objects to be studied, in particular with respect to inherent narratives, corresponds to the hermeneutic turn of TA (Grunwald 2019). From this perspective, model-based stories of the future are regarded as characteristic expressions of the time in which they have been created, based on modeling techniques, assumptions and narratives, and data and other ingredients of that time. This perspective builds on research on narratives (Walton 2011, Roßmann 2020) and combines it with the hermeneutic view on anticipations.

Relation to Anticipation2022
The suggested topic fits well to the conference theme #4 Critical Anticipatory Capacity. In particular, it addresses literacies for better understanding model-based anticipations and for gaining a critical perspective on model-biases as well. The paper aims at creating awareness among modelers with respect to narratives shared in their communities. Recent results demonstrate that such narratives are often included into models without critically reflecting them and without making them explicit. The hermeneutic approach is introduced as a means for shedding light on hidden narratives.

References
Erdbeer, M., Achermann, E., Grunwald, A. et al. (2022): Critique of Modeling. Abingdon: Routledge (fortcoming)
Grunwald, Armin (2019): Technology Assessment. Practice and Theory. Routledge: Abingdon
Roßmann, M. (2020): Vision as Make-Believe: How Narratives and Models Represent Sociotechnical Futures. Journal of responsible innovation, 1–24. doi:10.1080/23299460.2020.1853395
Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press

Abstract: The present paper focuses on the method for designers developed by the author. It’s an experimental approach to designing innovative products. It should help bring harmony between logical thinking and imagination. The paper focuses on the influence of a time model on the creative consciousness and lists the requirements to the conceptual framework that would help anticipate the future.

Abstract: The way we work is consistently moving towards digital spheres, enabling ever-more flexible working arrangements. The quick adaptation to remote work practices during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that remote work might be here to stay, shedding light on the necessary changes having to take place for future work environments to be just and inclusive and for these to sustain the existing environmental resources. This research focuses on remote work as a potential leverage point for more sustainable corporate culture. By taking a design-approach the aim is to develop engaging methods that assist stakeholders in envisioning and creating shared images of the future of work.

Abstract: The research question this paper session addresses is: how might we bring the world-making power of highly ritualized and symbolically rich events such as the carnival to bear on matters of collective well-being in an era of existential risk? Our project explores the idea that a better world is possible - we only require the entry point to allow a sudden transition to another way of being. Our work is situated in the context of scholarship from the transition movement, feminist and care-oriented critical theory, design futures, existential risk theory, applied compassion, medical humanities and the built environment as a social determinant of health.

As we spiral through the anthropocene, caught in the long tail of a pandemic, how we live is more important than ever before. With the ecological crisis threatening planetary inhabitability and the reality of living through this time at the center of a parallel health epidemic worldwide, well-being is at the epicenter of a project to expand what we mean by “well” so that it includes not only individual wellness, but collective wellness, non-human wellness and also living with purpose and intentionality. Convergent existential crises at the scale we now face demand a mythologically-scaled, highly trusting and collaborative effort.

To this end, our research on transdisciplinary routes to collective well-being orbit the key mediums of fiction and carnival. The carnival is the embodied and experiential medium of choice for working collaboratively towards living well in this age of crisis.

Abstract: This paper examines fieldwork conducted which examined how methodologies from contemporary art and design can be deployed in social innovation projects, particularly those which promote community participation and processes of working and making collaboratively towards positive anticipated futures. The fieldwork took place in the housing projects of Palmeira in Câmara de Lobos on the Portuguese island of Madeira -- one of the European Union’s official “outermost regions”.

I set out to investigate how the nexus of art and design methodologies, social innovation, and technology create concrete material possibilities and greater agency for small, remote communities. I instigated a series of artistic interventions using a wide range of methods and media into a community's social and physical setting in Madeira, and addressed aspects of cultural heritage and local history which are concealed or under-explored.

This research began by focusing on definitions of social innovation which emphasize social empowerment and process. In the literature, a discussion of the arts contributing to social innovation is surprisingly rare, yet my empirical knowledge as a curator and artist meant that I know how much artists contribute much to the social realm. There are tensions in the discourse around the true potential and scope of what we think of as innovation. Design scholar Pelle Ehn and colleagues note that there is “...a belief that innovation is getting democratized. At the same time, inventive as it may seem, this new paradigm is surprisingly traditional and managerial.” As well, innovation studies scholar Saradindu Bhaduri remarks that key features of non-Western innovation, including networks of informal economies, are sidelined or ignored in the wider discourse. Is an engagement with social innovation by artists one method of putting the social aspect of social innovation at the forefront? Artists and designers have long had a role to play as engaged outsiders, providing what STS scholars Shapin & Schaffer called "stranger's accounts" of a culture, disturbing the "self-evident methods" which take hold in every community.

Moreover, as any activist will tell you, any progress or gains made by any process of innovation must be closely guarded. This knowledge has led to the study of how progress is maintained or systems continue to work as a result of repair and care, and this is exemplified in the emerging field of maintenance studies. The narrative around inventions (whether they be objects or methods) should be expanded to accommodate a more in-depth history around their creation and maintenance. This narrative expansion provides a way to describe the innovation in maintenance and repair work (without indulging in a heroic narrative or other grand narratives about the inventors or the maintainers). There is an urgency to adjusting our view of how success happens and how infrastructures are built. There is also an urgency to becoming slow -- working with communities on a longer term towards building future imaginaries with them -- something I call "curating-with" (after Joan Tronto's "caring-with"). Continuously dismantling our propensity to assign a leader or give credit to a singular hero is in itself a kind of essential maintenance work. This kind of maintenance work to the narratives of social innovation, what I term an anti-heroic turn, is potentially transformative and can apply to other fields. This paper explores this territory and its relevance to the practice of futuring.

Abstract: Similarly to futures studies, design has always been a practice oriented to futures. By not being limited to a solve-problem approach, design relies on criticism and imagination as methods to reflect on the future. This 90-min workshop is an invitation for participatory speculative design futures. It aims to collectively explore speculative fashion designs as a medium to discuss futures from a cultural and societal perspective taking into consideration technological advances and the inclusion of non-human beings in alternative futures. How can the intersection between fashion, speculative design and co-design tell stories about more sustainable and less Antropocencric futures societies? This workshop aims to raise collective critical reflections on more sustainable and technological futures by establishing connections between design practice and futures studies in a holistic way, where fashion intermediates the thinking about alternative futures and unfolds a new way to discuss changes in societal and cultural values.

Abstract: This proposal for a curated session in the ‘Anticipation Conference 22’ intersects the themes 1. Public Futures and 4. Critical Anticipatory Capacities and will examine practices of the ‘use-of-the-future’ in society through Futures Literacy as a capability, particularly for the case of Latin American countries.
This curated session is proposed by the Latin American Anticipation Network (RAAL for its acronym in Spanish), which involves a diverse group of researchers, practitioners and institutions working on futures and anticipation. RAAL is led by the UNESCO Chair in Socio-Cultural Anticipation and Resilience at the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (Uruguay) and embraces a handful of UNESCO Chair candidates in Futures Literacy, including Universidad del Externado (Colombia), Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), and Museu do Amanhã (Brazil) among other institutions and colleagues in Latin America from the field of Anticipation and Futures Studies. This curated session aims to encourage an exchange of experiences and knowledge on more conscious, systematic, and effective practices of the ‘use-of-the-future’ in society. In particular, we would like to provide an inclusive, interdisciplinary space for discussions to rethink the practices and theoretical underpinnings of the foresight community into the ‘use-of-the-future’ as a potentially complementing anticipatory capacity for futures thinking in the present, as described in Miller (2018).
These discussions should enrich our understanding about the democratization of the ‘use-of-the-future’ through futures literacy capabilities. To this end, some crucial aspects to reflect in this curated session are:
(i) The promotion of futures thinking, anticipatory, and foresight capacity building in ‘use-of-the-future.’
(ii) The ways for nurturing anticipatory capacities across society.
(iii) The fostering of anticipatory leadership skills for the creation of transformational innovations in emerging country settings.
(iv) Public policy design with focus on the ‘use of the future’.
(v) Building inter and transdisciplinary capacities for ‘using the future’.

Abstract: This Techniques Session gestures towards future forms of relationality with mushrooms by engaging in fungal modes of co-authorship. This hands-on workshop will activate elements of our installation Sensory Kinship of the Third Kind, which we have submitted for the Mesa Art Center’s exhibit Emerge 2022. Workshop participants will experiment with multisensory means of communication and intimacy with cultivated varieties of oyster mushrooms through audio and smell.

Mushrooms represent a ‘third kind’ both in their occupation of liminal spaces between life and death and beyond plant or animal, as well as bearing a speculative similarity with inhabitants of a distant galaxy. Mushrooms maintain a persona that hovers between our world and the underworld, provoking disgust and fear as potentially lethal entities which veer outside categorization. What if we questioned these fears as we envision new futures? Mushrooms deal directly with the intimacies of our material future: they have been proposed as agents for detoxifying soil and as instigators of life in polluted landscapes. Fungus is a critical agent in building sustainable multispecies assemblages, but most of their labor and energy have remained hidden from human sensing. Inspired by composer Pauline Oliveros, we will seek to listen — and sense — at edges as a critical path towards how we can relate to fungal beings in the future.

How might we listen to mushrooms in the future? How can listening deepen our sense of kinship with and create mutually beneficial futures? Sound will interact with mushrooms on three spatial and temporal levels in our installation: (1) The ‘five tones’ used in conversation with extraterrestrials in Close Encounters of the Third Kind will be projected through mushrooms and picked up through a contact mic (2) Electrodes will convert differences in electrical energy within the mushrooms to MIDI data (3) A temporally removed layer of sonic interaction will amplify sounds recorded from electrical energy of mushrooms growing near Mesa Art Center.

Smell will comprise another unexpected form of sensory engagement with the mushrooms. Diffusers and perfume vials in the installation will allow visitors to smell dried mushrooms grown by Wist. Smell is an intimate and corporeal method for engaging non-human bodies, and the potent smell of the mushrooms in this work asks viewers to participate in a kind of invasive aesthetics to relate to the mushroom’s materiality. We ask: How can we bring ourselves into conversation with critical and liminal fungal worlds, since we lack the physical proximity that mushrooms have with more of their direct symbionts (tree roots, ants, or organic matter in soil)? We hope to make crucial sensory impressions that impact how we make choices in the future, in the face of the climate crisis within the Anthropocene.

The session will be 90 minutes long, and limited to 15 participants.

10 minutes: Background, motivation and goals
15 minutes: Structure and workings of installation
65 minutes: Workshop A or B
A: Mushroom listening - learn to use Midi sensors, transducers and contact microphones to listen to mushrooms and “compose” fungal music.
B: Guided smell companionship: mushroom smelling exercises, story sharing

Abstract: Autonomous Tree is an art installation in which a tree is transformed to hypothetically represent and act on the behalf of non-human living beings within established human systems of governance. The installation focuses on a living tree fitted with replicas of digital sensors and devices utilised on autonomous vehicles and security apparatus today. An arboreal chat-bot, accessed by visitors using their mobile phone, enables a conversation between visiting humans and the tree in which the tree issues a financial penalty for the collective harm humans have caused. Over 950 people have met with an Autonomous Tree, including human authority figures such as police officers and politicians, at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven and Internet Age Media in Barcelona. The three trees chosen for duty have theoretically raised €4.300.885,66 for something called the Planetary Wellbeing Marketplace, a fictional exchange where it is possible to invest in the protection and regeneration of Earth’s ecosystems and species.

The Autonomous Tree project emerged from a participatory initiative facilitated by Krzysztof Wronski during the Master of Design for Emergent Futures (MDEF) called Hypothetical Authorities, aiming to reframe relationships with authorities, who shapes them, and the challenges they focus on—primarily focusing on enhancing agency and participation. Reflecting on the potential of increasing participation in the policy making process, a series of interventions took place to invite imagination and involvement in shaping proposals for new or alternative kinds of authorities in society. The interventions included an online chat-bot which guided participants through the process of considering an alternative authority to address a challenge their community faces and a series of workshops where participants that submitted similar authority ideas discussed and further developed authority proposals. The 15 authority proposals that emerged were documented, stamped, and displayed at an event called Design Dialogues organised as part of the MDEF program. Of the 15 Authority Proposals that emerged as a result of the work, the theme of ecological protection to address the climate emergency gained the most collective interest. In an effort to further explore the proposals and involve a wider audience in conversation, an intention was set to create an interactive art piece, speculative design prototype, or public happening that promoted the wellbeing of non-human living beings, addressed human environmental exploitation and damage, and explored the potential role non-humans could play in society— Autonomous Tree is a little bit of each.

Autonomous Tree and Hypothetical Authorities show the value of applying design practice in complex subject matter areas without commercial or organisational goals directing or constraining outcomes. What emerges from such processes are unexpected and novel opportunities to engage people in considering what could and should be and building momentum to challenge current norms.

Abstract: Factors like erosion of public trust in healthcare professionals and organizations, increasing policy focus on value-based reimbursement have forced hospitals to establish new practices of accountability and visibly embrace new forms of performance measurement. In service of measuring, verifying, narrating, and “performing” performance, the healthcare industry in the United States has developed a massive enterprise premised on the capacities of information technologies to measure and determine quality of health care practice. Automated performance measurement algorithms and expanded capabilities for data storage, retrieval, and analytics have become critical tools in demonstrating attention to cost, performance, and effectiveness. This has also resulted in explosion in the number of quality measurements that healthcare organizations collect for internal use and report externally. This paper argues that the quantitative assessment scores and organizational performance are made commensurable through metrics and performance ranking systems, and further, that the managing healthcare practice via these quantified systems restructures the way that healthcare organizations and individuals therein reflect and learn. Further, the shift to quality measurement is shifting the temporal orientation of healthcare organizing as organizations increasingly focus on anticipation of future quality measures so as not to be left “behind” their peers.

We use a practice theoretic lens to identify how healthcare quality measurement affects organizational practice at the micro level. In order to do so, this paper takes inspiration from critical accounting practice—specifically, literature that, drawing on Foucault’s work on power-knowledge systems, to describe how numeric performance measurements discipline organizations and workers, and influence how organizations anticipate the future and change their behavior (Hoskin & Macve, 1986; Espeland & Stevens, 2008; Espeland & Sauder, 2016). We also draw on sociological literature on valuation to describe how quality is made commensurable, and auditable, through particular numeric practices that reduce a phenomenon (the “goodness” of healthcare work) into a small set of scores –e.g., numbers or letters that indicate an organization’s performance (Lamont, 2012). Drawing on critical accounting literature that examines the reformulation of examinations in other domains (e.g., education), we analyze how numeric and graded symbols of quality are constructed and explore the impact of these symbols on the governance and management of health care work. Specifically, we use multi-sited ethnography of quality measurement of obstetrical services across multiple organizations in the U.S. to answer the following research questions: How is “quality” enacted in organizations through quantitative performance measurements? How do numeric performance measurements discipline organizations and workers, and influence how organizations plan for and change their behavior? And, given that “quality” is a moving target, what is the role of anticipation of future demands for quality audit in organizations’ enactment of quality measurement?

Data collection spanned three years of observation and interviews with field sites carrying out multiple facets of quality measurement for maternity (mother/baby) services. This included three hospitals in a larger hospital system on the west coast and a statewide quality improvement (QI) organization housing a data center (which serves the entire west coast) for maternal care quality. Data collection also took place with participants who are key developers or users of maternity care quality measurements, such as professional standard-bearing organizations and consumer activists.

Drawing on this large corpus of data, we present and critically analyze multiple cases of quality measurement. These include the rate of central-line associated bloodstream infections (infections that occur because of a hospital procedure), the number of cesarean sections performed on women with no risk factors, and the percentage of infants born due to physician choice prior to 39 weeks of completed gestation. Through our analysis of these cases, we propose that ‘quality’ is a, if not the, key metric for healthcare services, and its determination rests on a number of commensuration processes where quality is made commensurate with performance and thus accountability. The quantitative measurement and rankings practices become objects of anticipation and reframe the temporal orientation of the self in terms of the many i.e. organizations find it necessary to enter into a mode of anticipation and “keeping up” with standards. Standards may change the underlying assuming that the construct can be measured quantitatively cannot i.e this understanding of quality is taken for granted as an obdurate reality. The accounting practice of applying quality metrics similarly restructures healthcare organizations as a population of ‘calculable hospitals’ and (increasingly) ‘calculable physicians/nurse practitioners’. The entire system of being built and managed for measurement.

The paper proposes that shifting material form these commensuration practices creates a state of “anticipatory ambiguity” as the field sites constantly look towards the future to predict upcoming quality metrics in order to not fall behind. This has several implications for healthcare organizations, clinicians, and other stakeholders including shifts in allocation of organizational resources and changing professional expertise in the organization. For instance, physicians have long enjoyed a wide degree of autonomy in the U.S. This scope of autonomy rapidly narrowing as physicians are increasingly accountable for adhering to specified work processes rather than producing acceptable outcomes. We argue that this state of anticipatory ambiguity is shifting focus from certain enactments of quality care towards managing and preparing for surveillance—potentially undermining the reason the indicators were there in the first place. This raises important questions about the consequences of quantitative regimes of performance management for healthcare and beyond, as a wide variety of sectors seek to use data-driven performance measurements to audit and manage care and see such regimes as fundamental to the future of work.

Abstract: Overview

The purpose of this research is to re-examine our relationship to and embodied experience of our needs, wants, and desires when situated within what the design theorist Tony Fry calls a “felt knowledge of unsustainability.”

We inhabit a world so deeply shaped by accumulation in the pursuit of a false sense of safety and freedom that we have also become estranged from our capacity to experience a felt sense of having enough. The visionary author Miki Kashtan speaks about the illusion of separation that money and resources allows us to create, which offers the feeling that we are independent and can therefore independently create certainty for ourselves. But this is not the nature of accumulation - it is not a process which will subside by itself. Left to its own devices, accumulation will continue, further stimulated by the idea that we can optimize ourselves out of imperfection.

In a world of interdependencies and continual change, safety is only ever temporary. We propose that experiencing Enoughness requires an acceptance of our inherent insecurity and dependence on the world - and a radical trust that, nevertheless, we will be okay. A practice to bring us closer to, not further away from, the inherent fragility of life.

Anticipation is a critical cognitive skill and anticipating the future means that the future also constitutes our present. If we are considering what is and will be enough for us, it includes an anticipation of our needs in the future, both near and far. Our tendency towards endless, mindless accumulation then could be understood as a result of poor or weakened anticipatory capabilities. Such capacities have been led astray and we argue that they are in need of recalibration.

We aim to explore Enoughness as a principle rather than a promise of a continued state of bliss and efficiency. We posit that Enoughness plays a role in developing habits of compassion and humility towards others as well as our future selves, and further, that these habits are critical to anticipating and bringing forth just futures.

As a transdisciplinary team of designers, artists, futurists, coaches, philosophers, researchers, and practitioners, we are inquiring into the role of emotions in developing an embodied understanding of Enoughness. We propose to engage in an artistic research process using a phenomenological lens and grounded theory approach to explore the essence of Enoughness and how it might help us recalibrate our anticipatory capacities.

We accumulate because of fear and in an effort to build a sense of certainty; what becomes possible if we accept the perpetual truth of our fundamental insecurity that is present in each moment?

Objectives and Questions to Guide Our Research
● Develop an understanding of the essence of Enoughness
o What does Enoughness feel like in an individual and relational context?
o How have we become alienated from this concept? Are we still able to experience it?
o How does an experience of Enoughness impact our anticipatory capacity?
● Explore the role emotions like disgust, shame, sadness, and guilt play in generating or inhibiting the felt experience of Enoughness
o How might these emotions have served as surrogates for responsibility, morality, ethics?
o How might these emotions be co-opted or adapted to shift our relationship with accumulation and enter into a new relationship with decumulation?
● Formulate a theory towards how we can recalibrate our anticipatory capacity through an experience of Enoughness.
o How might we embody a philosophy of Enoughness when living in a world that is not currently structured for it?
o How might we integrate this principle of Enoughness into our design processes?

Process

We have purposely designed our process to be open ended because while we have formulated some of our initial ideas/hypotheses, we cannot anticipate what we will learn during the initial phenomenological inquiry. What we extract from that research will guide the rest of the project. In brief, our process will look like the following:

● Conduct narrative and phenomenological research to understand the embodied experience of Enoughness today and how people imagine it might feel in the future
● Extract the essence of Enoughness while honoring and retaining the nuances of the individual experiences
● Use a grounded theory approach towards a method for a recalibration of our individual and collective capacities for Enoughness.
● A potential next step would be to engage a speculative design or experiential futures process to evoke conversations about a post-accumulation future where the experience of Enoughness is commonplace


Format

A premise of this research is that we cannot know everything in advance, despite how hard we may try to anticipate what we will find. From our view, we see this as a good thing and are engaging in the practice of embracing uncertainty.

Part of our framing is that Enoughness requires an acceptance that we cannot know and do everything. In this vein, we propose to keep the final format of our curated session open-ended until we have progressed far enough in our research to see what emerges.

Loosely, we imagine a participatory workshop where we will present our findings while simultaneously engaging the audience in our continuing research process.



Curator Contributions and Underlying Research
Klelija Zivkovic
Co-Lead Curator, Development of Initial Concept, Main Researcher
● Creature Comforts: An ongoing transdisciplinary insight into the role design plays in shaping humanity and the more-than-human world
● DGTL12: A collaborative design-based inquiry into the digital transformation through pedagogy, performance and technology
● Some Call Us Balkans: A collective effort to explore possibilities for new conceptions of the Balkans through artistic research practices

Mushfiqa Jamaluddin
Co-Lead Curator, Development of Initial Concept, Main Researcher
● Future of Conscious Communities: Research project which generated the initial concept of Enoughness (submitted to Journal of Futures Studies, in-review)
● Experience of Self in 2050: Current research using embodied approaches
● Future of Sex: Collaborative experiential design futures research into relationality, pleasure, and embodied sovereignty
● Ongoing autoethnographic research into the embodied experience, sustainable mindsets and behavior changes, and the power of dyadic relationships

Ivana Chaloska
Curator & Researcher
● Glitch Forest: Ongoing research, and conceptualisation of "gamification wise" VR experience as a critical interpretation that will provoke the users to change their approach to raising awareness around privacy issues, unfair conditions, and other red flags in the digital environment.
● Digital terraforming: Ongoing research and speculative proposal for technological reevaluation towards the creation of future social artifacts

Abstract: Science and technology studies (STS) have shown multiple ways how socio-technical futures feature in the governance of innovation at different levels (Konrad & Böhle 2019). The sociology of expectations has studied promissory statements and discourses related to particular research and innovation fields and their performative roles in research, innovation and policy processes. A further line of research is concerned with (macro)structural phenomena, such as how modes of future-orientation are culturally and historically dependent (Andersson & Keizer 2014), how socio-technical imaginaries are rooted in collective understandings of social life and social order (Jasanoff 2015) or have pointed to particular regimes of future-orientation closely related to modes of innovation, such as (a) regime(s) of promising (Robinson et al. 2021). In parallel, many STS scholars have followed an engaged approach by designing and conducting participatory forms of future deliberation or STS-inspired scenario processes, typically applied and experimented with in various ‘local’ projects (Konrad et al. 2017).
In between work that is concerned with rather persistent structures and specific, often local cases, I would position meso-level work that addresses the underlying anticipatory practices that, either intended or as a side effect, shape socio-technical futures and their very roles in the governance of innovation (Alvial Palavicino 2016), some of those established in particular domains or supported by institutional frameworks. An emblematic example is the ITRS roadmapping process in the semiconductors industry (Meyer et al. 2018); more recently we see a proliferation of ‘roadmapping’-related processes and practices at the nexus of science, policy and industry; further examples are market forecasts and hype cycle assessments (Alvial & Konrad 2019). Another important form are various modelling practices common in particular sectors, e.g. in fields like energy and climate change modelling (Aykut 2015).
In this paper, I firstly reflect on the usefulness of regime concepts for capturing the specific role of anticipatory practices in the governance of innovation, suggesting that this perspective appears quite fruitful to capture the role of anticipatory practices as embedded in particular, partly sector-specific forms of governing innovation. However, in contrast to a somewhat idealtypical use of the concept (Joly 2010; Robinson et al. 2021), I suggest that taking inspiration from the perspectives of regimes as part of a multi-level perspective (Geels & Kemp 2007) that draws attention to diversity in regimes, change processes and the relations between meso-level regimes, local and niche-like phenomena and wider influential developments could be quite productive for not only understanding how such regimes ‘work’ and distinguishing idealtypical regimes, but for considering how such anticipatory regimes may differ in more nuanced ways, how they change, and potentially could be modulated. Furthermore, I suggest that the meso-level of practices, embedded in institutional settings, may actually be particularly interesting ‘loci’ (Rip & Schot 2002) for ambitions to not only study socio-technical futures, but to modulate common promissory ‘routines’ and dynamics.
Alvial Palavicino, C. (2016). Mindful Anticipation. A practice approach to the study of emergent technologies. PhD, University of Twente.
Alvial-Palavicino, C. and K. Konrad (2019). "The rise of graphene expectations: Anticipatory practices in emergent nanotechnologies." Futures 109: 192-202.
Andersson, J. and A.-G. Keizer (2014). "Governing the future: science, policy and public participation in the construction of the long term in the Netherlands and Sweden." History and Technology: An International Journal 30(2): 104-122.
Aykut, S. (2015). Energy Futures from the Social Market Economy to the Energiewende. The Politization of West German Energy Debates, 1950-1990. The Struggle for the Long-Term in Transnational Science and Politics. Forging Futures. J. Andersson and E. Rindzeviciute. New York, Routledge: 63-91.
Geels, F. and R. Kemp (2007). "Dynamics in socio-technical systems: Typology of change processes and contrasting case studies." Technology in Society 29(4): 441-455.
Joly, P.-B. (2010). On the economics of techno-scientific promises. Débordements: Mélanges offerts à Michel Callon. M. Akrich, Y. Barthe, F. Muniesa and P. Mustar. Paris, Presses des Mines.
Konrad, K. and K. Böhle (2019). "Socio-technical futures and the governance of innovation processes—An introduction to the special issue." Futures 109: 101-107.
Konrad, K., H. Van Lente, C. Groves and C. Selin (2017). Performing and Governing the Future in Science and Technology. The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 4th edition. C. A. Miller, U. Felt, R. Fouché and L. Smith-Doerr. Cambridge, MIT Press: 465-493.
Meyer, U., C. Schubert and A. Windeler (2018). Creating Collective Futures: How Roadmaps and Conferences Reconfigure the Institutional Field of Semiconductor Manufacturing. How organizations manage the future. Theoretical perspectives and empirical insights. H. Krämer and M. Wenzel. Cham, Palgrave Macmillan: 253-276.
Rip, A. and J. Schot (2002). Identifying Loci for Influencing the Dynamics of Technological Development. Shaping Technology, Guiding Policy: Concepts, Spaces, and Tools. K. H. Sørensen and R. Williams. Cheltenham, Edgar Elgar: 155-172.
Robinson, D., M. Audétat, P.-B. Joly and H. Van Lente (2021). "Enemies of the future? Questioning the regimes of promising in emerging science and technology." Science and Public Policy 48(6): 814-817.

Abstract: As transport systems transition towards zero emissions electric vehicles (EVs), they are set to change our urban soundscapes, which have been dominated by noise from internal combustion engines over the last century (Clendinning, 2018). Alongside personal vehicles, public transit bus services are a significant part of these soundscapes, often operating within urban settings in close proximity to homes, businesses and pedestrian areas.

EV technologies provide a potential to reduce urban traffic noise through their quiet operation. However, they simultaneously raise safety concerns for pedestrians who may not hear a vehicle approaching (Yasui, 2019). In response to these concerns, countries are establishing regulations around the level of artificial sound that EVs must emit when travelling at low speeds (Liu et al., 2018). While these regulations stipulate that a sound must be emitted, they do not prescribe what that sound should be. With predictions that EV buses will increase their market dominance over the coming decades (Transport & Environment, 2018), this new imperative to develop artificial warning sounds also creates an opportunity to anticipate a new array of future soundscapes and to more carefully consider how our cities and public transit networks are evolving. As transit bus services are funded by and implemented for the public, there is an extra responsibility to ensure that diverse perspectives are included in anticipating and shaping futures that will, in turn, shape us.

This research seeks to explore the question: How could co-design of speculative urban soundscapes contribute to anticipating alternative futures? A review of literature, research, and practice precedents is presented to highlight the opportunities and limitations of applying co-design methods to inform how urban futures are conceptualised during an energy transition. Discourse from speculative research, co-design, and interactive sound design is brought together to argue for the inclusion of diverse community perspectives, particularly from vulnerable road users and disabled people, in the collective anticipation of these public services. We discuss and evaluate the potential for co-designed, speculative soundscapes to influence and guide alternative choices in urban design and placemaking in the present.

Abstract: Background/context

This workshop shares and tests a novel design fiction technique being developed by the two leads in the context of growing concerns about city-level resilience and preparedness for disasters.

Specifically, the technique aims to allow participants to explore and critically assess how in/security/ies are constructed and implicated in action and decision-making in a western European city undergoing a disaster through narratives resulting from the intersection of three factors: (a) participation in and reliance on digital media infrastructures and practices; (b) challenges to democratically elected decision making and public policy for example by populist, radical, activist or marginalised groups; (c) self-organising, including by vigilante or criminal groups as well as through social innovation in a context of absent, reduced or ineffective public service responses.

For the purposes of Anticipation 2022, we propose broadening the scope of a current project to look not just at an attack on an urban city, but also at preparedness and responses required in the face of climate-related disasters. In so doing we build on developments in studies of futures and design in order to develop and test this new design fiction technique.

Design fictions (Hales, 2013), incorporating aspects of narrative, a variety of media formats and artefacts and co-creation are well-established within of a broader account of arts approaches being understood as a form of creative anticipation (Brassett & O'Reilly, 2021). Using the approach within collaborative settings such as climate emergencies opens up the potential of achieving collective work to imagine and anticipate alternate futures shaping decision-making in the present (Morrison & Chisin, 2017; Hilgren et al, 2020).

Newmarch (2020) developed a novel method of anticipatory social analysis that combined different moments in time in relation to preparedness for blackouts resulting from power cuts. By combining narratives from archival research of UK-wide power cuts in 1974 and social media analysis of local organising in Lancaster in response to power cuts in the city post-flooding in 2015, Newmarch showed how narrativising helped illuminate the social practices and infrastructures that might be required to adapt to future power outages. As such we propose that design fictions can aid the development of futures literacy (Miller, 2007) in relation to complex and contested public policy issues, in which narratives about previous disasters may help with the development of responses in the present. Here, we note the visibility of design and futures methods within public policy settings (Kimbell &Vesnic-Alujevic, 2020).

To produce the technique we will combine media, digital, artefact and performance elements with a focus on surfacing narratives and narrativising in relation to in/securities in an urban setting. The intended outcomes of the technique are
1. Increased awareness of the role of narrative in how in/security is constructed, negotiated and experienced by citizens
2. Better understanding of the complex, networked governance shaping how in/security is narrated
3. Recognition of the diversity and partiality of different perspectives involved in constructing in/security

We hope that by sharing the technique in the context of Anticipation, we will have an opportunity to refine it while also continuing to develop it the context of our UK project, leading to a future public presentation of it for others to build on and use.

In terms of scope, we recognise that urban experiences including in western Europe are highly variegated and uneven, and (re)produce structural inequalities so it is not justified to develop a technique that purports to be contextless. Instead we will situate the technique in a fictionalised UK city (population >1m), recognising that this may limit the application to other settings because of contingent political, socio-cultural, economic, demographic, spatial and infrastructural characteristics.

Participant experience

A hybrid session.
- We will craft, curate, facilitate and deliver experiences that meet the differing needs of in-person and online participants, dividing them into two groups with opportunities for interaction and dialogue.

Interactive co-creation.
- We will embed in the technique approaches associated with co-design, spatial practices, media arts and futures-oriented design fictions.

Part 1 (45 mins) - Curated experience – narrative in/securities.

Following a welcome/introduction, participants will have opportunities to explore the prototype technique we have developed. This will take the form of inviting participants to experience and interact with a series of media narrative objects curated by the workshop leads. This will include material from different perspectives, positions and situations in the fictionalised UK city experiencing an attack or breakdown, and different ways of understanding in/securities. In particular we aim to surface and aid negotiation of different, conflicting perspectives and integrate interactive media experiences that enable achieving the outcomes outlined above.

The likely contributions will take a range of formats to bring the variegated ways of narrativising in/securities to life including short videos, micro-narratives, imagery, audio and performance, including from academics and experts in aspects of cities, civil engineering, urban planning and story telling, as well as creative, activist and civil society perspectives.

We will include perspectives from people whose lived experience of in/security, and responses to it, will be extremely different owing to structural inequalities and social conditions, including:
• Immigrants
• Young people aged 14-21
• First responders/emergency services
• Organised crime

Part 2 (15 mins) - Invited responses. We will invite at least three 5-minute responses from participants whose disciplinary expertise will provide a focus on aspects of our technique in development including
- Prof Noortje Marres, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick, UK. Digital sociology.
- Dr Lucia Vesnic-Alujevic, EU Policy Lab, EC Joint Research Centre, Brussels. Futures in public policy making.

Part 3 Facilitated evaluative discussion (30 mins)
This will assess the extent to which the technique achieved the intended outcomes and also review how different voices/perspectives/positions included/excluded in experiencing in/security.

Abstract: This paper presents a theoretical and philosophical account of the relation between anticipation and communication. I argue that all communication takes place against a background of anticipatory consciousness and that anticipatory practices can only exist as communicative practices. Both communication and anticipation by their very nature stand out into an unfinished world. The intrinsic link between anticipation and communication has thus far gone largely unnoticed, although it is present implicitly in the work of many thinkers who have focused their attention on anticipation and communication as modes of engagement with reality. An explicit theory of the connection between these two modes can provide the basis on which to conceptualize and put into practice a more open, creative, inclusive and free attitude towards the future that awaits us and the relations with each other and the world that stand in its light. Also our understanding of meaning is modified once we see that anticipation is intrinsic to meaning. A specific application of the general theory will be explored as a case study: how are anticipation and communication entwined in I-Thou dialogue? Can we improve the quality of dialogue, especially in the context of decolonising philosophy, by turning to a deeper understanding of this entwinement? How are the communicative actions of voicing and listening affected by anticipation? I argue that an understanding of the fundamental connection between anticipation and communication makes it both necessary and possible to depart from deeply ingrained attitudes, dichotomies and assumptions, especially in Eurocentric thought, such as the dichotomies between truth and persuasion, mind and body, form and matter, the universal and the particular, the head and the heart, nature and culture, epitomised in the historical institutions of "philosophy" and "rhetoric". As we create ways to let go of the death traps of classical thought (still with us throughout postmodernism) and its aftermath in social relations based on extraction and exploitation, a new appreciation of an open, creative and interdependent world may emerge that embodies a new vision of what it means to be at home on our planet and in relation with each other. A new and deeper understanding of the way of truth ensues.

Abstract: The “Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe” project aims at informing the development of the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe (HE), the European Union’s current Research and Innovation Funding Framework Programme, by employing a combination of different forward-looking approaches.

The Strategic Plans of Horizon Europe explicate how the R&I initiatives funded by the Framework Programme are expected to contribute to the achievement of major EU policy goals as captured for now by the key strategic orientations of the 1st Strategic Plan of HE. However, already during the implementation of the 1st Strategic Plan, the EU is confronted with novel developments that may hamper achieving the initial ambitions of the 1st Strategic Plan, and which should be re-considered when devising the 2nd Strategic Plan. These novel developments can arise from the global and EU context of EU R&I policies, but equally from RTDI activities. Of particular interest are those developments that may bring with them potentially disruptive consequences (e.g., new social confrontations or advances in general AI) – both threatening and promising ones. They will indicate areas in need of particular attention in EU R&I policies, pointing beyond those already identified in the 1st Strategic Plan, and possibly also questioning some of them. In other words, the sequence of Strategic Plans is a means to make the Framework Programme more adaptive and account explicitly for newly emerging developments, with foresight methods applied to ensure that a long-term perspective is taken.

Our project opens a new page in making use of foresight for underpinning the development and adaptation of large-scale policy initiatives in the EU policy context. We argue that it offers the possibility to promote futures thinking and anticipatory capacity building in public sector organisations by introducing new foresight infrastructures, building inter-organisational networks, and mobilising futures literacy and domain expertise around selected themes to underpin the definition and adaptation of policy strategies and actions.

The project is embedded in a regular interaction process with an intra-EU network of forward-looking thinkers, involving all European Commission Directorates with an active role or stake in research and innovation. The project also reaches out to EU member states foresight nodes to stimulate exchange on emerging future challenges and innovation opportunities in selected areas across policy levels. And it also facilitates debates with a wide range of societal stakeholders. These interactions are organised through online workshops and an online community (futures4europe.org) that was launched at the beginning of 2022.

More specifically, the emphasis on sources of potential disruptions is reflected in the design of the project. Its first component focuses on potentially disruptive developments in the global and EU context. We explore possible future changes in the global and EU context for EU R&I policies to identify those areas of change that might have disruptive impacts on EU’s ability to achieve its overarching policy goals.

The first part of the project has reviewed a set of recent forward-looking activities with global scope. The scenarios developed by these activities have been characterised by considering a set of aspects, including
• The needs of the client commissioning the study
• The methods used
• The main features of the scenarios (organising principle(s), the level of analysis, …)
• The main trends, drivers, and key factors underlying the scenarios
• The key likely developments in a given future
• The actual use and influence of the report on decision-making
• Critical assessment (novelty of the approach, methods or scenario architecture; if any; new or surprising elements considered; relevance for EU R&I policies).

We will consider the pros and cons of various scenario approaches, namely the types of scenario architectures used in the reviewed reports; other options used in further prospective analyses; as well as three more generic methodological approaches we experimented with in the first part of the project: multi-level scenarios; disruptions as ‘starting points’ (their likely impacts explored in different contexts); and narratives (short, focussed descriptions of certain developments, as opposed to scenarios offering a more comprehensive picture of a given future). We will identify methodological differences and elaborate on the particularities of context scenarios as opposed to other types of scenarios, and their added value for selecting and framing policy issues.

This first, context-oriented component will serve to test the robustness of suggested new emerging, and potentially disruptive, developments that may be possibly included in the 2nd Strategic Plan.

The second component aims at deepening our understanding of disruptive developments in selected areas or research and innovation using horizon scanning and scenario development techniques. This part is going to be implemented in the first half of 2022. The purpose of this second component is to identify candidate areas for inclusion in the 2nd Strategic Plan. Drawing on these two components, a visionary outlook and possible suggestions for the 2nd Strategic Plan will be developed in interaction with the different communities of practice tied to the project.

The closing phase of the project will distil policy priorities from prospective analyses. In other words, it aims to interpret how to tackle the disruptive factors at context and area levels, e.g., how to take advantage of the favourable ones; how to prevent or ‘amend’ the unfavourable ones; and how to adapt to the unstoppable ones. We will consider what processes and approaches would be appropriate for selecting and framing issues when setting R&I policies in an environment characterised by multi-level governance and interactions among policy tools set in different policy domains.

Abstract: This session aims to foreground the varied, sundry, and possibly even emancipatory ways that anticipatory thinking enters into educational thinking, policy and practice. It directs attention at the 2021 UNESCO Futures of Education report Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education in an effort to advance the ethical dimensions of thinking about and working with ideas of the future in education. The first part of the session will feature a presentation by Keri Facer (University of Bristol UK) whose paper “Futures in education: Towards an ethical practice” served as one of the background papers commissioned for the initiative. This will be followed by a presentation on the report itself by Noah W. Sobe (Loyola University Chicago USA) who previously worked in the UNESCO Secretariat to the International Commission on the Futures of Education. Then the remainder of the session will be dedicated to a conversation led off by the invited discussants and to include the audience.

Abstract: Futures Literacy is a relatively new and unexplored capability in the world of futures thinking. Learning what Futures Literacy is and how to use it can be challenging on multiple levels – cognitive, social and emotional. Designing tools that reflect on this process demands a creative and less travelled approach. This presentation introduces a creative process for reflecting on Futures Literacy learning journeys using visual metaphor cards in a digital collaborative tool (Miro). The presentation describes the design principles of the exercise, findings from using the exercise with systems innovators, and identifies the potential of using creative tools for reflecting on Futures Literacy learning journeys.


The tool was developed in the context of the FLxDeep initiative in 2020. At which time FLxDeep was investigating what happens when you enhance the Futures Literacy capabilities of systems innovators and their partners working to avert climate emergency. In 2020, FLxDeep organised two Futures Literacy training programmes and a multitude of Futures Literacy engagements across the EIT Climate KIC Deep Demonstrations project. FLxDeep was co-funded in 2020 by its six partner organizations and EIT Climate KIC.

Developing Futures Literacy capabilities is not a simple matter, for two reasons.

Firstly, Futures Literacy is inherently reflexive – practising the capability asks you to reflect upon and reconsider your own assumptions and habits of mind. In becoming conscious of these, a typical futures literacy process then asks a participant to act upon their own thinking to produce alternative imaginings about the future. This can be fraught with cognitive, social and emotional barriers.

Secondly, interfacing with futures brings you into intimate contact with complexity. Complexity defies rational prediction and challenges typical modes of engaging with the future through preparation for contingencies and planning for optimisation. As such, the acquisition of Futures Literacy capabilities has to make space for some wildness of the imagination, intuitive sensing, and emotional intelligence.

After participants work under conditions of reflexivity and complexity in a Futures Literacy training session, forming coherent and well formulated insights can be challenging. Likewise, developing tools for operational contexts that are open and flexible enough for the expression of a wide array of meanings and value is demanding.

The creative reflection tool described in this presentation was developed in collaboration with Dr Petra Cremers, an educational researcher at the UNESCO Chair Futures Literacy at Hanze University of Applied Sciences, one of the consortium partners of FLxDeep. We devised a toolbox of reflection exercises that tap into other ways of knowing and communicating, that are intuitive to use, and that facilitate the uncovering of useful new meanings that deepen the Futures Literacy learning journey.

This presentation would summarize my personal insights from developing creative exercises for reflecting on Futures Literacy capability acquisition.

Abstract: How will humanity address climate change? It is the top question of our times. There is a growing wave of innovators who have turned their focus to addressing the climate emergency, applying their attention and abilities to produce new knowledge and invent new products, services, resources, and ways of doing things. How can a capability to diversify and vary the futures we imagine for which purposes, or futures literacy, help climate innovators? How can this futures literacy be introduced and developed in Climate-KIC? What benefits (or difficulties) can the capability produce for innovators addressing climate change?

These questions shaped the primary inquiry of the FLxDeep consortium supported by EIT Climate-KIC in Europe. This Knowledge Innovation Community (KIC) launched its ambitious Deep Demonstrations program in June 2019 with a goal of demonstrating a portfolio approach to systems innovation to address climate change at sufficient scale and in time to make a difference. The FLxDeep consortium was comprised of six partners and leading experts in Futures Literacy and engaged in multi-faceted experimentation in three Deep Demonstrations while offering futures literacy ‘train-the-trainer’ training to all Deep Demonstration leaders. Their work can be framed as a Community of Inquiry conducting participatory action research in the context of a rapidly changing organization and research setting.

In this panel discussion, members of FLxDeep talk freely about their experiences fostering -- learned from engaging in EIT Climate-KIC. What did we observe? What novelty emerged? What potential did we notice? What could others learn from our experiences? What aftereffects have occurred? What has the experience of working together enabled ourselves and others to do? A metaphorical framing of our work is the compost pile: we have interacted and produced nutrients. Who could use these nutrients and for what purposes?

This panel discussion is relevant to broader discussions about what futures literacy is, how it develops, and how climate innovators can develop and apply it. It touches on larger discussions concerning human processes of anticipation and how awareness of these processes can support development of new capabilities relevant to innovation.

NB! The panel will be facilitated by Martyn Richards. All other co-authors will be panelists.

Abstract: This paper aims to introduce and explore one specific type of anticipation, which we call ‘regenerative anticipation’. Regenerative anticipation seems particularly relevant in times when planetary wholeness is fractured, and research and practice that anticipate regenerative futures may have positive outcomes related to planetary well-being. To build our argument, we combined concepts from biology (stem cells, exaptation, autopoiesis), and perspectives from the knowledge of Brazilian indigenous peoples (ancestral futures). Regenerative anticipation is a potentially important line of research in anticipation studies. It can provide significant inputs to futures literacy, while delivering on decolonial futures perspectives.

Abstract: “Human Economies of the Future”

We are proposing a series of two panels to explore theoretical and practical dimensions of economic systems with regard to their future-oriented dimensions. Panelists will discuss non-linear dynamics of social systems (Anderies); the radical political potential of hope-less anticipation among youth in Japan and Korea (Kroo); an example of community-led energy initiatives that model alternative economic practices (Parmentier); the dialogue between community-based economic practices of the past and the future in an initiative in Kenya (Berman); and the relationship between economic systems of the past and the future, as explored through a digitization project of the ancient city of Palmyra (Graf).
We imagine two connected panels, one grouped around theorizing futures (Anderies, Graff, Nocek), the other around social practices of the future (Kroo, Parmentier, Berman). Alternatively, we could also go to a roundtable format. In both scenarios, the interactive part consists of an invitation to the audience to “Imagine into the future”: panelists will focus on select aspects of the economy and ask the audience to imagine them into the future (perhaps supported by a visual tool) and then invite everybody to reflect on the processes by which they imagine. This interaction should highlight what kind of data and/or beliefs people mobilize to imagine their economic futures. We plan to begin the panels with the interaction, and then panelists could dive more deeply into their particular projects.

Human Economies of the Future I: Design, Ownership, Governance

Marty Anderies: Anticipation, Non-linear Dynamics, and Tipping Points
The world-earth system will face increasing levels of uncertainty in the next century. While ‘anticipation’ may play a crucial role in navigating those uncertainties, the notion that processes that drive earth system dynamics and social organization exhibit strong non-linearities may strongly circumscribe what we may anticipate. Non-linear dynamics generate tipping elements that are difficult, if not impossible, to systematically characterize in space and time and, in turn, to anticipate. This calls into question what it means to ‘anticipate’ our future with such high levels of ambiguity, and perhaps calls us to focus on obvious principles: fairness, justice (across all species) and investment in building trust.

Sarah Graff: Anticipating Digital Ownership of Cultural Heritage
Knowing that the future will include loss, archaeologists are working to digitize the remains of the past. But how will those digital (re)productions be used in the future? Who do they belong to and who will economically benefit from their use? While archaeologists would agree that preserving cultural heritage digitally is important, there are several ethical choices that need to be made to prevent a reprise of colonialism in the form of “digital colonialism” in the future. The discussion will use a case study of the ancient caravan city and economic hub of Palmyra along the silk road, its destruction by ISIS, its preservation by The Institute for Digital Archaeology, and the exhibition of its Triumphal Arch through 3D reconstruction on Trafalgar Square in London.


Adam Nocek: “Anticipatory Governance: On the Logic of Algorithmic Governmentality”
This talk investigates the growing concern that artificial intelligence is governing human action across institutional, political, economic, and financial domains, and how this has increasingly become a question of social and behavioral design. The convergence of algorithms, governance, and design has drawn the attention of social and legal scholars in recent years, leading them to map out the fields of “algorithmic governance” and “design-based regulation,” and offer a host of policy recommendations to ensure the elimination of racial and gender biases, preemptive action based on spurious correlations, lack of transparency, and more (Yeung 2018, Hildebrandt 2016; Pasquale 2015). What’s missing from this and related research are two, interwoven lines of investigation: first, how the configurations of algorithmic governance we witness today are rooted in a much longer history of governing and designing behavior through automation technologies. And this picture comes into view once governing is conceived through the genealogical frame of “governmentality” (Foucault 2007, 2008). And second, what distinguishes this era of algorithmic governmentality is that machine learning techniques are used to anticipate possible futures (e.g., via preemptive and speculative security practices [de Goede 2012; Amoore 2013, Amoore and Raley 2017; Aradau 2010)] and mitigate threats to the dominant regimes of governance. The talk concludes by showing how it’s the anticipatory logics of AI based governance that require critical attention today, and how this conception of governance as a practice of speculative social design is already anticipated by Michel Foucault in the 1980s: governance concerns “guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome” (Foucault 1982, 221).

Human Economies of the Future II: Potential, Communities, Social Capital

Judit Kroo: Anticipation and the Radical Potential of Hopelessness
Distinguishing anticipation from hope, anticipation highlights the ways in which individuals’ discourses of past and present social conditions delimit future possibilities, rendering the future as a realized present and foreclosing the possibility of imagining futures that diverge from the present. Bound by the limitations of the present, anticipatory futures are not hope-ful, since hope requires the ability to project positive alternatives to present circumstances, imagining that things might be otherwise. Such a state of hope-lessness dominates narratives of life among younger adults, such as those in Japan and South Korea. But this hope-less anticipation also contains radical political potentials. After all, there is a brutality to hope, since it may emphasize the possibility of positive outcomes in ways that lead us to cling to modes of life that are cruel, disastrous, and unequal; in this way, hope can dull resistance. Framing anticipation as the achievement of something like an ordinary life, as the endurance and resilience of life itself might emerge as a locus of alternative, radical politics.

Mary Jane Parmentier: Cross-National Perspectives on Anticipation and Community Development
ASU has been involved in several initiatives that study and support off grid, community-driven renewable energy projects. In the fall of 2021 Let Communities Lead, funded by the Global Futures Lab, collected narratives from communities around the world on energy projects that make it apparent that energy is not disconnected from economic activity, but an integral part of how communities can shape their own futures based on economic models that work for them, and at the same time provide environmental benefits. These communities make it apparent that governance, domestic and commercial production for the community, the transfer of skills and other benefits can come with energy systems. Traditionally energy systems have been centralized, often government run, with many rural communities left off the grid. These narratives show how marginalized communities can take the lead, addressing issues in their lived realities. What do these stories tell us about how different cultures and contexts manifest anticipation?

Nina Berman: Afrofutures: The Worth of Social Capital
In Afrotopia, Felwine Sarr states that “African economies would see an explosion in growth if they were to operate in accordance with their own driving forces.” Farr’s envisioning of a better future for African economies is part of a larger discussion in African Studies generally referred to as Afrofuturism, a term that goes back to the 1970s and has been mobilized again in the context of Black Lives Matter and notions of an “African Renaissance.” My discussion will explore future-oriented energies as “driving forces” of an initiative founded by a group of acrobats in Kenya, Diani Mambo Acrobats Group. Social capital has often been hailed as the cornerstone of African economies, and various social practices of this group will shed light on the potential of community-based initiatives to draw on, reinvigorate and transform preexisting practices that have been eroded–but are not entirely lost– by the introduction of the salaried economy and the urbanization of large areas of Kenya.

Abstract: Context
With the increasing ubiquity of socio-technological developments, future challenges and technological implications become even more unpredictable and uncertain. As a reaction towards challenging this uncertainty, design - bearing its disciplinary responsibility towards sustainable futures - has proposed alternative directions that tend to explore the borders of future challenges.

Critical Design Futures
Over the past three decades, researchers and practitioners have developed design directions that aim to operate outside the borders of market-driven inquiry in order to question and interrogate design futures. The purpose and motivation of these practices is the mitigation of the implications of unfavorable consequences that might affect the future. They act as problem finder rather than problem solver (Mazé & Redström, 2007). To provide representative examples, these practices include Speculative Design (Dunne & Raby, 2013), Design Fiction (Sterling, 2005), and Experiential Futures (Candy, 2010). In this paper, we refer to these practices as Critical Design Futures.

We define these set of practices as Critical Design Futures (CDF). Which is a notion that describes a set of constructive design research practices aiming at exploring design disciplinary borders and limitations. They create a framework for critiquing and revisiting our uptake of technology, politics, and publics engagement. They work as a reflexive practice that aims at positioning design as an act that does not only produce affirmative design outcome, but also as a responsible practice that aims to enact constructive social change. It’s an actionable set of practices that aim to trigger and initiate debates about the future.

CDF diversifies the ways we look at design issues and boundaries, it does not explain, clean or sterile the debate but rather it problematizes and accentuates future issues. It acknowledges that design is a futures-oriented activity; its role is to rethink the actions we take today. CDF anticipates the future and disrupts how a designer looks at it. It unsettles the way designers and public think about the future, and it brings to the table alternative proposals to publics’ assumptions. CDF opposes, conflicts, and takes a resistant stance towards conventions, hegemonies, and go-with-the-flow design decisions.

Research Gap
Although sounding very profound, and examples are abundant, the theoretical academic literature of the CDF practices is still not fully comprehensive in terms of theory, relation with other design practices and enquiries about method, making and development are still unresolved. (Bardzell et al., 2012; Mazé & Redström, 2007; Ozkaramanli & Desmet, 2016; Pierce, 2021)

In this paper we propose The Critical Catalyst (CC); a set of reflexive design activities and devices developed to fill the gap in the methodological approach of Critical Design Futures.
The CC works as the initiator of critical debates in design futures and a catalyst to facilitate designers’ reflections towards future challenges. Its aim is to a) Facilitate triggering critical enactments in design futures practices b) work as a self-reflexive tool for practitioners and researchers c) facilitate critical design decisions along the process.

The CC Structure
The CC is structured as several critical paths as follows:
- first layer or the paradigms: they are meant to act as paths to adopt along the process,
- second layer or the motivations: where designers identify their aims and approaches in addressing futures challenges through design,
- third layer or the critical narrative approach (scenarios): where it is possible to develop both structure and critical lenses that can be used in a critical design futures proposal (for diegetic scenarios or world-building as well).
This context allows the designer to connect the gap between material and immaterial, turning scenarios into visceral and tangible design output by defining specific critical design propositions and designing critical objects. This CC climax opens up the discussion and proposes the concept of critical pragmatics in design for futures context.

Methodology
This research is developed through the analysis of speculative and critical design projects as secondary resources. The aim of case studies is to identify and develop themes and paradigms at which a critical futures project can take place. We analyzed designers’ uptake and motivations through the analysis of the artifacts, videos, and projects’ documentation. Literature review has been conducted to support this research and to further the insights as well as grounding the secondary research findings (Candy & Dunagan, 2017; DiSalvo, 2012; Dunne & Seago, 1999; Lindley et al., 2018; Malpass, 2017; Mitrović et al., 2021; Pierce, 2021; Sengers et al., 2005; Tharp & Tharp, 2013). The second layer of research is the expert interviews, design experiments, and testing in design pedagogical context for the master students of Integrated Product design at the Design School in Politecnico di Milano. These activities were conducted to further test the applicability of the CC, and to define the problematic and weak areas that need development. The CC has gone through 3 rounds of modifications and development. This research was conducted as a parst of a PhD research at the University of Politecnico di Milano and supported by “FUEL4Design: Future education and Literacy for Designers”; An ERASMUS + co-funded project.

Conclusions
To conclude, in this paper we discuss three questions and propose a non-prescriptive answer through the critical catalyst. 1) What does it mean to be critical in design futures?
2) Why would you be critical about design futures?
And 3) how this can be achieved from performative and conceptual levels?
The research investigates a precise area of the future oriented design inquiry placing the capacity to activate critical thinking along the process as an intrinsic value. This is described by Carrol indicating that that "designers are not just making things, they are making sense” (Carroll, 2000).




References
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Abstract: Disadvantaged neighbourhoods and communities in urban and peri-urban settings are among the groups who stand to benefit the most from the promises of the just transition in terms of social and environmental justice and health and wellbeing benefits.
A bottom-up approach to sustainable and inclusive urban living is key to delivering these promises, however, the material conditions of these communities are often characterised by insecure work and housing, time poverty and several immediate problems to be solved, coupled with lack of access to educational resources and safe spaces for creativity. Focused on the emergencies of the present, they are hard pressed to imagine a future which is not just a reproduction of the present crisis, and therefore are less likely to be able to plan it and implement it through bottom-up initiatives.
Knowing that if you can't imagine a sustainable future, then you can't start to build it, we have implemented two projects to empower communities to take ownership of their future through speculative design and solarpunk praxis.
The projects “Milano, Cartoline da un Futuro Possibile”, conceived and realized by Commando Jugendstil and A.ME.LIN.C. Onlus, implemented by Punto.Sud, and co-funded by the European Commission and Fondazione Cariplo, and “The Town That Could Be - A time travel journal from Reading 2045”, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund via Transition Bounce Forward, focused on giving the communities the tools to understand sustainability issues and helping them imagine and implement their future through sessions of speculative design and visioning.
We report on key successes and issues encountered through these projects, with special attention to the issues of digital exclusion cause by the forced reliance on virtual meetings during the pandemic and on the importance of community building through making.

Abstract: Format: Technique Workshop Duration: 90 Minutes Maximum Participants: 50


Provocation: The ubiquity of conventional narrative structures in futures imaginaries is a critical constraint to envisioning and enacting preferred, pluriversal futures. This workshop seeks to make explicit narrative sensemaking structures of control and explore alternative structures to create spaces for creative emergence. Story is one of humanity's oldest technologies which allows us to influence the self, the other and the environment. Story is also our gateway to the future, the means by which we transport ourselves speculatively to other times and places. There is a tension between anticipation as a discipline that cultivates openness and emergence, and storytelling which seeks to exert control.

What Participants Will Take Away from the Workshop: Futurists have developed a sophisticated set of tools in regards to scenarios - high level narrative representations of the future. Design Futures has made strides in instantiating artifacts, experiential encounters, and design fictions, in order to consider implications of possible futures with relatively high fidelity. This workshop seeks to address the messy middle, the translation from scenario to artifact, the in-between levels of narrative abstraction, in order to surface biases, assumptions, and patterns of emplotment. Emplotment is the process by which information is organized structurally. Story theorists differentiate between the transmission of information and the transportation of audiences in order to engage with the information experientially. Participants will leave the workshop with a new appreciation for the relationship between structure and content in constructing stories about the future.

Workshop Structure

Pre-Work: Participants are asked to craft a short description of a preferred future in 25 years, to imagine the story of how this preferred future might come to be, and to write (or visually illustrate) a description of the main plot points (approximately 10).

Step 1: Working in small groups, participants each share their “Vision of a Preferred Future” and the key milestones/plot points that lead from the present to the future. They each map these steps in the shape of the story as they envision it (linear, steps on a ladder, meandering, circular, non-linear/exponential).

Step 2: Group participants are then provided with a set of “alternative” narrative structures in which to re-emplot their future story. Question prompts will help guide conversations around what has changed, what hasn’t, and where have new open spaces emerged? How does this new storyform disrupt their preferred future?

Step 3: Participants are then provided with the opportunity to construct emergent story structure(s). They are then asked to re-emplot their future story one last time before engaging in generative, facilitated conversation around what emerged in the process.

Post-Work: Participants who agree will receive a follow up questionnaire survey about their experience, any further reflection on their preferred future and the narrative pathway they had constructed and then disrupted, as well as a request for considerations on how to continue to evolve this method.

Intellectual and Artistic Foundations: This workshop proposal draws on several intellectual traditions. First is the Transition Design Framework, specifically a body of work exploring transition pathways in socio-technical systems. Story theorists, narratologists, and specifically David Boje, and his work on antenarrative (pre-formed, unplotted, fragments of story) also figure heavily in this workshop. Assumptions of change and Inayatullah’s timing of the future have also guided certain protocols, as well as Dator’s generic archetypes. Finally, from an intellectual perspective, this workshop draws on the organizer’s work in the experiential futures space, and early-stage research that explores the processes by which audiences are confronted with artifacts and experiences from the future, and then retrospectively backcast and scaffold a narrative that bridges the future to the present in an emergent and iterative manner, by synthesizing Candy’s Experiential Futures Ladder and Scharmer’s Theory U framework. In terms of artistic foundations, this workshop makes use of several playwriting techniques that focus on the sequencing of scenes and ordering of knowledge to influence narrative tension and audience reception.

Workshop Organizer: Adam Cowart is a PhD Researcher and teaching fellow in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University studying Transition Design. He is a strategic foresight professional, and an adjunct professor of foresight at the University of Houston. He holds a BFA and MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, an MBA from Simon Fraser University, and an MSc in foresight from the University of Houston. Recent courses taught include Design Futures, Experiential Futures, and Alternative Perspectives in Futures. His research focuses on storytelling structures and ecosystems in futures imaginaries and design.

Abstract: The proposers and panellists for this curated session are currently participating in a project called “Responsible Futures”. These are drawn from a special interest group of around 30 people that has formed to share in a study of responsibility in the processes of foresight and anticipation. The purpose of this is to understand and develop meaning and to shape practices as a result. Practices refer not only to specific futures-oriented thinking (e.g. foresight projects) but to future-creating activities, such as enterprise, activist movements and governance.
The concepts of “responsible foresight” (Tonn, 2018, Van der Duin, 2019) and of “responsible futures” (Arnaldi, Eidinow, Siebers, Wangel, 2020) has emerged in futures literature. The focus of the initial programme is motivating contributions that (i) articulate a conceptual basis for the study of responsibility in the processes of foresight and anticipation and/or (ii) identify forward-looking examples of future-making in practice which address global challenges (such as the Sustainable Development Goals) to use as living laboratories in which practices of responsibility can be revealed.
Anticipatory systems (AS) have an ethical dimension. In his treatise, Robert Rosen remarks that “The character of a predictive model assumes almost an ethical character even in a purely abstract context. We might even say that the models embodied in an anticipatory system are what comprise its individuality; what distinguish it uniquely from other systems” (Rosen, 2012, p 370). Relationality appears to be an important principle of Rosen’s AS and of matters of responsibility.
The responsible stance of the futures field addresses many facets of responsibility, Including the issues of values, ethics, morals and of sustainability. The issue is to understand that anticipation is an act of responsibility and has an ethical character. Our discussion in this curated session may surface ethical characteristics inherent in types and forms of Futures Studies and in everyday futures thinking and futures-making.
The group has been developing connected conversations since June 2021, and continued these. An edited book and other spin offs are expected. As can been seen from the short outlines of the panellist’s interests, the session addresses several of the conference themes, but most specifically in relation to Politics, Justice and Ethics of Anticipation

Abstract: Issues, trends and weak signals of the phenomenon

In the attempt to define the possible evolutionary paths of contemporary societies, we often talk about “knowledge society” (Drucker, 1969, 1993; Lane, 1966; Stehr, 1994), an expression recalling the high degree of complexity and contradiction of today's social systems (Beck, 2000; Giddens, 1994; Kumar, 2000; Martell, 2011; Stehr, 2001; Touraine, 1993), pointing out at the same time the leading role that knowledge should play in the definition of political actions focused on building a “new model of society” (Gallino, 2007; Morin, 2012; Touraine, 2012). In this sense, contemporary debates highlight how knowledge now becomes more than ever a strategic asset for companies and organizations as we can clearly perceive by reading the guidelines and policies of the European Union of the last 30 years and its “flagship initiatives”. Among them there is the continuous verification that the transformation processes underway in training and education systems, processes and models are able to bring "satisfactory results in terms of raising the critical abilities, the cultural foundations and the social inclusion" of learners (Pastore, 2019). Anticipating by building a critical knowledge approach is one trait underlined in the definition of Homo Sapiens whose peculiarity, following Seligman’s approach, does not lie so much in having acquired its own language, having built tools or developed its own rationality, but has to be found in the “unparalleled human capacity to direct one's actions by imagining various possibilities that are articulated in the future” (Seligman et al., 2016). By talking about Homo proscpectus, we then agree with Seligman on the assumption that anticipation is the "capacity which in its highest expression realizes the ambition of wisdom". Anticipation is then a way of thinking, acting, designing and working within a "liquid contemporary age" (Bauman, 1999) which is intrinsically connected to the belief that change is the only permanent thing and that uncertainty is the only certainty".
The risk of inadequacy and uneffectivess of learning paths to face uncertainty is summarized by what the sociologist Gerardo Pastore calls the "dark side of the knowledge society”: if not properly designed, learning paths risk not to favour the acquisition of a set of transdisciplinary skills aimed at building a systemic way of thinking and responsibly acting in the current volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous socio-economic-cultural environment.
The Advanced Design Unit of University of Bologna started the reflection on the influence of design in knowledge and learning innovation processes even before the pandemic crisis brought a radical transformation in our lives and work. The research team had actually a double tension while approaching this investigation:
• a “push” tension (design for knowledge): how to design new processes, methods and places of organisational “knowledge distribution” to cope with reskilling and upskilling emergent challenges ? Trying to find a design perspective on this question, design needs to interact with multiple theories and disciplines, especially with “organisational learning” which still does not have a single definition, being actually a living and evolving phaenomenon moving between information processes and behavioral change evolution. Design itself is in essence a process of knowledge acquisition because it requires to designers to be involved in a continuous “in and out” process: working in the reality from inside and also working on the reality from outside, not limiting the related outputs to physical artifacts but extending them to “cognitive artifacts” which are essential for learning of people and organisations and include the generation of new meaning and values.
• A “pull” tension (knowledge for design) was meant for the research group to rethink about design education processes and methods and prepare future designers to have a significant role and impact vs the emerging challenges in the VUCA environment. Designers have to apply their peculiar “productive thinking” to increasingly complex and impactful changes linked to cognitive processes and artifacts and facing four kinds of challenges: performance (what a designer must do), systemic (how to address the entire system, not just a single part), contextual (how to deal with complex systems being affected by the local context) and global (how to deal with complex socio-technical system at even larger scale).

An anticipatory hub for gathering inspirations, contributors, experiences: the International Symposium “Future Design for Knowledge Innovation”

With these premises, the Advanced Design Unit has organized and curated an International Symposium on “Future Design for Knowledge Innovation” aimed at observing and mapping processes, methods, practices and places related to the distribution of adult knowledge and learning in organisations as “spaces of complexity” from a four-side perspective:
• processes, strategies: the set of approaches and emergent way of working organisations have taken in place to distribuite knowledge within all its layers
• communities: design of networks and aggregations for the purpose of knowing and/or learning something, based on the “network society” distributed knowledge model
• formats design of learning spaces, models and formats to understand their influence on the content itself
• enabling technologies: tools and technologies to empower knowledge communities by including them in the learning experience design.

The link with two conference critical topics: public anticipation and critical anticipatory capacities

After observing and mapping more than 150 best practices able to transmit signals of the contemporary attempt in knowledge innovation models and practices, we then moved to the modelling phase to link past experience, present situation and future prospects to share our perspective and co-create with a mixed pool of contributors (academics, entrepreneurs, designers, corporates and specialists within the “knowledge industry supply chain”) so as to open a collective reflection and start the building of an international permanent observer as a space of “public anticipation”. At the crossing between the conference discourse on the topic of “public future” and “critical anticipatory capacities” this paper is aimed at showing the results of the International Symposium and its main co-created outputs: an inclusive definition of “organizational knowledge innovation design”, the editing of the “Manifesto for Knowledge Innovation” and the “Knowledge innovation future map” according to mapped cases and experiences and anticipatory collaborative workshops made.

Abstract: Discussions about the possibility of human migration to Mars have become more prevalent in recent years, largely owing to the highly publicised ambitions of privately-owned space companies such as SpaceX. There has also been renewed interest in futures studies and the public sphere for the moral permissibility of Mars migration. This paper aims to contribute to the debate over whether humans should migrate to Mars from an anticipatory ethics perspective.



The debate generally falls into ‘for’ and ‘against’ camps, and authors tend to draw on traditional ethical approaches in formulating their arguments, such as consequentialism or deontology. I propose that philosophical pragmatism can make a valuable contribution to this debate. Pragmatism can not only provide tools that will make for a more fruitful debate, but also provide the procedural conditions that would make moral deliberation more inclusive. In addition, pragmatism is of special importance for futures studies because of its focus on the possibility of techno-moral change (Swierstra et al 2009), and therefore it addresses the issue of presentism. In this paper, I suggest three ‘tools’ from pragmatism that can prove fruitful.



Firstly, the pragmatist emphasis on finding new moral vocabularies might help to highlight some of the ambiguous and problematic terms within the Mars debate (Swierstra 2002, 225). Bringing the pragmatic approach to bear on the Mars debate can highlight the significance of terms that are often taken for granted. One notable example is ‘colonisation’, which is the most common way to describe the process of moving humans to Mars permanently. I argue that using such language in the context of Mars migration erases the history of colonisation on our own planet, thereby hindering social progress that is predicated on reckoning with past injustices. ‘Colonisation’ as a term in the Mars debate may also do some of the same discriminating work that it has historically done as a social practice; some groups will benefit from the endeavour, while others are excluded. Instead of ‘colonisation’, I argue in favour of the term ‘migration', to signal a fundamental conceptual shift. Rather than suggesting an unequal power dynamic in which one group asserts dominance over others, ‘migration’ shifts focus to a wider swathe of humanity. The term also has a naturalistic appeal which is more in keeping with a pragmatist view. Crucially, unlike with 'colonisation', the notion of migrating to Mars does not come loaded with ideas of entitlement to land and resources.



Secondly, the reframing of ethics as ‘experimental inquiry’ is a more sensible approach to the technological novelty of Mars migration – in contrast to traditional ethical theories. John Dewey, one of the founders of pragmatism, argued that our ethics ought to be conducted in a way similar to scientific inquiry – that is, we make ‘value judgements’ which act similarly to scientific hypotheses, and these are instruments by which we uncover new information about the world (Dewey 1922, 19-26; Dewey 1925, 88 – 9). I argue that this kind of approach to ethics is preferable in the context of Mars migration. For such a novel technological venture, we simply cannot make judgements before it has even been attempted. Human migration to Mars will have consequences which will be valued, and in light of those consequences, we can revise our earlier value judgements in order to guide further conduct. In contrast to traditional ethical theories like deontology or consequentialism, this means that we are not making theoretical commitments about what to value ahead of time.



Approaching the question of Mars migration with a view of ethics as ‘experimental inquiry’ thus avoids stringent claims of moral obligation – that we have a duty to migrate to Mars or not to – and also avoids having theoretical commitments to ideas of ‘the good’ or of intrinsic value that do not serve as useful guides for action. Even though we can draw some historical parallels, as many Mars advocates do, the scenario of moving humans to Mars permanently is so unprecedented in history that we should not approach the ethical debate armed with theoretical commitments that may not serve us. Moving humans to Mars permanently may entail all kinds of dramatic changes that we cannot anticipate, and so having an approach to ethics that is more adaptable and flexible considering these changing circumstances may be more productive and better able to accommodate progress. By relying on traditional ethics, then, we may be closing ourselves off to possible futures by overly fixating on a search for certainty and fixed principles. In addition, approaching ethics as ‘experimental inquiry’ opens up the Mars debate to more people. This point also stems from John Dewey’s complimentary views on ethics and political philosophy. For the Mars migration debate, this marriage of ethics and politics is crucial.



The third ‘tool’ from pragmatism is thus an emphasis on democratic institutions as fostering intelligent moral inquiry. This provides the means for greater participation in the Mars debate. For pragmatists like John Dewey, ethics and democracy should be complementary. With democracy, we practise ‘intelligent moral inquiry’ together (Anderson 2019). This means that the implications and consequences of the arguments for and against Mars migration are not just grist for philosophers, but data to be valued and judged by as many ordinary people as possible. This is another way in which Deweyan pragmatism (and pragmatism generally) differs from traditional ethics. Instead of the individual Cartesian ego reasoning through moral problems, there exists a ‘community of inquirers’ (Keulartz et al. 2002, 13). Such a community stands a better chance of finding solutions to moral problems. Crucially, no group should be excluded from decision-making and debate.



This latter point is important in the context of Mars migration, given that space exploration in general is dominated by elites. This domination is not only on the technological side, with these elites spearheading current efforts into space and to Mars, but the visions of these elites are often the only ideas that circulate in anticipated futures of Mars migration. It is in this context that a democratic approach to ethical inquiry becomes more necessary. Not only would it expand the possibilities for Mars migration, but it may also contribute to the empowerment of groups that have traditionally been disenfranchised and ignored in debates about our socio-technical future (Sand 2019, 99).




References



Anderson, E. (2019) "Dewey’s Moral Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/dewey-moral/>.



Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct (Vol. 14, John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899–1924). Carbondale. Southern Illinois University Press.



Dewey, J. (1925a), Experience and Nature, Chicago: Open Court Publishing.



Keulartz, J., Korthals, M., Schermer, M., & Swierstra, T. (2002). Ethics in a technological culture. In Pragmatist ethics for a technological culture (pp. 3-21). Springer, Dordrecht.



Sand, M. (2019). On “not having a future”. Futures, 107, 98-106.



Swierstra, T. (2002). Moral Vocabularies and Public Debate. In Pragmatist ethics for a technological culture (pp. 223-240). Springer, Dordrecht.



Swierstra, T., Stemerding, D., & Boenink, M. (2009). Exploring techno-moral change: the case of the obesitypill. In Evaluating new technologies (pp. 119-138). Springer, Dordrecht.

Abstract: In this session, we aim to examine the work of “making critical futures” – as a politics, as a series of questions, as a practice, as an embodied experience – based on a wide range of cases from studies of corporate foresight to participatory futuring [1] around topics such as health, work, craft and culture. Rather than universal, objective futures from nowhere that are continually advanced and promoted in the futures field as well as in Silicon Valley proclamations, our interactive conversation locates futures that are emergent from our own identities, desires and visions for social change. We refuse the apolitical discourse around futures as a blank slate [2] and, instead, infuse futures with a commitment to care and healing of our relationships to ourselves and our communities. Our futures are first-person [3], somatic [4, 5] and embodied [6].

There are many active communities engaged in the use of inventive methods [7, 8] including design fiction [9], speculative design [10], speculative and/or anticipatory ethnography [11], experiential futures [12], critical fabulations [13] and speculative civics [14]. Yet, many of these critical and anticipatory design methods have been criticized for their elitism and lack of engagement with the public. Beginning with reflections on our own positionality, we work towards a speculative praxis [15] that reunites critical theories with design futuring methods that support participation and intervention in order to destabilize [16] existing socio-technical imaginaries [17] and narratives. Across a range of field sites, we ask “who gets to future?”[18] and, in addition, where, why and how do we future?

Abstract: This paper is based on the intuition that a work of fiction (in this case, Odds for tomorrow, by Nathaniel Rich) can enrich the theoretical perspective on climate change in management sciences. We claim the relevance of apocalyptic fictions to decipher the reactions of different social groups to the events of the Anthropocene, and the modalities of collective action that result from them. Following the example of De Cock et al (2021), we argue that in order to face the challenges of climate change, it is necessary to shake up our thinking about future human and societal organization through the imaginary. Here we therefore confront, with the help of a qualitative coding methodology, the text of the post-apocalyptic fictional book with Hoffman and Devereaux-Jennings' (2018) Anthropocene archetypes. This ongoing research is based on an original methodology and produces creative writing; its results enrich the theory, reinforce its performativity, and call for an epistemological renewal.

Abstract: What impact does anticipating apocalypse have on the psyche of a child? Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, children the United States and Canada were performing “duck and cover” drills under their school desks. Existential anxiety was the norm – after all, the nuclear war with Russia was impending. Fast forward to 2021, three-quarters of children and young people believe that “the future is frightening” as a result of climate change, with 45% reporting that their eco-anxiety emerges on a daily basis (Hickman, et. al., 2021). War and climate change are, of course, not the same. But this is not the point of comparison within this work – we are looking to examine the areas of convergence between the collective and unending existential anxieties faced by both generations as children & young people living in (what many would consider to be) pre-apocalyptic times. Within this theme, we seek to explore the broader question of survival and its meaning across social divides. More specifically, we are asking the questions “what does it mean to be in a collective ‘survival mode’ in the fact of an apocalypse & what does “survival” mean across race, class, and gender?” What role does formal (mis)education play in propagating unhealthy anticipatory narratives in the face of apocalypse? Finally, how have top-down political narratives influenced collective apocalyptic anticipation?

Abstract: This ongoing research project is actively engaged with the Innovation Service at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to explore storytelling and speculative fabulation as world-building practices. Building on a collaboration beginning over a year ago, our work engages art, storytelling, design, and the social sciences to address alternative approaches to humanitarian response, asking difficult questions about aid work and the futures it shapes. We have been developing generative methods, frameworks, artifacts, and collective narratives with UNHCR’s Innovation Service that reimagines their work with displaced people.

(please see attached .pdf for our whole proposal)

Additional participants/facilitators from Project Unsung, TBD: https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/unsung/

Abstract: How can we think about our past and future as historia – a place of living inquiry? Understanding both the past and future requires perpetual conversation and questioning. We are not headed down a fixed path. We have the potential to unearth new stories, ones that make room for multiple layered futures, that are able to hold different and diverse perspectives at the same time, and that repeat, regenerate, and renew.

We live at a time of great change where it is increasingly clear that we cannot solve future challenges with systems unquestioningly inherited. Current strategies for dealing with our human and planetary crises have not taken us to where we need to be.

Exploring past lessons – good and bad – is how we learn, and learn quickly. After all, time is not on our side if we’re to tackle multifaceted challenges from escalating climate and biodiversity issues to growing inequality, a global health crisis and an urgent need for economic reform. A global system that relentlessly pursues profit at the cost of living creatures and our beloved planet cannot continue indefinitely. Our societies, technologies, cultures, ideologies – the very systems we’re trying to change – have all been shaped by history. Appreciating what has and has not worked is vital as we look to innovate, inspire and drive change.
The past is an intriguing place full of lessons for all of us. Not just in respect to discrete events, but in the systems, worldviews and cultures that have emerged from the way our ancestors saw and shaped our world. It’s now time for us to deliberately examine where we are right now, where we’ve been – and where we’re heading if we’re to fulfill our duty to future generations.

Themes:
Linear thinking about time as a modern creation, and what nonlinear thinking can offer
How ancient people thought about time and conceived of the future
What we gain from studying not only what people in the past did, but how they thought and viewed the world
The need to decolonize the past as well as the future
Storytelling and telling better stories, ones that center the voices we need to hear from today
Format:

This session will bring together three time travelers - a classicist, a futurist, and an activist, who study the past, future, and present. We will build on the dynamic discussion started in our article and invite the participants of Anticipation 22 to join the conversation about what the past can teach us about the future.

Our conversation will begin through the lens of three objects, an object from antiquity, an item from the present/near future, and a future artifact. Each presenter will discuss the object through the lens of worldviews that the object represents and the context in which it was created.

The panelists will then engage in a free-flowing “salon” style conversation about the themes listed above. After initial context setting, audience members will be invited into the conversation to share stories and experiences around these themes.

Prior to the session, audience members who wish to participate will be given a prompt to bring in an object from the past that represents a different worldview and these will be shared with the larger group and included in the discussion.

We hope participants leave the session with a greater understanding of how the past, present, and future intertwine, and how we might question our own worldviews and assumptions to better meet present challenges


Nandini Pandey
An associate professor of classics trained at Swarthmore, Oxford, Cambridge, and Berkeley, Nandini Pandey is author of The Poetics of Power in Augustan Rome (Cambridge, 2018) and numerous articles in academic journals and public-facing venues from Eidolon to Hyperallergic. She is currently writing a book on Roman diversity and helping build a new consortium called Pasts Imperfect that connects diverse modern views on global antiquities with a wider public.

Nour Batyne
Nour Batyne is a creative producer, facilitator, and artist whose work lies at the intersection of immersive storytelling, futures thinking, and social innovation. With a global portfolio of work, she is currently based in New York and serves as an Associate Instructor in the M.S. in Nonprofit Management program at Columbia University. Nour is a Next Generation Foresight Practitioner Fellow at the School of International Futures and a member of the Wide Awakes, an open-source network who radically reimagine the future through creative collaboration. She runs One of Many Studios, a consulting and design studio created to build a movement of future ancestors.

Alisha Bhagat
Alisha is the Futures Lead at Forum for the Future, a global sustainability nonprofit. Her work focuses on the creative use of futures tools to impact long term positive change. She works with companies and organizations to tackle global challenges with the aim of building a more just and regenerative future. She is also a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design where she teaches Immersive Scenario Planning. Alisha is passionate about changing the narrative about who the future is for and convenes the Diaspora Futures Collective, a group of PoC working on decolonizing, reframing, and taking action for the future.

Examples of our collaborative work:
Diaspora Futures Salon (virtual) at PRIMER ‘21
https://www.2021.primerconference.us/diaspora-futures-salon
Futures of Sustainability 2021
https://www.thefuturescentre.org/alisha-bhagat-unpacks-what-history-can-teach-us-about-the-future-in-conversation-with-dr-nandini-pandey-and-nour-batyne/

Contact:
Alisha Bhagat
alisha.bhagat@gmail.com

Abstract: Abstract

Since the 1990s, nanotechnology has served as the “jewel in the crown” of a new research policy regime (Johnson 2004), and as the paradigmatic technology that has spawned new ideas regarding anticipatory governance (Barben et.al. 2008) and responsible innovation (Shelley-Egan and Bowman 2018). Today, man-made nanomaterials are no longer a technology of the future – they are becoming staples of everyday life. Nevertheless, professionals within the field suggest that consumer and investor appetites for such materials are stifled by uncertainties regarding health and safety, as well as regulatory uncertainties.

This paper will explore the anticipatory practices of Swedish NGO ChemSec. While portraying itself as an advocacy organisation that was founded by the likes of WWF and the Friends of the Earth, it also fashions itself as a consultancy. Thus, in the context of the above-mentioned uncertainties, it provides a tool called the SIN (“Substitute It Now”) List. This list contains a constantly revised inventory of chemicals and materials that are likely to become subject to future EU regulation. As such, they provide companies with foresight into which chemicals and materials that will become commercial liabilities in the near future.

Following previous research on how ChemSec sparked a debate among scientists about the politico-scientific merits of making such claims about the regulatory futures of carbon nanotubes (Surber et.al. 2022), the paper is based on qualitative data on how the NGO operates, how it construes its anticipatory practices, and on how other actors respond to them. Specifically, the paper focuses on how the NGO negotiates the tensions between consultancy and advocacy, and between prediction and performativity.

In so doing, the paper engages with recent historical research on how military think tanks have negotiated these tensions (Andersson 2018), as well as with recent anthropological research on how futurist consultancies are involved in similar negotiations. (Garsten and Sörbom 2021) Nevertheless, the case of ChemSec represents an alternative situation, in which the agent of anticipation – an NGO – is pitted against a nanotech industry that holds significant economic and political power, in turn trying to influence another powerful institution: The EU Commission. As such, the paper seeks to engage with the second main theme of the conference (“Politics, Justice and Ethics of Anticipation”), specifically the issue of how power is wielded and negotiated in anticipatory practices.

References

Andersson, J. 2018. The Future of the World: Futurology, futurists, and the struggle for the post-cold war imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Barben, D., Fisher, E., Selin, C., and Guston, D. 2008. Anticipatory Governance of Nanotechnology: Foresight, Engagement, and Integration. In: EJ. Hackett et.al., eds. The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Third Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Garsten, C. and Sörbom, A. 2021. Future Fears: Anticipation and the Politics of Emotion in the Future Industry. Culture Unbound, Vol. 13, No. 3.

Johnson, A., 2004. The end of pure science: science policy from Bayh-Dole to the NNI. In: D. Baird, A. Nordmann, and J. Schummer, eds. Discovering the nanoscale. Amsterdam; Washington, DC: IOS Press.

Shelley-Egan, C. and Bowman, D.M., 2018. Nanotechnologies: the catalyst for responsible research and innovation. In: C. Shelley-Egan and D.M. Bowman, eds. Nanotechnology environmental health and safety. Elsevier.

Surber, N., Arvidsson, R., de Fine Licht, K. and Palmås, K. 2022. Implicit values in the recent carbon nanotube debate. (Under review)

Abstract: In spatial governance the need for public participation is commonly acknowledged in academia and in practice. In terms of anticipating the future participation holds a dual promise, that is

- (1) a moral promise containing the obligation to anticipate the future in a fundamentally democratic way taking responsibility for both present and futures needs and values, and
- (2) an epistemological promise to accumulate, mobilize and direct all knowledge and know-how to secure the probability of shaping a collectively desired future.

Over the last decade co-creation or co-production is increasingly advanced as an approach to give shape to participation in the context of strategic spatial policymaking and planning. It is considered as an antidote to the idea that we endlessly need to ask citizens’ opinions, before handing the plans, policies and projects back to the professionals to deliver (Albrechts, 2013). Instead, in co-creation citizens are actively involved in the agenda-setting, problem formulation, the shaping of the content of policies, plans and projects and the delivery as well; (Bason, 2010).

In this paper we research the question: ‘How the promise of participation sorts reality effects in the formation of strategic spatial governance processes?’. We conducted two extensive case studies over a period of 3 years into co-creative processes of spatial strategy formation in the Netherlands. The first case study involves a strategic policy process, that is the development of the Brabant Environmental Strategy (BES). The second case study encompasses a strategic spatial planning process, that is the development of a vision on Seelig Park area development in Breda.

Whether inscribed in necessity or opportunity, our research demonstrates that there is a strong and genuine desire and effort in government to embrace co-creation in order to alter the course of governance and open up to new ways of engaging with society on the one hand and anticipating the uncertain future(s) on the other. However, notwithstanding these genuine intentions and efforts, we have scrutinized how the ‘framing’ of co-creation in these strategic spatial governance processes effectively builds on tacit structural features. These features refer to the implicit ways in which the inherent uncertainty and selectivity of the future are codified and conditioned.

- The first tacit feature relates to ontologically consideration of future as an empirical and manageable reality, rather than a social construct in which different opinions are legitimated to co-exist. The consideration of the future as an inherently empirical and manageable reality fits the traditional understanding of governance as a rational problem-solving system (Christiansen & Bunt, 2014) and a programmatic and linear approach to anticipating the future.

- A second tacit feature relates to the opacity of equivalence as a key premise of co-creation. Equivalence implicates the existence of a universal idea of justice and a transcendental believe in a just future. However, ideas on equivalence and the pursuit of a just future are embedded in fundamentally diverging and often conflicting perspectives, from libertarian ideas on ‘equal opportunities’, to egalitarian ideas on ‘equal voices’ and utilitarian ideas on ‘equal benefits’.

- The third tacit feature directs to the depoliticization of the outcome. Co-creation is a productive process, meaning that 'something' is designed. However, the challenge in creation processes in strategic policymaking and planning is that the actual reality effects go way beyond the materialized strategy or plan. These reality effects are commonly reduced to static and instrumental ideas on implementation, whereas in practice the reality effects will always be subject to the politics of the ‘future-in-the-making’ ((Adam & Groves, 2007); cf.(Maze, 2019)).

Herewith, analogous to the tacit promise of technological innovation (Borup et al., 2006; Brown & Michael, 2003; Ruben, 1972) we argue that co-creation principally offers governments a tacit contractual language that has the capability to secure political legitimacy and administrative and situational room for manoeuvre in the emerging future. We assert that in the design and execution of co-creation in spatial governance (1) the extent of people's consent to decisions to be made in the emerging future, and (2) the extent and way in which participants’ knowledge is productively contributing to shaping the future-in-the-making are not reflected upon and commonly taken-for-granted. We conclude that participation in strategic policymaking and planning practice bears more resemblance to recruitment campaigns by governments than to a true co-creation process. We therefore advocate for more critical and reiterative reflection in governance on the tacit features and subsequent recognition on how these affect the anticipation of the future as a collective co-creative journey.


Adam, B., & Groves, C. (2007). Future Matters.
Albrechts, L. (2013). Reframing strategic spatial planning by using a coproduction perspective. Planning Theory, 12(1), 46–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095212452722
Bason, C. (2010). Leading Public Sector Innovation: Co-creating for a Better Society. Policy Press.
Borup, M., Brown, N., Konrad, K., & Van Lente, H. (2006). The sociology of expectations in science and technology. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, 18(3–4), 285–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537320600777002
Brown, N., & Michael, M. (2003). Prepublication Copy of Brown , N . and Michael , M . ( 2003 ). A Sociology of Expectations : Retrospecting Prospects and Prospecting Retrospects . Technology Analysis and Strategic Management , 15 ( 1 ), 3-18 . A Sociology of Expectations : Retrospecting. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, 15(1), 3–18. http://research.gold.ac.uk/2379/2/SOC_Michael_2003a.pdf
Christiansen, J., & Bunt, L. (2014). No Title. In C. Bason (Ed.), Design for Policy (pp. 41–56). Gower.
Maze, R. (2019). Politics of Designing Visions of the Future. Journal of Futures Studies, 23(3), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.201903
Ruben, D.-H. (1972). Tacit Promising. Ethics, 83(1), 71–79.

Abstract: Curated Session

(dis)assembling the power of energy futures

The urgency of climate change and the necessity to accelerate global mitigation efforts have prompted energy researchers to move from analysing the fossil fuel-dominated past towards anticipating fossil-fuel-free futures. Among different approaches that can help us better understand energy futures, the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (STIs) has been increasingly employed in social science research to scrutinise the power to imagine future transition pathways or the impotence to imagine alternative energy futures (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, 2015; Kuchler 2014, 2017; Kuchler and Bridge 2018). The STIs approach highlights the cultural and political work done by the shared social meanings associated with technical infrastructures and how “the capacity to imagine futures is a crucial constitutive element in social and political life” (Jasanoff and Kim 2009: 122). Recent work on natural resources, however, shows how the capacity to imagine energy futures is strongly shaped by – and often trapped within - the resources, infrastructures and materialities of the present and/or past (Kuchler 2014, 2017; Kuchler and Bridge 2018). Moreover, by arguing that imaginaries “project visions of what is good, desirable, and worth attaining for a political community” (Jasanoff and Kim 2009: 123), a critical question arises as to “whose visions of future possibilities these are, for whom they are good and desirable (…), and why certain policy-makers would find them worth realising” (Kuchler 2014:433). Additionally, the STIs scholars increasingly observe that public imaginaries often entail different, often plural temporalities (Kinsella 2020; Mutter and Rohracher 2021). For example, some energy visions require more time to become embedded into specific institutions or materialities, while others face resistance much quicker.

The overall aim of this Curated Session is to undertake creative and critical thinking about the processes of anticipating and (re)imagining energy futures. More specifically, we want to use this thinking exercise to transcend the conceptual boundaries of the STIs approach and problematise novel ways of theorising how energy futures are anticipated and imagined. By doing so, the Session’s main contribution to the Anticipation Conference lies in creating a scholarly dialogue about the themes concerned with Public Futures and Temporalities. In convening a set of papers focused on energy transitions, our objective is to develop an empirically – grounded and conceptually-informed conversation that takes inspiration from – and takes forward – the interdisciplinary body of work, including anthropology, political ecology, cultural and political geography, and science and technology studies (STS). The proposed Session will have a form of a Symposium involving four papers and two discussants. The papers will explore three overarching themes:

1) Materialities – scrutinising how material conditions of both the energy source itself and the required infrastructure condition and (re)shape imaginaries of possible energy futures; how materially bound, powerful energy visions can be disassembled to empower alternative futures?

2) Collectives – unpacking the notion of collectively anticipating and imagining energy futures; what scale does a collective entail and how scaling-up or -down the collective may have implications for power struggles surrounding collective interpretations of ambitious climate/energy policies?

3) Temporalities – identifying temporal dimensions in the imaginaries of fossil-free futures and how such temporalities are induced and reshaped by the necessity to accelerate climate mitigation, as well as how these different – often unsynchronised, nonlinear, and competing – temporalities enable and/or constrain transformative development pathways.

The Session will be curated by (1) Magdalena Kuchler, Senior Lecturer in Global Energy Systems and Associate Professor in the Research Programme Natural Resources and Sustainable Development (NRHU) at the Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University; her research focuses primarily on how energy imaginaries are (re)shaped and (re)produced both discursively and materially, by whom and for whom energy futures are described and prescribed, as well as how energy visions are governed; and (2) Gavin Bridge, Professor of Economic Geography at Durham University and Fellow of the Durham Energy Institute; his research focuses on the spatial and temporal dynamics of extractive industries; the raw material networks associated with high and low carbon economies; and the institutions, practices and imaginaries sustaining ‘resources’ as objects of economic and political strategy. Both Kuchler and Bridge will act as discussants for the four papers.

Contact person:
Magdalena Kuchler, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University
magdalena.kuchler@geo.uu.se

References:

Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. (2009). Containing the Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Nuclear Power in the United States and South Korea. Minerva, 47, 119–146.

Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. (2015). Dreamscapes of Modernity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Kinsella, W. J. (2020). Extracting Uranium’s futures: Nuclear wastes, toxic temporalities, and uncertain decisions. The Extractive Industries and Society, 7(2), 524-534.

Kuchler, M. (2014). Sweet dreams (are made of cellulose): Sociotechnical imaginaries of second- generation bioenergy in the global debate. Ecological Economics, 107, 431–437.

Kuchler, M. (2017). Post-conventional energy futures: Rendering Europe’s shale gas resources governable. Energy Research & Social Science, 31, 32–40.

Kuchler, M., & Bridge, G. (2018). Down the black hole: Sustaining national socio-technical imaginaries of coal in Poland. Energy Research & Social Science, 41, 136–147.

Mutter, A., & Rohracher, H. (2022). Competing Transport Futures: Tensions between Imaginaries of Electrification and Biogas Fuel in Sweden. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 47(1), 85-111.

Abstract: More and more initiatives, from top-down UN processes to bottom-up activism, seek to emphasize the rights of future generations within today’s political and judicial systems. The topic of rights of future generations is key subject of emerging literature on intergenerational fairness and increasingly addressed within political and moral philosophy. Thus, it is also an apt topic for the interdisciplinary field of Anticipation Studies.

This paper derives from the Finnish government-funded FORGE-project (described below) for which the central research question is: How can legislative processes in Finland be improved to better represent the rights of future generations? The project thus strikes right at the core of the emerging discussion, albeit with the national context of Finland as focal point. The paper here addresses the future-oriented components of the project in general and theoretical terms, as it seeks to square the perspective of future generations with traditional foresight and Anticipation Studies approaches. Building on the unique research data collected for FORGE, the paper discusses key tensions and complexities identified within this intersection of emerging rights-based approaches to the future and other traditional anticipation approaches underlining uncertainty and emergence.

In particular, the paper discusses the tensions between the concepts of “future generations“ and “long-term“. This distinction, with important implications for preferences in real-world policymaking, has not been widely discussed within the academic anticipation literature previously. The paper further discusses the two concepts’ connections to value-based (political) and expert-based (technocratic) governance styles in the context of a Nordic welfare state (Finland) and its democratic governance system. This leads to a fourfold configuration of anticipation styles, which we theorise from the perspectives of anticipatory governance and anticipation theory, and especially anticipation theory’s key dialectic between continuous emergence and more stable long-term structures here termed as "relative permanences". The theoretical discussion provides a valuable and timely contribution, as the above dialectic is perceived as inherent anticipatory logic, when seeking to speak for future generations in an uncertain and volatile world. The configuration and the theoretical discussion are concretised with relevant data gathered during the FORGE project.

The FORGE research data underpinning this paper includes a triangulation of various data sources: i. A systematic review of relevant peer-reviewed academic literature, ii. A review of key grey literature such as reports by international organisations, iii. Interviews with key Finnish stakeholders, and iv. A survey of 150+ international foresight experts fielded February-March 2022. The unique survey of international foresight and anticipation experts provide the main data source for this paper, although other collected research data is also applied.

Abstract: A number of fundamental challenges have emerged with considerable force and effect in the past two decades and seriously influence and impact what and how we know what we do, ways we teach and learn and methods and tools we take up to make sense of a changing world. These challenges are deeply implicated in contexts of human and non-human systems and our own humanoid frailties in modernist extractivist economic models and consequences of neo-liberal cultural consumption practices, including design (Fry & Nocek, 2021). These span the global financial crisis of 2008, the ongoing and increasingly acute climate crisis and the most recent global pandemic around the Covid 19 virus and its mutations. Our response is that greater attention, productively and performatively, be given to what we term Design Futures Literacies. Context, communication, creativity and criticality matter immensely if human kind is to adopt and adapt to rigorous and dynamic practices of transformation - and in a mode of designing as future making (Yelavich & Adams, 2014). Here design is not seen as a prescriptive or solution oriented science but a transdisciplinary pursuit through a variety of domains and relations to other specialisations that is about way-finding and situated querying through making: less prescription, and in a cultural sector frame about critical co-creativity and the value of the imaginary in posing and problematising alternate presents through future crafting and worlding futures. How are these aspects to be embedded in meaningful and long term socio-material sustainable change processes if we do not attend to education about futures and pedagogies that support the shaping of futures through our collective and specific changing design literacies?

In this curated session we discuss a practice based pedagogical funded futures literacies project centred in four leading design universities. We do so to surface a range of features, extending notions of futures literacy (Miller 2007) within an emerging frame of anticipatory learning and action (Inyatullah, 2006; Facer, 2011). This we present in shift of anticipatory framings from futures literacy (with a futures view; Miller 2007, 2010, 2018) to futures literacies (more located in critiques in the learning sciences, situated, agentive; Amsler & Facer, 2016; Gidley, 2016; Morrison et al., 2019) to design futures literacies (hybrid, multimodal, ecologies, designerly; e.g. Snaddon & Chisin, 2017; Snaddon et al., 2019, Morrison et al., 2021; Marenko, 2021). Recent elaborations on futures literacy have been made by two of the leading scholars in anticipation that make important contributions but both stop short of engaging with how creative-critical exploratory and risky acts of coming to know by making, through designing, ought to and may be part of shaping futures literacies.

Poli (2021) has argued (with an underlying focus on science).that relations between elements of futures literacies are intricate, and need to be futures located in a world as an unfinished process He holds that ‘... authentic futures are embedded in dawning, unfolding events’ (Poli 2021: 7) that need aspiration. Poli proposes a multi-part typology to pattern these for improved understanding, optimisation and action in different ways of being and becoming through building radical novelties in spaces in the present as a mode of anticipation to ‘reopen’ the future in the present through hope and action.Facer and Sriprakash (2021), oriented towards education and anticipation, have characterised approaches to futures literacy as being beset by a move to codification centred on technical expertise, championed by UNESCO, and embodied in Miller’s compendium Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century (2018), around universal views on using the future to effect change in the present. Proposing a provincialisation of futures literacies to face power relations and struggles, Facer and Sriprakash motivate for a plurality of ways to bring the future into meaningful presents, to time and place, - reflexively, with curiosity and historicity, decolonising through alliances - and through a range of modes of knowing, ideas and positionings as students and teachers in changing organisations and institutions. With co-emergence and care for the future central, (Osberg 2010), it is through collective inquiry and co-emergence that ontological futural educational change may be realised (Facer and Sriprakash, 2021: 8 ).

In our work we have outlined ways design futures literacies may be situated, in mode of becoming and negotiating power, with a wider frame of anticipatory design (Zamenopoulos & Alexiou, 2007; Celi & Morrison 2017; Morrison et al., 2021). We conceptualise extending literacies and futures relations, transdisciplinarily and in methodological transversals, to include perspectives on multi-literacies (Cope & Kalantizis, 2015), multimodality (Morrison 2010), multi-sitedness and digital living (e.g. Estad 2015) and cultural plurality (Appadurai, 2013; Escobar, 2018) and diversity of design domains and practices. Taken together, we term these ‘Design Futures Literacies’ (Morrison et al. 2021). In the session we will elaborate on what and how we understand these to be conceptually, pragmatically and pedagogically in the contexts and challenges of shaping futures education by design and design education through futuring (Candy & Potter, 2018).

We have addressed this through the development and implementation of online learning resources in the FUEL4DESIGN (F4D) project in terms of design centred explorations and reflections on higher education design students and educators involvement since September 2019, and mostly, due to the pivot to digital means, we have explored the uncertain, unfolding, changing and risky negotiations of productively and critically enacting design futures literacies online. Drawing on earlier situated pedagogies (studio, street, corporation, community etc) we frame these as dynamic, flexible, situated and emergent performatives made of intersecting 1) capacities and competencies, 2) fluencies and articulations, and 3) what we term ‘vibrancies’ or engaged, aspirational acts of emergent, situated knowing through design.

Key here is that design is both a noun and a verb, positioned within practice based inquiry that entails experiential learning, process philosophy, multimodal discourse, to mention a few of our intersection fields of practice, expertise and research that come together in a pursuit of ways of ‘shaping futures literacies by design’ (Dudani & Morrison, 2020). F4D supports the discipline of Design and its MA/PhD students and teachers in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to productively anticipate critical futures learning needs and change processes through sustained future making. We began working with two overlapping work packages that were upended by the brutal arrival of the Covid 19 virus and the ensuing public health, global pandemic. This means the project had to pivot and continut to balance in a (largely) digital mode of teaching and learning, collaboration and research.

For us since ANT 2019, the future has seemed to have arrived in the present. In the mode of dispatches for ‘pan/demic learning’ we reflect on our endeavours in developing online DFL learning resources and emergent, tentative, challenging and inspiring experiences with students and colleagues. In the session we invite participants to join a set of reflective roundtable-like presentations. These include key intersecting themes and open discussion on shared future knowledge building and literacies by design realised through experimental and experiential critical situated practices (see Tables 1-3 below).


Table 1: Formats

The session will be arranged around four main thematics (despatches to ANT2022) and reflection drawn from aspects across the F4D project and related to wider matters of futures and anticipatory learning, with a focus on the anticipation and the creative industries (Brassett & O’Reilly 2021) oriented toward design learning. The themes (see Table 2) are: 1. Anticipatory designing and design futures literacies, 2. Changing design by making futurally, 3. Altering pedagogies by design, and 4. Decolonising designing DFL. The themes will be co-presented in 15 minute combinations of four lead researchers in F4D (see Table 3) . Each presentation will open out to 10 minutes of discussion concerning the contributions of design to anticipatory learning and long term sustainable futures. Participants will be able to follow up the material presented as a whole through access to the project website and a related open access project e-book that will be launched for the anticipation community to close this curated event.


Table 2: Exemplifications and experiences

1. Anticipatory designing and design futures literacies
Two aspects of the F4D project will be reviewed, connected and discussed as a means of addressing these matters. a) World views, process philosophy, Deleuzian dynamics, criticality and positioning.The Future Philosophical Pills (FPP), as a design ‘pharmakon’, are a curated set of philosophical insights, concepts, ideas to use to think about futures. They offer packaged critical lenses that interrogate, challenge and unsettle established assumptions around futures.. b) The Design Futures Lexicon (DFL): relational vocabularies, situated uses, semantic emergence, semantic categories, wordplays, connecting terms to contexts and conditions, developing vocabularies from scales of core definitions, contextual uses and re-framing them to context, purpose and futures designing. Includes Card games, playful word generation, working critical discourse relations and multimodal and embodied practices of shaping and sensing futures-in-the present.

2. Changing design by making futurally
With a focus on futures scouting, existing and new tools and situated methods ( design, humanities and social sciences), we present ways F4D presented these to master’s and PhD students. Online learning fora and works are presented, principally via the tool Miro. Focus in the experiential, situated, hybrid and design work, not foresight projections in developing first person views of alternate presents, close critical uses and annotations of core main futures tools in design projects, and the co-creation of teacher resources around methods and futures as part of shaping relations between pedagogies and design centric futures facing multimodal multiliteracies. This includes discussing frameworks for responsible innovation, speculative design and design fictioning. Emergent, experimental and collaborative uses of resources developed will be presented and discussed.

3. Altering pedagogies by design
From and for and by design, Relations between physical and digital practices and participation. Focus on digital platforms and tools in experiential, non-representational learning: spatial uses of Miro prevalent in much design based ‘pan/demic pedagogy’, presence/visibility, student productions, annotation, and critical reflections on changes or repetitions of prior F2F pedagogies and weak signal (Diez, T., et al., 2020). Examples of design teaching and learning practices from 1 and 2 above and the project’s diverse productions, see blogs in F4D website for examples of reflections. Conveys design pedagogy that reaches beyond functionalism into the pragmatic and the imaginary that works with a diversity of participants and interests. Acknowledges and addresses the changing nature of futures where the temporal and spatial, social and political, economic and ethical are increasingly entwined. Draws on design specific domains and student projects as illustrations.

4. Decolonising designing DFL
Engage participants in relating and raising issues that connect decolonising design pedagogies, practices and inquiry to wider anticipatory knowledge making and transdisciplinary connections. Opening out and positioning in relation to global south perspectives in decolonising design (DD): Philosophically, conceptually and discursively, socio-materially, etc (e.g framing world views and their DD manifestations and applicability. To extend to new tools developed such as the multilingual Translexer. Material to be included from participants to key project events from the global south. To extend to modes of assembling and inviting contributions from design schools in the ‘global south’ (e.g, Brazil, South Africa, India). Closes with positioning key propositions, potential directions, possible projections via a Manifesto for Design Futures LIteracies as prompt and a prospective spacemaking event for more open discussion on the implications and application of DFL for other domains and disciplines, practices and pedagogies (syncretic yet diffractive, possibilities, thick presents, role of imagination, creativity with critique, collaboration and connections).


Table 3: Contributors
Prof Andrew Morrison, Design at AHO, Norway (applied linguistics, digital media/humanities and learning, transdisciplinary anticipatory and speculative design inquiry)
Assoc Prof Manuela Celi, Design Politecnico di Milano, Italy (strategic and product design, humanities and design,meta/advanced/anticipatory design and pedagogy)
Assoc Prof Oscar Tomico, Design ELISAVA, Spain, (Industrial Engineering, innovation, emerging futures, interactions design, soft wearables)
Dr Betti Marenko, UAL, UK (design theory, techno-digital futures and contextual studies).


References
Amsler, S. & Facer, K. (2016). ‘Contesting anticipatory regimes in education: exploring alternative educational orientations to the future’. Futures, 94: 6-14.
Brassett; J. & O’Reilly, J. (2021). (Eds.). A Creative Philosophy of Anticipation. Abingdon: Routledge.
Candy, S. & Potter, C. (2019). (Eds.). Design and Futures. Taipei: Tamkang University Press.
Celi, M. & Morrison, A. (2017). Anticipation and design inquiry. In Poli, R. (Ed.). Handbook of anticipation. Vienna: Springer, 1-25 (online).
Celi, M. & Colombi, C. (2019). ‘Design future literacy in the Anthropocene: A matter of awareness’. 3rd International Conference on Anticipation, 9-12 October 2019. Oslo: Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO).
Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2015). (Eds.). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies. Houndsmill: Palgrave
Macmillan UK. Kindle Edition.
Diez, T., Tomico, O. & Quintero, M. (2020). ‘Exploring weak signals to design and prototype emergent futures’. Temes de Disseny, #36.
Dudani, P. & Morrison, A. (2020). ‘Futures design, language and systems: Towards languaging pluriversal futures’. In Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD9) 2020 Symposium. Ahmedabad: NID. 9-17 October. Retrieved December 20, 2020. https://rsdsymposium.org/2020/09/futures-design-language-and-systems-towards-languaging-pluriversal-futures/
Erstad, O. (2013). Digital Learning Lives. New York: Peter Lang.
Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the Pluriverse. Durham: Duke University Press.
Facer, K. (2011). Learning Futures. New York: Taylor & Francis
Facer, K. (2016). Using the future in education: Creating space for openness, hope and novelty’, In Lees, H. & Noddings, N. (Eds.). Palgrave International Handbook of Alternative Education. (pp. 63-78). London:Palgrave Macmillan.
Facer, K. & Sriprakash, A. (2021). ‘Provincialising futures literacy: A caution against codification’. Futures, 133: 102807.
Fry, T. & Nocek, A. (202): (Eds.). Design in Crisis. New worlds, philosophies and practices. Abingdon: Routledge.
Gidley, J. (2016). Postformal Education: A philosophy for complex futures. Springer.
Häggström. M. & Schmidt, C. (2021). ‘Futures literacy. To belong, participate and act!
An Educational perspective’. Futures, 132: 102813
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Miller, R.(2007). ‘Futures literacy’. Futures, 39(4): 341–362.
Miller, R.. (2010). ‘Futures literacy: Embracing complexity and using the future’. Ethos, 10(10): 23-28.
Miller, R. (2018). (Ed.). Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st century. Paris:
UNESCO/Abingdon: Routledge.
Morrison, A., Erstad, O., Liestøl, G., Pinfold, N., Snaddon, B., Hemmersam, P. & Grant Broom, A. (2019). ‘Investigating agentive urban learning: An assembly of situated experiences for sustainable futures’. Oxford Journal of Education, 45(2), 204-223.
Morrison, A, Celi, M., Cleriès, L. & Dadani, P. (2021). ‘Anticipatory design and futures literacies: A need and a want.’ In Proceedings of CUMULUS ROME 2020. https://cumulusroma2020.org/
Osberg, D. (2010). ‘Taking care of the future? The complex responsibility of education and politics’. In D. .Osberg, & G.Biesta (Eds.), Complexity Theory and the Politics of Education. Sense Publishers.
Poli, R. (2021). ‘The challenges of futures literacy’. Futures 132: 102800.
Snaddon, B., Morrison, A., Hemmersam, P., Grant Broom, A. & Erstad, O. (2019).
Investigating design-based learning ecologies, Artifact, 6(1&2), 2.1-2.30.
Snaddon, B. & Chisin, A. (2017). Futures oriented design pedagogy. Proceedings NORDES 2017, Design+POWER. Oslo: AHO, 15-17 June. Retrieved December 20, 2020. https://archive.nordes.org/index.php/n13/issue/view/12
Urueña, S., Rodríguez, H. & Ibarra, I. (2021). ‘Foresight and responsible innovation: Openness and closure in anticipatory heuristics’. Futures, 134: 102852
Yelavich, S. & Adams, B. (2014). Design as Future Making. Bloomsbury: London.
Zamenopoulos, T. & Alexiou, K. (2007). Towards an anticipatory view of design. Design Studies, 28(4), 411-436.

Attribution
This paper is an outcome of the FUEL4DESIGN project (Future Education and Literacies for Designers) (www.fuel4design.org) funded by the ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership Programme of the EU (Grant Agreement 2019-1-NO01-KA203-060181).

Abstract: The theoretical and reflective construction made in this work seeks, in the analysis of the autobiography of one of the main leaders of the indigenous communities of Amazon-Brazil, to connect Amerindian cosmology and ontology with the field of studies on anticipation and foresight. The book analyzed is exchanged with other theories in this exercise, and in our reflection we seek to point out some of the different forms of anticipation present in indigenous cosmology and what we can learn from them. The work “A Queda do Céu” is the result of an ethnographic work of more than thirty years, the ethnologist Bruce Albert, translates the measurements of the Shaman and indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa from his speeches about the contact with the white man, since 1960's to the present day. The work brings the odyssey of the indigenous leader and his harbinger of an ecological apocalypse to denounce the destruction of his people. Illustrated by shamanic visions, description of dreams, rituals and stories about Amerindian communities, Kopenawa and Bruce Albert guide us in a narrative about anticipations present in Amerindian culture and point us to a new ontological opening of thought experimentation. We also use the production known as Amerindian Perspectivism, by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, as a point of view of a possible philosophy of thought to be experimented in the construction of possible futures.

Abstract: The practices of strategic foresight and futuring have always acknowledged the critical role of the past and the present in anticipating and shaping futures. Futurists believe that the past is a driver to unfolding futures: they also assert that while understanding and analysing the past will not provide a true indicator of the one singular ‘future’ ahead, historical data cannot be ignored.

Feminist futuring workshops are sites of rehearsal for performing and conceiving differently, acknowledging past injustice and inequality while anticipating and influencing multiple alternative futures. There are implications for how this practice is designed, facilitated and materialised: anticipation itself can lead to repetition and ritual, or the physical enactment of what is anticipated, and social norms are repeatedly reinforced when the subject is called upon, hence the need for intervention to shift the enactment and performativity.

In this paper we highlight the powerful and significant intersection of futuring and feminism, and explore why a commitment to intergenerational and intersectional feminist anticipatory approaches is required if we are to move toward more just futures for all. Using the global response to COVID-19 as the context for discussion, the authors consider the need for best practices for decolonised, futures-focused feminist collaboration across generations, and for intersectional feminist interventions in the cultural, structural and institutional systems that prevent innovative solutions to persisting problems of gender inequality.

Abstract: Artifacts are meant to be carriers of information through time—a role particularly fraught when transmission is undertaken across timescales beyond the comprehension of individual lives or remembered histories. The materiality of artifacts challenges the veracity of memory from the past, as well as how we transmit meaning to the future. Artifacts meant to speak across time are compelling to study especially due to a particular paradox: memory is often place-dependent, but places and landscapes are changing more rapidly than ever due to both technology and climate change. Thus, objects which reveal changes to place and environment, in particular, are both especially slippery and especially powerful. In this paper, I outline various theories on memory and temporality in relationship with the environment to suggest that food, and the related senses of smell and taste, can combine to serve as potent means of remembering landscapes, places, and environments as they change over time, and especially through rapid changes in the face of the climate crisis, the Sixth Mass Extinction, and Capitalocene-induced ecological damage. I engage an interdisciplinary network of scholars to explore the potential of sensory ‘artifacts’ in environmental temporalities. I introduce environmental vignettes of taste and smell from my own sensory research, and combine this with an analysis of work from academics and artists who have postulated the role that food might play in connecting us to past or future ecosystems. I argue that specific embodied experiences of the chemical senses can act as traces of past temporal scales and changing environments, as well as speculative traces of the future. The manifold ways in which food mobilizes the senses make it a powerful medium through which to transmit information, especially concerning ecosystems, agriculture, or human/nonhuman land entanglements. Food has a symbiotic relationship to memory, whereby it continually co-creates connections to other times and places. This paper seeks to answer the question: can the sensory experiences elicited by food alleviate change blindness? Can taste and smell reveal the past and point towards future states of the environment in a way that enfolds multi-temporalities? This paper builds on Donna Haraway’s premise of situated knowledges, and extends into questions of embodied cognition and environmental awareness, especially in conversation with Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Timothy Morton, Brian Massumi, and Beatriz Cortez. It extends the potential for sensory experiences of multi-temporalities into the future through Karen Barad’s concept of diffraction, and Georgia Born’s work on simultaneity. Ultimately I propose that a renewed environmental consciousness and capacity for futures imagination in the age of climate collapse can be enhanced from the creation of non-discursive knowledge based in food.

Abstract: Proposal for a 90-min Techniques Workshop to Build Critical Anticipatory Capacities

Workshop Title: Fights in Futures: Building Stories of Tomorrow

Number of participants: Up to 32

Facilitators:
Lisa Kay Solomon, Lecturer and Designer in Residence, Stanford University Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
Jeffrey Rogers, Futures Facilitator and Educator, Possible Futures.design & Principal, be radical group

Summary:
The scope of our possible futures is bounded by the stories we imagine and inhabit. Each of these stories is defined by an image of the future that carries within it an argument not only about what the future will look and feel like but also about who gets to create that future and how. That so many of the dominant images of the future in contemporary culture and politics seem to have so much in common stands at odds with the endless capacity of the human imagination – and with the project of anticipating the kinds of solutions and agency that an inclusive, sustainable, equitable future will require.

We need more (and more varied) images of the future, more stories of what we might build, do, design, and become, more leaders and learners who recognize and celebrate themselves as shapers of their own tomorrows, and more spaces within which to learn from futures – to reflect on our prospection.

Flights in Futures: Building Stories of Tomorrow proposes such a space. The 90-minute workshop will be designed to immerse participants in a diverse range of practices for seeing, imagining, creating, experiencing, and learning from future worlds, and it will be based on a class by the same name to be held at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Spring ‘22.

As in the Stanford class, we will take Anticipation workshop participants on a “futures flight” to explore future worlds through a set of thematic lenses (climate futures, civic futures, bio futures, etc.) in combination with a corresponding array of futures thinking and narrative prototyping methods (e.g., gameplay, wordbuilding, collaborative storytelling, speculative fiction, scenario creation, and improvisational performance) – mixing and re-mixing to create a combinatorial gallery of experiences and artifacts. We join these practices of prospection with a critical practice of reflection so that we might learn from these new/diverse images of the future and engage them in reframing decisions in the present.

After exploring and experimenting with some of the methods and literacies we taught in the Stanford course, we’ll also share the final capstone projects from that class organized into a “World’s Fair of Futures” to expand the reflection, discussion, and critique.

This workshop will provide the instructors with an opportunity to (1) condense and improve the quarter-long undergraduate and graduate course into a 90-minute format, (2) share learnings, resources, and designs from the course with a broader community of practitioners, and (3) gain feedback from the workshop participants on the program structure, content, and outcomes – as well as the larger project of teaching anticipatory practices in an open enrollment undergraduate course.

This techniques workshop will be designed to chiefly address the Anticipation Conference themes of Critical Anticipatory Capacities and Public Futures but will also touch on several adjacent conference themes.

The Flights in Futures: Building Stories of Tomorrow workshop, like the longer course at Stanford, is built on fundamental beliefs that we hold as educators and foresight practitioners.

We believe that leaders must develop empathy for the future.
We believe future empathy is best developed, expressed, and shared through narratives that build, populate, and allow us to experience worlds.
We believe that engaging multiple, diverse perspectives is critical to expanding our worldview and sense of wider responsibility, mutuality, and agency.
We believe that it’s essential to trace change over time both to learn from history and to envision the expansive deep future.
We believe that we can teach students and leaders to create visions of coexistence that support an inclusive, equitable, preferred future.

About the Facilitators:
Lisa Kay Solomon designs environments, experiences and classes to help people expand their futures, adapt to complexities, and build civic fellowship. Her work blends imagination with possibility, building the capacity to take the long view when today’s problems seem overwhelming.

Currently a Designer in Residence at the Stanford d. school, Lisa focuses on bridging the disciplines of futures and design thinking, creating experiences like “Vote by Design: Presidential Edition” and "The Future’s Happening" to help students learn and practice the skills they don’t yet know they need. At the d.school, she teaches classes such as Inventing the Future where students imagine, debate and analyze the 50-year futures of emerging tech, and works closely with the K12 community to make futures thinking a mainstay of the 21c core curriculum.

Named to the Thinkers50 2022 Radar List and one of ixDA’s Women of Design 2020, Lisa has also taught leadership and design at the California College of the Art’s MBA in Design strategy, was the founding Chair of Singularity University’s Transformational Practices effort, and has guest lectured at organizations and leadership institutions around the world.

Lisa co-authored the bestselling books Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change, and Design A Better Business: New Tools, Skills, and Mindset and Strategy for Innovation, which has been translated into over a dozen languages. Lisa created the popular LinkedIn Learning Courses Leading Like a Futurist and Redesigning How We Work for 2021, and has written extensively on helping leaders productively navigate ambiguity through teachable and learnable practices.

Jeffrey Rogers is an independent futures facilitator & a principal at be radical, a boutique learning & development and innovation consultancy. He was previously the lead facilitator for Executive Education programs at Singularity University. His grand professional goal is to empower more learners to think/act/live and lead like the future is theirs to create.

He's been featured as a guest lecturer and workshop leader at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford and has delivered futures thinking, strategic foresight, and narrative prototyping workshops to a long list of Fortune 500 clients.

Prior to his work in futures, Jeffrey developed and delivered experiential leadership and informal narrative-/place-based learning programs for high school students.

Abstract: Addressing the climate crisis is a complex, multifaceted effort that requires collaboration across academic disciplines, national borders, and political interests. This curated session focuses on a global climate initiative, called Turn It Around! (TiA!) which engaged youth artists and activists to radically (re)envision and (re)articulate the role of education in anticipation of more sustainable and ecologically just futures. Mobilizing the power of socially engaged art to move people into action, this project was designed to ‘move’ politicians, policymakers, and educators into a different state of thinking, doing, and being. At the center of the initiative is one of the most basic learning tools – a deck of flashcards – designed by youth for decision-makers at all levels to challenge them to think, see, and act in new ways. In this session, we will begin with an introduction of the initiative, an overview of three papers that describe the ontological, methodological and pedagogical ‘turnsʼ for education that were activated through this participatory climate art initiative, and conclude with an opportunity for participants to engage with the “Turn it Around!” flashcards.

Abstract: Our urban environments must urgently transition from extractive, vulnerable, and unjust to sustainable, resilient, and equitable. The task is complex and requires systemic transformations across social, environmental, and technical infrastructures. But the question remains: How do just transitions to positive urban futures occur? Decision-makers are responsible for defining and implementing the policies, plans, and projects that lead to transformations towards sustainable and resilient futures. However, we know little about their conceptualizations of just transition pathways. This research aims to uncover the mechanisms that facilitate sustainability and resilience just transitions, as conceptualized by collaborative groups of urban policymakers, community members, and researchers. To discover how decision-makers think just transitions happen, this research uses a modified process tracing methodology to uncover proposed causal relationships between actions and outcomes on pathways to positive futures.

This project analyzes data from a scenarios workshop held in Phoenix, Arizona, as part of the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN). Workshop participants created projected timelines dictating the pathways to proposed futures that were resilient, sustainable, and equitable. A comprehensive process tracing analysis of timelines allows for comparison of proposed transition pathways, indicating how decision-makers characterize key causal mechanisms and illuminating their theories of change. The transition pathways are evaluated to understand whether they are just and equitable, innovative or conventional, logical or assumptive. Finally, the work concludes with a reflection on the usefulness of process tracing as a tool for visioning and planning just transitions.

Abstract: Called black gold, or the oil of the future, lithium is a powerful and unavoidable structural element of the economy and society we are building and to the exploitation of which science has contributed much, especially with regard to the mobility and transport sector, one of the most polluting in today's societies. Existing studies on lithium production in the world have highlighted several areas of debate on the chain of issues involved in the exploitation, use and potentially contaminating effect of lithium, even after its use in car batteries. Despite these studies, many questions persist and grow, especially in recent years, both about what lithium is and what it is used for, and about the effects of its exploitation and extraction on the populations and territories involved, which are often low density and far from large cities. In effect, in Europe and especially in Portugal, the governments have been facing several resistances from the populations living in places where lithium mining is or will be operating very soon. This resistance is based mainly on the argument of "loss" and "theft of the future", due to the transformation of landscapes, reconfiguration of sectors of activity and fear of contamination of water, soil and air in the medium and long term and also on the argument of low participation of local people in this whole process which is supported by a political discourse based on the contribution of lithium mining to achieving European convergence with a "clean" energy future.
But why do local populations react so negatively to its exploitation and how does this resistance or refusal reveal past futures and also imagined and unwanted futures? How do technical and scientific undertakings cause disruptions and crises in people's identities and how can governmental actions respond to these past futures? These are some of the questions that guide this communication which, using mainly qualitative methodology, through interviews and observation, presents the results of a study on the visions of future and methodologies of anticipation included in the controversy over the exploration of lithium and its intense and complex network of socio-technical and political meanings. By temporally tracing the controversy around its exploitation and use and making explicit the main visions of the actors most directly involved, including politicians, experts, NGOs and other organisations and citizens living in and outside the territories covered, the communication highlights the value attributed by the populations to the future, through a theoretical discussion that contemplates the deepening of the concept of anticipation analysed, fundamentally by seminal authors in the area of sociology and anthropology of time, in particular Bourdieu, Appadurai and Koselleck, who perspective the place of temporality in sustainable development. Assuming that these are processes that imply strong impacts on the national and European collective future, their main ideas are discussed: i) promote an integrated and interdisciplinary scientific approach on the place of the future and the forms of anticipation implied in lithium exploration; ii) develop a set of policy recommendations directed to the construction of anticipation methodologies which imply the communication and involvement of local populations and the expansion of the scientific culture concerning the environmental, socio-economic and cultural uses and impacts of lithium extraction and iii) articulate toolkits with the methodologies of public involvement in the anticipation of changes in the landscapes of time and space which result from large techno-scientific enterprises linked to the production/discovery of new sources of energy, or the resolution of energy problems (including in Portugal, the desalination centres, in regions of severe drought).

Abstract: "To concern oneself in the present about the future certainly does not consist in programming it in advance but in trying to bring it into existence”
Irigaray in Grosz

This curated session proposes an interdisciplinary panel discussion comprising a 5 minute ‘position statement’ presentation from 3-4 presenters, followed by approx. 10 minutes of discussion before opening to Q&A. Educators, practitioners and professionals from diverse sectors will share their perspectives reflecting women, gender, LQBQTI and people of colour on anticipation and futures/foresight practice beyond normative heteropatriarchal futures discourse. Speakers from different backgrounds, cultures and communities will be invited to participate including indigenous people, LGBQTI+, people of colour, and young people where possible.

Feminism can be understood as a criticism of, and resistance to, how society is perceived and structured both now and in the past, making it a driving force for transformation for futures. However, normative heteropatriarchal futures dominate discourse, therefore more clearly articulated feminist futures are needed to facilitate the ambition of change.

Panel members will share stories and visuals (and could use technology such as Menti to engage and elicit responses from conference attendees). Discussion will include how changing the narrative from normative futures that propagate the status quo (which isn’t very equal) is critical in anticipating and influencing alternative futures in which equity is prioritised.

Abstract: This paper seeks to contribute to the notion and practical meaning of ‘anticipatory governance’ by problematizing the concept, scope and its practical application supported by developments on anticipatory systems and processes (Rosen, 1985), complexity and collective intelligence knowledge creation, with focus on the ‘use of the future’ in decision-making. Defining the notion of Anticipatory Governance (AG) and its applied scope is a challenge that is at the center of attention. Although contributions have been made from different areas of knowledge in the last five decades, it is in the last three or four years that efforts has been made to generate consensus and effective directives for widespread practice in governments. Integrating the future in decision-making today shows substantive differences to the simplification of the sum of governance (in the various nuances as it may be understood), plus foresight frameworks and tools applied to prevention and planning. Instead, there is a specific focus on the skills and competencies to deal with complexity and uncertainty while integrating the future into the present. Progress has been made from interdisciplinary approaches and relational complexity frameworks to delve into theoretical and practical aspects of the 'use of the future' and anticipation (Miller, 2011, 2018; Tuomi, 2018, Poli, 2019). Supported on this basis, a heuristic conceptual framework (MaCHT in Spanish, Garrido, 2021) for anticipatory capacities is being developed, which is being tested in research (contributing to 'giving meaning' to what is observed), for the creation and strengthening of anticipatory capacities and competencies in decision-making fields and learning spaces.

Abstract: The role of technological innovations in addressing climate change is highly contested. One of the most divisive topics—even among experts—is the development and use of technologies for carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS refers to a set of technologies that purport to capture carbon from fossil fuel burning power plants or directly from the environment and sequester it in various reservoirs. Such technologies show potential to help curb atmospheric carbon accumulation and halt the rise of global temperatures. Given the slow progress in global climate negotiations and with extreme weather events already harming vulnerable communities, the prospect of such technological solutions is clearly appealing. However, CCS technologies are presently untested at the scales needed for effective mitigation, and the risks and efficacies of these technologies are poorly understood. Some argue that the focus on such ‘technological fixes’ dilutes the public urgency necessary to radically transform our energy systems and build new infrastructures (Carton, 2019; Sarewitz & Nelson, 2008). Others worry that scaling up experiments with CCS technologies will have destructive effects that will be felt disproportionately by marginalized communities (Biermann et al., 2022). The premise of this session is that anticipating CCS technologies in the present requires not only scientific and engineering perspectives, but also engagement with broader communities.

This curated session will offer a platform for an open and inclusive dialogue around CCS (Stilgoe, 2016). Dialogue will explore questions of timelines, scales, uncertainties, values, principles, and costs. These questions are relevant to understanding what structural and practice-based changes are necessary in governing technology and climate futures. The purpose of this session is not to come to a conclusive answer regarding CCS, but to disrupt some of the gridlock surrounding these questions.

Abstract: Part of the Prototyping Social Forms "Un altro mondo è possibile" Stream
(see submissions 197 and 82)

“Detourning” the notion of anticipation, we offer a workshop on enacting alternatives to what is the case. Supplementing techniques for extrapolating from the present to the future, the interdisciplinary and international collective Prototyping Social Forms (PSF) develops platforms, tactics, and technologies to make locally generated knowledge transportable and transformable, forming such knowledge into “germs” that can "sprout" in disparate learning and research environments.

For the purposes of this PSF Techniques Workshop, we interpret bodies as energetically bounded entities that can affect and be affected by one another – bodies like microbes, humans, and cities. We introduce and compare techniques for speculatively enacting more-than-human ethical as well as aesthetic ventures.

• Germ 3: Atmosphere (Foerster)
We adapt techniques for preparing selves for sensing non-local, extended qualities of atmosphere and metabolism, interpreted as multivalent fields of distributed matter, energy, affect. In particular we introduce Butoh techniques that can be exercised with people in their own rooms as well as in a comfortable outdoor / indoor common space

• Germ 4: Sense-making Complexity (Sha, Perera)
We introduce structured improvisational tactics for designing urban spaces for change, paradox and play. Techniques include pirated board games and alternate reality propositional play.

Abstract: The design studio—where students and faculty work together in a highly collaborative relationship—informs professional workplaces, providing a playground model for productivity where all participants could explore innovative solutions. The studio has been touted as a place in which faculty are mentors and students are future design leaders—equals by most measures. Yet, despite aspiring to this great vision, issues such as inequality and a disregard for wellbeing are being challenged within this experience.
As the pandemic removed students and faculty from the standard studio environment, issues of inequality and wellness that had previously been ignored came to the forefront. Diverse voices had not been and were not included in the conversations, even within this new realm, leaving many students isolated and unheard. This feeling of isolation is even more evident in the online student experience, as cohorts do not have a standard studio learning space, and are thus left with asynchronous messages to questions or comments, and disembodied faculty feedback to guide their education.
This paper explores how the studio concept has informed our world, and how reconsidering its structure using Cross-Modal Third Spaces can build a better and more inclusive learning community that meets social needs through engagement of campus-based and remote/online student engagement.

Abstract: "Another world is possible"

“Detourning” the notion of anticipation, the interdisciplinary and international collective Prototyping Social Forms (PSF) offers a series of workshops and a curated panel on enacting alternatives to what is presently the case so as to better imagine, sketch, inhabit and reflect on other ways of living in the world that may be obscured by present narratives. Supplementing techniques like world-building or trend-casting for extrapolating from the present to the future, we develop platforms, techniques, and technologies to make locally-generated skilled practices transportable and transformable, forming such knowledge into “germs” that can "sprout" in disparate learning and research environments. Rather than create recordings of some activity or finished products for exchange, these germs condense living processes that can metabolize into another suite of living processes that may grow quite differently under other conditions. Thus we supplement representation of “know-thats” with ways to disseminate and germinate know-hows, know-whys, and know-whens.
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PSF’s work revolves around the practice of prototyping—the generation of models, or rather, germs, that can develop and grow in various ways and within different contexts, without assuming a fixed outcome. By focusing on the practice of prototyping, PSF attends to processes of development and their dynamics, as well as the limiting and enabling constraints of different “knowledge ecologies.”
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Inspired by “seed banks” developed and maintained by horticulturalists and ecologists, the PSF Process Germ Bank is an experimental infrastructure for sharing germs of research-creation practices and for developing signature methods for probing and promoting diversity within different knowledge ecologies. Hybridizing metaphors, we offer a “seed ball” of process germs to try out in the terrain of the Anticipation Conference 2022 and stand ready to prepare conditions for embedding these process germs in the event with local organizers.

We propose two 90-minute techniques workshops (submissions 82 and 195) followed by one 90-minute curated session for reflections upon the techniques workshops and related work.

FOREGROUND ACTIVITY

We pass a wireless microphone among curated participants who take turns offering reports on enactive work either from the sister PSF Workshops, or from other projects.

• Participants from the PSF Techniques Workshops (submissions 82 and 195) recount their experiences with the different germs such as: Rhythm, Time Zone, Atmosphere, Sense-making Complexity….. (See PSF workshop submissions for the descriptions of the germs and how they would be enacted.)

• Vibrant Fields (Aksöz, Balzar, Asan) https://www.vibrantfields.net/

• SloMoCo (Johnson) https://moco21.movementcomputing.org

• Synthesis-UNDP Navigating Complexity Alternate Reality Simulation (Sha, Lympouridis) http://synthesiscenter.net/projects/navigating-uncertainty-ars/

BACKGROUND ACTIVITY
Cooking in parallel with the Foreground Activity: Every participant will bring ingredients and instructions for something edible or drinkable, and easy to make in under 30 minutes. The instructions can be in conventional text, but we encourage alternative modalities and forms such as a score, a diagram, a recorded video or song, a knotted string, …. The participants exchange recipes and associate ingredients, enact them in a fixed time, then order the creations into a meal. Duration 2.5 hours including break(s) for palate cleanser walks; kitchen access, indoor / outdoor tables to sit within earshot, local sound reinforcement.

http://synthesiscenter.net/projects/alter-economies/
http://synthesiscenter.net/projects/prototyping-social-forms/

Abstract: The Center for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies will curate an interactive, participatory, and experiential session that will explore postnormal times and anticipate transnormal times. The session will engage participants in examining postnormal theory and its application by role-playing the core concepts – e.g., chaos, complexity, contradictions – as they emerge in relation to specific issues and topics chosen by participants. The activity will co-create emergent stories of postnormal futures and anticipate the potential for transnormal futures.

Abstract: Abstract

This paper builds upon the idea that social innovation incubation can be considered, both in terms of process and result, as a way to foster the anticipation capacity of communities of giving shape and constructing prospective realities, in other words in empowering them to act on their own future. In this framework, the design discipline contributes in setting the stage for participative processes and, adopting codesign methodologies, for including civil society players in developing ideas that can generate public value. These reflections arise from the intensive structured program of social innovation incubation named La Scuola dei Quartieri (translated into “The School of the Neighbourhood”) promoted and organized by the City of Milan, with the aim of spreading the ability to design social impact solutions that respond to the desires, needs and aptitudes of the inhabitants, and to prototype future solutions as more impactful ways of living the neighborhoods. In other words to recognize and enable the capacity to initiate strategic conversations with and within local communities and to support the sense-making ability of citizens to design alternative futures.

Background knowledge

In the last few years we are witnessing an increased awareness and knowledge, especially from the public sector, on the importance of creating spaces and programmes for design conversations about the future of the cities as practices of participation. We refer here to the concept of 'infrastructuring' of the Scandinavian scholars of participatory design ( Hillgren et al, 2011, Karasti and Syrjänen, 2004) as the construction of processes and policies that aim to build relationship among civil society actors by organizing purposeful encounters and facilitating the connections between them, in this case to stimulate social innovation from citizen-based initiatives. The case study of “The School of the Neighbourhoods” can be considered a structured example of such processes aiming at acknowledging and reinforcing the creativity and proactivity of citizens by supporting the scale up and out (Westley and Antadze, 2013) of bottom-up ideas and therefore progressively instilling the sense that different ways of living are possible. Social innovation incubation experiences (Miller and Stacey, 2014; Davies & Simon, 2013) have indeed proved that, besides providing technical measures and skills, enabling social innovation means nurturing an innovation culture in society (Meroni, 2019; Moulaert & Van den Broeck, 2018), or in other words empowering communities in generating critical and creative thinking, imagination, openness and interest toward the future and then behavioural change (Manzini & Jégou, 2008). In this framework the design discipline acts as a cultural agent capable of stimulating such partecipative and strategic conversations among public bodies, local communities and civil players. Moreover the adoption of codesign methodologies is a way to develop and, prospectively, to favour the co-production and co-management of public value (Murray et al, 2010; Pauwels et al, 2016; Selloni, 2017) through a bottom-up alliance, by means of collective imagination, collaboration and the growth of meaningful relationships with and within the communities (Zamenopoulos, T., & Alexiou, K., 2020)

The School of the Neighbourhoods: a case study

‘The School of the Neighbourhoods’ (La Scuola dei Quartieri, 2018-22) is a programme initiated by the municipality of Milan to stimulate and enable social innovation in some disadvantaged areas of the city. The School aims to shape future and more sustainable solutions and services conceived and realized by citizens themselves. It is designed to be a free civic school of social innovation, open to all citizens. Without classrooms, it takes place where people live and work and aims at supporting people in making things happen through a capability-building multidisciplinary programme. Organized into 3 cycles, each one lasts about one year and is composed of 3 phases of scouting, training and support to transform ideas into prototypes and actions. The activities of the schools range from forms of cultural empowerment to technical empowerment (Meroni et al. 2017), meaning supporting people on one side to tackle challenges, recognize opportunities, and invent innovative responses and on the other one to modeling solutions and developing entrepreneurial skills.
In 4 years the school has directly involved 2300 citizens, organized 70 meetings in the neighbourhoods, selected and supported 64 ideas in prototyping in the fields of manufacturing, new models of aggregation, food-related services, alternative forms of care and eco-efficient solutions and more.

Connection with conference themes

The School of the Neighbourhoods as a social innovation incubation programme, promoted by a public entity, can be considered an experimental yet promising process to support communities in acquiring and practicing the capacity of anticipation. The payoff of the SdQ is "citizens making the city" to testify the overlap between the recipients of the activities and civil society. In this sense all the actions promoted by the School have had the objective of involving the citizens in activities that range from a more informal and popular character up to actions of light and advanced training. In this sense it is important to underline that the involvement precisely aims at nourishing the imaginative and action capability of people and at enabling a renewed perception of the existing potentialities of the city in its peripheral areas. In this regard, we believe that this work can intercept the themes of the conference on the following points:
The solutions supported by the School are forms of socially innovative practices and as such act as prototypes of the future: staging alternative ways of living, producing, consuming, collaborating. The design discipline contributed to the adoption of an experimental approach by training citizens in engaging with multi-stakeholder communities, proceeding through fast, actionable and adjustable prototypes and becoming familiar with uncertainty and ambiguity of present and future situations.
The acknowledgment of the local creativity is a way to recognize and value the vocation of a neighborhood and to reinforce the awareness of people of being part of the solution instead of the problem. This can be considered as a way of increasing participation and informing public policy strategies by means of proactivity, inclusion and collaboration, rather than executing them.
The open, free and partecipative character of the school precisely aims at engaging the widest public possible, especially in contexts that might be problematic, deprived or of social disadvantage. Lowering the entrance barriers, being hosted in the neighborhoods, providing accessible training formats and making the complexity of design’s tools and means affordable to all participants, the School aimed at tieng together inclusion and innovation, rethinking the relationships between diversity, inclusivity and anticipation of the future. This claims for reflections on the importance of cultural incubation and readiness for change as prerequisites for accepting and contributing to innovative proposals.

References

Davies, A., & Simon, J. (2013a). Growing social innovation: a literature review. A deliverable of the project:“The theoretical, empirical and policy foundations for building social innovation in Europe”(TEPSIE). Brussels: European Commission, DG Research.

Hillgren P.A, Seravalli A. and Emilson A. (2011). Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation. CoDesign, Vol. 7, Nos. 3–4, September–December 2011, pp 169–183.

Karasti, H. and K.S. Baker (2004) Infrastructuring for the Long-Term: Ecological Information Management. Proc. HICSS’37 , p. 10.

Manzini, E., & Jegou, F. Sustainable Everyday. 2008. Milano: Edizioni Ambiente.

Meroni, A. (2019), ‘Crossing the boundaries of participation, activism, paradigm change and incubation: On the edge of design for social innovation and sustainability’. In: Michel R. (Edited by), Integrative Design. Essays and projects on design research. Birkhauser, Basel.

Meroni, A., Corubolo, M., & Bartolomeo, M. (2017). The social innovation journey: emerging challenges in service design for the incubation of social innovation. Designing for service: key issues and new directions. Londres: Bloomsbury, 163-181.

Miller, P., & Stacey, J. (2014). Good Incubation. The craft of supporting early–stage social ventures. London: NESTA. Retrieved February 20, 2022 from https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/good_incubation_wv.pdf

Moulaert, F. and Van den Broeck, P. (2018). ‘Social Innovation and Territorial Development’. In: Howaldt, J., Kaletka, C., Schröder, A. and Zirngiebl, M. (edited by). Atlas of Social Innovation – New Practices for a Better Future. Sozialforschungsstelle, TU Dortmund University: Dortmund. Retrieved February 20, 2022 from www.socialinnovationatlas.net

Murray, R., Caulier-Grice, J., & Mulgan, G. (2010). The open book of social innovation (p. 2).
London: National endowment for science, technology and the art.

Pauwels, C., Clarysse, B., Wright, M., & Van Hove, J. (2016). Understanding a new generation
incubation model: The accelerator. Technovation, 50, 13-24.

Selloni, D. (2017). CoDesign for public-interest services. Berlin: Springer International
Publishing.

Westley, F., & Antadze, N. (2013, November). When scaling out is not enough: Strategies for system change. In Social Frontiers: Social Innovation Research Conference, London.
Zamenopoulos, T., & Alexiou, K. (2020). Collective design anticipation. Futures, 120, 102563.

Abstract: Over a decade ago Ziauddin Sardar welcomed his contemporaries into postnormal times, ‘an in-between where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense.’ Postnormal times theory provides a diagnostic of our times and queries how anticipatory practices support orientation and navigation in these conditions. It spotlights perils of old standards and approaches for responding to postnormal realities and underlines the indispensability of creativity, imagination, and ethics (or virtue) for navigating our postnormal time and building transnormal practices. The literature draws attention to the vitality of polylogue(s) for mixing these various ingredients together (Sardar, 2017, 2015, 2010; Montuori, 2017; Sardar & Sweeney, 2016). This paper traces the origins and various uses of the concept of polylogue over time and in different domains. It proposes an operationalisation of the model of polylogue for the co-creation of images of the futures as a contribution to the manifold existing efforts to understand, strengthen, build and multiply the capacity for collective anticipation, social foresight throughout society.

In ‘The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal Times’ Ziauddin Sardar and John Sweeney (2016) formulated a response to the ‘discourse of doing’ question Sardar put forward in 2010. Here we find an explicit call for polylogues of various scope and scale that constitutes an admittedly broad but nevertheless key proposition: “Polylogues require the creation of new physical and mental spaces where diversity, pluralism, and contending perspectives are present on their own terms but also deeply invested in engaging others in creating and sharing information and knowledge.“ (Sardar and Sweemey, 2016, p3) Where do we see, how do we understand, find and build such spaces and interactions?

So far, postnormal scholars and practitioners have modestly experimented, feeling our way into the idea and the practice of polylogue. For an irreducible concept like this, that is certainly appropriate and even required. In this manner we have reached a broad understanding of why we seek forward looking polylogue and what it might be. Now we can probe the meaning of polylogue further and begin to operationalise it more systematically.

The first section of this paper looks into the place of polylogue in postnormal times theory and its relation to Ziaudin Sardar's concept of mutual assured diversity, also highlighting its uses in the framework of anticipatory activities. The next section is an exploratory overview of how the concept is situated and explained in different fields of inquiry. Then we look at how polylogue(s) take(s) place in practice, delving into concrete approaches to achieving the spaces and deep engagement that are the ground for polylogue. The next sections of the paper then focus on the operationalisation of the concept of polylogue and how this ideal type model is beginning to be implemented in practice for the co-creation of images of the futures, providing an introduction to the polylogue(s) in the experimental research and education project of the UNESCO Chair on Images of the Futures & Co-creation (Erasmus Brussels University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Belgium). It has attention for the scaled nature of polylogue and considers how media, art and design approaches already include and can underpin, inform and enrich this kind of inclusive and generative multi-vocality.

Picking up the threads on polylogue that run throughout postnormal literature -even when the term is not spelled out- and tracing the use of the concept elsewhere, this paper weaves them into a yarn from which we can begin to implement a scaled and varied practice of polylogues for the co-creation of images of the futures in different contexts, spread across different domains and geographical locations and learn how such collective anticipatory practice may grow.

[If selected, please schedule this paper presentation in a joint themed session on postnormal times and anticipation with Chris Jones and Wendy Schultz]

Abstract: This paper explores the role of imagination in science education. Einstein argued “Imagination is more important than knowledge. [...] Imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research” (Einstein & Shaw, 1931/2012). Rather than an alternative to reason, we consider imagination as a necessary complement (Pendleton-Julian & Brown, 2018), particularly in relation to socio-scientific challenges shaped by complexity and emergence like climate change.
The intertwined drivers and complex dynamic structures of global human activity increasingly influence earth systems, generating emergent phenomena at multiple scales, often with unintended (and unanticipated) consequences. As global citizens, youth are future leaders of families, communities, and institutions who will fundamentally shape collective climate efforts such as transitions to post-carbon energy systems. Yet, contemporary science education typically provides youth with substantive opportunities to understand earth systems and human activities only in terms of past and present efforts towards sustainability, resilience, and regeneration. We contend that an equally important opportunity in science education is to understand human activity as being guided not only by reasoning about the past and present but also by imagining possible futures.
Societies face changing relationships with the future; optimism and ambition towards the future seem diminished, if not lost (e.g., New America Foundation, 2011). That is, people often struggle to construct plausible, let alone desirable, futures (Bai et al., 2016). Imagining desirable futures challenges individuals to examine what actually exists in terms of what potentially might and, in so doing, to amplify possibilities for action in the present. By coupling reason and imagination, science education invites youth to problematize energy transitions prospectively in the context of still-evolving material and social interdependencies rather than retrospectively in terms of linear cause-and-effect relationships (Pendleton-Julian & Brown, 2018). Against this backdrop, our paper reports the design-based research study. We share the design of a pragmatic imagination workshop then present complementary analyses of the social processes and collaborative products through which participating youth developed pragmatic imagination in an informal science education program about the role of photovoltaic innovations for accelerating energy transitions.

Abstract: Voices of Tomorrow is a multidisciplinary research project that uses storytelling, data modelling and the human face and voice to imagine the future of refugee resettlement decision-making processes. The paper describes how cutting-edge creative technologies can be combined with AI technologies to envision the conditions that will allow the best possible outcomes for both refugees and their host communities, thus helping to advance policy-making and decision-making in this complex and disputed area of policy implementation.
What if it were possible to use data to more fully understand what the future holds for people resettled through semi-automated systems, what would such a future system look like and how might it operate? This is the question asked in joint exploratory work from designers Parallel Systems and Territory Studios, and from researchers at StoryFutures and the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London. We are working with policy organisations in the UK to explore how the simulation of lifelike synthetic humans might allow users of future decision-making systems to anticipate what the life outcomes of real people might look and sound like in different resettlement settings.
By simulating and dramatising the results of different assumptions about policy for decision-makers, this research represents a step-change in how design responses to complex societal challenges can be framed. It moves beyond conventional two-dimensional personas that are typically devised in user centred design and creates a new paradigm closer to the practice of worldbuilding, offering transformational opportunities to redirect policy and technology design towards a better understanding of the needs of all stakeholders.

Abstract: The question posed by the Conference Committee as part of the Critical Anticipatory Capacities theme is “What is the role of educational institutions in fostering capacities for anticipation and for critique of anticipatory work?” The simple answer is that we should teach about anticipation and the future in every classroom in the world. What better way can educational institutions advance this discipline other than by doing what they do best – teaching the next generation? The approach for this session is an interdisciplinary discussion on how best to get that done.

The Discipline of Anticipation was created for these times in history when forces come together to create a new order. We are at one of those moments. The forces in this case are 1) the increasing rate of change, 2) the increasing frequency and depth of disruptions, 3) the unprecedented challenges to our way of life, and 4) the emerging technologies that promise to redefine what we are as human. Change, disruption, challenge and technology are not new, but we are experiencing more of them and more rapidly than almost any other generation in history.

These changes call for new forms of human organization – an economy and a way of life that respects the environment, a form of governance that goes beyond political advantage, and a culture that balances individual and community welfare. A requirement for these transformations is to change how we prepare the next generation to be successful in these turbulent times.

Education has been awash in proposals to update and reform itself for more than a century although few have actually changed the student experience during that time. A popular meme compares the history of the office and the classroom. It is said that Tom Watson, who took over IBM in 1915, would not recognize what is going in an office today whereas John Dewey, his contemporary, would know exactly what was going on in a classroom.

Amid these proposals is the opportunity to include the emerging Discipline of Anticipation as an integral part of the standard curriculum, the study of the future. This new discipline is already making its way in the adult world. Universities have been offering degrees in futures studies to graduate students for more than 50 years:
* The University of Hawaii at Manoa created a futures concentration in Political Science in 1971.
* The University of Houston-Clear Lake established its Master’s degree in 1975.
* Graduate programs are now operating in Finland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Korea, Australia, Mexico, Germany, South Africa and other countries.
* Arizona State University opened its School of the Future of Innovation in Society in 2015 and offers the first bachelor’s degree in the subject.

To address the question of what role can educational institutions plan in fostering capacities for anticipation, we propose a dedicated panelists with the following speakers:

Dr. Peter Bishop, Executive Director, Teach the Future
Teach the Future was founded in 2015 to share this new discipline and its contemporary approach to the future with young people, both in and out of school. The organization has recruited educators and advocates from dozens of countries around the world, and it reached at least 1,000 young people in 2020 alone. Peter will make a short presentation on the theme of this session and brief history of Teach the Future’s effort to promote futures thinking within education. In addition, Peter will introduce the work of two secondary teachers, one middle school and one high school, who will describe their experience teaching Anticipation in their classes along with the student outcomes and reactions.

Lisa Kay Solomon, Designer in Residence, Stanford d. school
Lisa Kay Solomon designs environments, experiences and classes to help people expand their futures, adapt to complexities, and build civic fellowship. Her work blends imagination with possibility, building the capacity to take the long view when today’s problems seem overwhelming. Lisa will present her work to help students learn and practice the skills they don’t yet know they need. She will share lessons learned from her work at the d.school where she teaches classes such as Inventing the Future where students imagine, debate and analyze the 50-year futures of emerging tech, and works closely with the K12 community to make futures thinking a mainstay of the 21c core curriculum.

Tim Foxx, Center for School Study Councils, University of Pennsylvania
As the director of the Center for School Study Councils (CSSC), Tim Foxx works with school superintendents, school boards, and district staff to help them keep pace with state-of-the-art educational and management theory, research, and practice. In addition, Tim has worked with more than 50 educational, corporate, nonprofit, civic, philanthropic and post-secondary institutions on a range of organizational development and improvement projects, strategic planning, equity, progressive pedagogy and systems redesign. Tim provides a unique perspective of the educational leadership challenges - and opportunities - of this moment, and will touch upon the systemic realities we need to consider to reframe education through the lens of futures, equity, and sustainability.

Dr. Ruth Wylie, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University
The mission of the Center for Science and the Imagination is to unite the collective imagination for a better future. An essential aspect of this goal is to provide young people with the skills of anticipation, foresight, and futures thinking so they can build the futures they want to inhabit. In her presentation, Dr. Wylie will discuss work done with middle school students in formal and informal learning environments and lay out a program of research for bringing futures thinking into more classrooms.

Abstract: This paper ties together core concepts in futures research –the futures cone and futures archetypes – with both chaos theory and complexity theory as relevant to understanding the emergence of, and potential responses to, postnormal times. This provides a structured argument that reinforces the need for decolonizing futures and radically extending participation in imagining and exploring futures: essentially, increased turbulence and emergent postnormal times require wild and feral outlier futures archetypes to challenge our invincible ignorance and fully explore the high dimensionality of deep uncertainty and intensified chaos.

Abstract: Abstract

Flyover Fictions: Extreme Life is a curated session exploring art-science collaborative research in rural justice. This panel rethinks the role of the rural in anticipation, alongside challenging how speculative design and storytelling can play a role in the scientific research and engineering that is shaping rural infrastructure.

Future design often fails to include the rural populations that live and work there. The rural can be characterized as a place with a low density of human populations, but populations of other species and materials are often robust. Systems like solar, wind, and food are often situated in rural areas, as are the material hubs of the ever-increasing cloud and data infrastructures that fuel and feed the urban. In Flyover country, new infrastructures and technologies yield strange designs and human-nonhuman relations. Long known for farming fields, are now research sites for energy systems, animal cultivation, plant health, and environmental resiliency.

Flyover is a platform for rethinking rural systems design and environmental futures— from the Nebraska plains to the deserts of Arizona to outer space; is based within the Story, Worlds, Speculative Design Lab at UNL. Flyover Fictions brings together scientists with global design practitioners. The results are stories, creative tools, and conjectures that anticipate other realities beyond the day-to-day work of scientific realism.

Our proposal for Anticipation 2022 focuses on strategies of artist-designer-scientist collaborations, focusing on one case study of Extreme Life/Extremophiles as an opportunity for rural research and rural justice at the fringes of life as we know it. How can we build literacies and methodologies across disciplines to communicate possibilities and preferable anticipations? Indeed, innovation is a vital aspect of this matrix, but so is the ability to communicate and tell stories across emerging media platforms such as VR/AR, immersive experience design, and games.

This session explores the role of speculative design and storytelling in opening up existing scientific worlds to a spectrum of secondary effects, possibilities, and spatial dynamics. In sum, design and art can bring an anticipatory dimension to science that pushes the discipline to extreme places and positions, testing its edges and borders. Bringing art and design to scientific processes also builds upon the often missed opportunity for the creative worlds of speculative design and the actual science where a thousand hyper-real and surreal ideas are buried. The job of scientists is explicitly to explore the existing, empirical world, but through this process, scientists encounter clues of a bigger picture–trajectories, impulses, possibilities. Scientific breakthroughs and our understanding of the world will also require new communications and stories.

This session invites one pairing from Flyover Fictions: plant pathologist Joshua Herr, with Designer Yasaman Sheri. Their project called Microbial Glyph is created through building a collaborative archive of extremophile microbes and organisms; while the investigation includes various types of research, the outcome takes the form of typographic glyphs with the ability for anyone to download and use in any written document digital or physical.

Format
Flyover curators Ash Eliza Smith and Stephanie Sherman will invite a panel of participants to speculate on extreme life in rural settings and the role of speculation and science in bringing rural justice for all forms of life into focus. This session will incorporate a live, site-sensitive worldbuilding segment with all participants to bring insights into the nature of extremophiles and art-science speculation.

15min.: Curators frame the context of Flyover and the challenges and opportunities of Art, Science, Story, and Speculation in relation to the rural and extreme life.

20min.: Josh Herr & Yasaman Sheri describe their project on Microbial Glyphs & Desert Skin

10min.: Discussion with discussants

25min.: Extremophiles & Rural Justice Futures: Rapid Worldbuild

20min.: Reflection on Anticipating Story & Science

Resources: a projector/ screen for sharing slides


Curators

Ash Eliza Smith is an artist-researcher who uses storytelling, worldbuilding, and speculative design to shape new realities. With performance as both an object and lens, Smith works across art+science, between fact+fiction, and with human+non-human agents to re-imagine past and future technologies, systems, and rural-urban ecologies. She is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts at UNL. Ash grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and has worked as a producer, director, performer, and writer for various studios and media platforms. Her research lab within the Carson Center of Emerging Media Arts: Story, Worlds, Speculative Design Lab, uses design fiction and narrative to solve problems, re-imagine systems, and build worlds.
https://www.flyoverfictions.com/
https://arts.unl.edu/carson-center/faculty/ash-smith

Stephanie Sherman directs the MA Narrative Environments course at Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London. A design strategist and producer, her practice transforms outmoded systems into platforms for collaboration and co-production. She has started multiple organizations that develop immersive contexts for creation and learning, from the transformation of abandoned thrift stores, the activation of defunct amusement parks, and the conversion of train stations to the online mobile radio. She is currently completing Auto: A Platform Parable, her Ph.D. dissertation at UC San Diego, which composes a speculative history of Fordism and the rise of planetary platform automation.
http://stephaniesherman.info

Participant Bios

Yasaman Sheri is a Designer, Director, and Educator investigating the creative inquiry into life sciences and our social relationship to technology. She is currently Principal Investigator of Serpentine Galleries, Synthetic Ecologies Lab, founder of Studio Gesture, and has a practice in interface design. She has more than a decade of experience building novel interfaces around the machine and biological sensing and perception systems. She is interested in the various spatial and temporal scales humans interact with living systems and ecology. Yasaman is also an educator, having taught at RISD and Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design, building unique pedagogy around novel sensing & emerging interfaces. More recently, she co-created the learning & applied research platform A Forest of Frames Curricula centering BIPOC and womxn in the study of alternative interfaces.
https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/synthetic-ecologies-lab/


Joshua Herr is a computational biologist with broad interests across the spectrum of life sciences. He is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska in the Center for Plant Science Innovation and the Department of Plant Pathology. Research in his laboratory utilizes new technologies, such as high-throughput nucleotide sequencing and machine learning computational techniques to understand life's taxonomic and functional diversity. In addition to his research in the life sciences, he is interested in how the diversity of life can inform and inspire the design and communication of information.
http://herrlab.com/

Abstract: What are the implications of the development of anticipation as a discipline for the joint articulation of community engagement and research? When first explaining the discipline of anticipation to Godet-influenced French school of thought, Miller (2011, 2018) and Poli (2015) repeated the need for a taxonomic proposal. The discipline of anticipation should serve both as a conceptual and methodological framework and as a dialogue space to detect, define and contrast contexts, methods of and reasons for anticipating in the present. The intellectual shift does not only lie in the need to diversify methods, but also worldviews to allow for those spaces to be noticed and grow. The shift to anticipation is an opportunity for universality to take another turn: not as the international application of one or several sets of tools produced in the North, but the openness to different (and often emerging) ways of thinking and acting with the future in mind in both South and North. This implies that foresight methods are not self-sufficient to clarify the parameters of the said discipline. Only the interests of the diverse community the discipline manages to gather are. Research is to be thought as context sensitive and community-driven.

At the outset of this contribution is the present constitution of social sciences. By “incorporat[…][ing] the later-than-now into their functioning in ways that are relevant” (Miller 2018:20) all living organisms anticipate, either consciously or unconsciously; all behavior is hence primarily anticipatory (Poli 2017:1). This premise demonstrates that excluding the pivotal meaning of anticipation from research agendas leads to an incomplete and even deficient view on our human and social nature.

In November 2021 UNESCO’s 41st General Conference unanimously decided to proclaim December 2 as World Futures Day with the aim of promoting inclusive and transdisciplinary discussions on futures. This decision fits within a larger agenda proposed by the UN Secretary-General in September 2021: the UN Common Agenda to foster a culture of anticipation in all Member states and human societies. This decision attests to the recognition of the pivotal role that images of the future play within our societies: Not only do they influence what we perceive and consider relevant in the world around us right now, they also shape our hopes and fears for the ‘later-than-now'. As perception always precedes action, understanding the sources and motivations of our images of the future is of immense importance.

To contribute to a deeper understanding of how and why humans anticipate, over the past decade UNESCO has been building a diverse community of UNESCO Chairs in Futures Studies and Futures Literacy across the globe. They are all committed to producing evidence of the diversity of humanity’s anticipatory systems and processes, and each of them has a specific focus shaped by local priorities, cultural characteristics, and diverse disciplinary orientations. From chairs focused on the integration of a historically sociology-oriented discipline in STEM in Kenya to the revelation of cycles of reproduction of cultural stereotypes in our uses of the future in Cyprus, each chair project has made use of its disciplinary entry point (law, geography, agricultural studies, etc.) to unearth the role of anticipatory systems in what agents of the field think and act. Each chair project has therefore articulated courses in executive education or masters programmes, engaged with their municipalities, NGOs or national governments to train them to use the future more holistically, or developed special issues and publications on more responsible futures.

This development attests to the importance of a culture of anticipation, rather than the use of foresight as an add-on to existing practices of decision-making. Over the last decade, UNESCO Futures Literacy team came to realise the value of a capability-based approach in developing and strengthening a community of practice. Less seasoned futurists could come to a space and actually create from where they were at. In other words, we were noticing a shift from a method-focused train-the-trainer approach to a transdisciplinary capability-based approach. This work is still underway and after 10 years, this is also the opportunity to assess achievements and detect next steps.

This curated session is therefore the opportunity to proceed to a snapshot of efforts led by a community of practitioners to embrace these questions from their disciplinary point of departure. How did each of them tackle transdisciplinarity especially in contexts where their core team's exposure to a conscious use of the future does not exceed 5 years? What context sensitive adaptations were proposed for these revelations to make sense for their respective communities (both in the explanation and the design of futures literacy processes)?

In preparation of World Futures Day, we also expect to run a series of preparatory sessions with our 32 UNESCO Chairs to collect the data leading to the event.

Considering duration (90 minutes), the presenters will not be able to present the work of 32 UNESCO Chairs. After an articulation of a maximum of 4 case studies (selection criteria below), the UNESCO team will reflect on the differences noticed between interdisciplinary approaches (especially when led by seasoned futurists) and transdisciplinary approaches (especially when led by newcomers in the field), and the impact it has on community empowerment. More generally, the 4 UNESCO Chairs and the UNESCO team will spend time on articulating the evolution towards more public futures (Feukeu, Bourgeois & Ajilore, 2021) and the role of institutions (UNESCO and universities) in pushing this agenda forward and the opportunity to do so.

Abstract: Disconnects between decision-makers’ and community residents’ viewpoints about sustainability transitions can be a critical barrier to implementation. This disconnect is particularly notable in public resistance to municipal plans for direct potable reuse of wastewater (DPR). To build support, some utilities offer DPR water tastings. Applying frameworks from knowledge co-production, embodied cognition and socio-technical transitions, this paper conceptualizes tastings as material co-production, defined as the use of material methods to engage individuals in deliberations that promote social learning across knowledge systems. Material co-production represents an innovation in water governance of potential use in the management of other difficult sustainability transitions.

Abstract: Smart city scenarios are often univocal and unilateral urban futures, that do not include wider societal perspectives or situated knowledge (Sadowski & Bendor, 2019). Moreover, these anticipations of urban futures often lack assessment on a societal level, and neglect to incorporate soft impacts such as potential value tensions or ethical issues (Boenink, Swierstra & Stemerding, 2010). In this contribution we present two design approaches that aim to stimulate participation and ethical reflection when anticipating smart city futures. The main goal of both scenario-based approaches is to narrate plausible stories based on the use of smart technologies that provoke public, private and civic stakeholders to anticipate and reflect on smart urban futures and their potential ethical impacts. With these approaches we aim to support the early identification and democratic formulation of ethical issues originating from smart city technologies, in order to encourage the creation of more desirable urban futures. In line with the conference themes, this contribution explores the incorporation of new voices and new approaches when anticipating smart urban futures.

Scenarios are a highly applied approach to anticipate the impact of emerging technologies on our society. They combine knowledge on technological innovation and its impact with imagination, to think creatively about possible futures, and to support informed decisions and policies. Technomoral scenarios (Boenink et al., 2010) are one of the few examples that actively take soft impacts and ethical challenges into account when discussing the future of emerging technologies. Moreover, technomoral scenarios highlight not only the ethical challenges posed by emerging technology, but also explore the mutual interaction between technology and morality, or the technological mediation of values (Swierstra, 2013; Verbeek, 2005). Post-phenomenology exposes how technologies mediate the way we experience, and act in the world (Verbeek, 2005). This hermeneutic role of technology has important ethical consequences, since it implies that technologies can actively contribute to the (moral) decisions human beings make. This political significance of technological artefacts needs to be made explicit and debatable in order to facilitate decision-making processes about our (urban) futures. It is important to be aware of these hermeneutic relations when thinking about the future city and the desired role of technology therein, or in the words of Verbeek (2005): ‘The fact that technologies always mediate human actions charges designers with the responsibility to anticipate these mediating roles’.

To anticipate the mediating of technology in our urban environment, we take inspiration from technomoral scenarios, however add a participatory element to it. Highly expert-based methods such as the technomoral scenarios, do not emphasize the involvement of stakeholders, who can bring additional situated knowledge and experience to improve the scenarios. To create more democratically informed and rich scenarios, this paper explores how the rationale of technomoral scenarios can be combined with approaches such as participatory design and experiential futures. These design approaches combine imagination and creativity with stakeholder empowerment. They emphasize that it is a matter of creating the right tools and settings for stakeholders to be involved in the process, and invite them as experts of their own experience. Adding participatory elements to the development or smart city scenarios enhances both its democratic character as lead to better informed scenarios, thereby making society better prepared for socio-technical developments.

We present two different tools that were developed in the context of the ongoing research project ‘Designing for Controversies in Responsible Smart Cities’. This transdisciplinary project consist of a consortium of two Dutch universities and five societal stakeholders, and aims to develop tools to support more responsible smart city development. Smart cities incorporate data-driven policies and urban AI with the promise to optimize city processes and improve city life, although are highly contested for their tech-driven and top-down nature. We take this contestation as a point of departure for our tools. Both approaches aim to explore (1) potential ethical dilemmas that different stakeholders might encounter if the proposed scenario occurs, and (2) the consequences of these dilemmas. Furthermore, both tools are built on scenarios that are set in 2030, to stimulate imagination and speculation, yet remain plausible as they extend on current developments and trends.

The first tool is a set of four orthogonal snapshots that provoke debate amongst stakeholders, building on the work of Wright et al. (2014): these are four different scenarios that relate to the same prompt, but each reflect different potential futures and ethical dilemmas. We formulated these scenarios in a series of co-creation sessions with societal stakeholders which are part of the research consortium. We guided our discussion by introducing a prompt that reflects a recently presented EU strategy, which proposed to make data sharing a civic duty. Together with the consortium partners, we discussed and identified the key indicators and (PESTLE) drivers that shape this scenario, such as specific technologies, relevant stakeholders or societal trends. Moreover, we focused on which values would be central in such a scenario, and what value tensions, ethical dilemmas or other consequences could potentially arise. Starting from the prompt and first scenario, a pushback scenario, positive scenario and unexpected scenario were formulated. These orthogonal snapshots were evaluated in a workshop with members from the municipal ethical committee.

The second tool is an immersive, interactive web experience entitled ‘Future Frictions’, that gives participants agency to influence smart city futures. This tool was co-created with a consortium partner and an external partner, in a series of design iterations to ensure an engaging and relatable virtual environment. Through relatable future scenarios and interactions with neighbors and passersby, ‘Future Frictions’ makes participants become acquainted with multiple perspectives and various forms of societal impacts around urban AI. As a result, the experience allows for ambiguity to exist, thereby stimulating participants to identify and articulate the values and issues that matter to them.
We reflect on how both approaches help to anticipate and reflect on the ethical and societal impact of emerging urban technology, and stimulate participatory discussions about the future. Different quadruple helix stakeholders can use these tools to reflect on the ethical implications of technology and plan a common ground to collaboratively shape desirable smart city futures.


References

Boenink, M., Swierstra, T., & Stemerding, D. (2010). Anticipating the interaction between technology and morality: A scenario study of experimenting with humans in bionanotechnology. Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology, 4(2).

Sadowski, J., & Bendor, R. (2019). Selling smartness: Corporate narratives and the smart city as a sociotechnical imaginary. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 44(3), 540-563.

Verbeek, P.P., (2005). What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press.

Wright, D., Finn, R., Gellert, R., Gutwirth, S., Schütz, P., Friedewald, M., ... & Mordini, E. (2014). Ethical dilemma scenarios and emerging technologies. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 87, 325-336.

Abstract: This paper takes a hard and critical look at creativity and innovation in anticipation and futures studies. There is widespread acceptance of creativity as a positive and necessary element in human development and particularly as a tool/method/cognitive aspect of imagining desirable futures. What if creativity and technological imagination are counter to the survival of our species? What if creativity, unrestrained by planetary or Gaian values, is an evolutionary cul-de-sac for human imagination? The paper questions the notion of unbridled creativity in futures studies and explores how postnormal times analysis and Sardar’s transnormal theory illuminate the pitfalls and contradictions (i.e., Schumpeter’s creative destruction) of creativity and innovation (modernity) and the threats they pose to human civilization.

Abstract: Disconnects between decision-makers’ and community residents’ viewpoints about sustainability transitions can be a critical barrier to implementation. In this workshop, participants will experience the material co-production methods we have developed to help water managers and socio-economically marginalized consumers make informed decisions about water supply options. These activities are inspired by approaches in urban planning, food studies, sustainability, and anticipatory governance that invite material, emotional and socially situated knowledge into policy-making. Significant time will be allowed for workshop participants to reflect on their experiences and discuss how the material co-production approach may be applied in their research and practice.

Abstract: This curated session addresses the conference themes of Public Futures and Critical Anticipatory Capacities by focusing on the learnings from the design and implementation of a cutting-edge program: the World Bank Future of Health Systems Program for Leaders. This program is designed to help transform primary health care systems focused on cultivating anticipatory capabilities in West Africa through an applied futures and systems thinking program. These systems, and the contexts they operate in, serve the poorest and most vulnerable, and concurrently personify wicked problems and persistent challenges. The novelty of this program lies in cultivating anticipatory capabilities across health leadership teams in West Africa as they work on complex health system challenges they have prioritized. This tailored program is designed to enable participating teams to translate learnings and “lightbulb moments” (i.e. mindset shifts) into actions for transformative results. Our pedagogical approach, which is focused on “non-experts,” can help make concepts around working in complexity and uncertainty more accessible by lowering the barrier to entry and providing opportunities for “learning by doing” through immediate, practical application. Importantly, this program aims to catalyze a power shift in how--and by whom-- primary healthcare systems are reimagined and designed at scale; from multi-lateral institutions to mechanisms for realizing African imaginaries.

The curated 90-minute session will be delivered by a multidisciplinary team comprised of public health specialists and human-centered design experts from the World Bank Group, experts on futures thinking and leadership coaching from the African continent, plus a virtual experience designer. The session will enable an interactive, cross-disciplinary dialogue introducing the innovative approach taken in designing and developing the program; unpacking the foundational framework that underpins the program; delivering an interactive learning experience for virtual and physical conference attendees, and leading a critical discussion evaluating the program and its triple-loop learning model.

Abstract: This presentation will discuss the current state of consent-based siting (CBS) for nuclear waste in the U.S. After discussing the historical context of nuclear waste management, we turn to the current approach to a CBS process, and make recommendations for a CBS process that is driven by principles of equity and justice, rather than technocratic decision-making. We argue that, if done well, a CBS process could serve as a model for participatory technology assessment (pTA) for complex temporal and spatial sociotechnical issues, in order to create broader social capacity, as well as a dedicated political space, for anticipating future uncertainty in waste management.


The U.S. has been mired in 70 years of conflicting and contested approaches to managing the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle; currently all efforts to manage commercial nuclear waste have stalled and ultimately failed. The U.S. government focused its efforts in the early era of atomic invention on producing increasingly powerful nuclear weapons, as well as developing a commercial nuclear energy industry; waste was viewed as an after-thought. In both these endeavors, the U.S. government relied on a highly technocratic process of decision-making, based on sociotechnical imaginaries of containment of the destructive atom, and control of the peaceful atom (Jasanoff & Kim 2009). In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) to expedite the site selection and creation of a permanent waste repository in the U.S; the 1987 amendment focused on one site, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, legally binding all federal studies and funding to this one site (Carter 1987). Yet, Yucca Mountain never opened, and understanding the long roots of this failure requires acknowledging and recognizing the ways that nuclear waste management was perceived as a technical issue that could be expediently resolved through the judicious application of scientific inquiry and technological innovation, rather than a political issue that requires layers of public engagement and a focus on the political process of decision-making in a democracy.

The selection of Yucca Mountain violated the principles of environmental justice, including distributive, recognition, and participatory justice. The NWPA did not involve a discussion of the risks and benefits of storing nuclear waste to local communities, nor did it involve any recognition of the transportation routes across states to bring spent nuclear fuel (SNF) to Nevada. Risks were assumed to be contained by the design of the repository, without clear long-term evidence that the site would be suitable over millennia. The historical misrecognition of Indigenous communities, as well as the veto of the state of Nevada, in the area were also ignored or overridden; leaving a of mistrust in this utilitarian approach to decision-making. Finally, there has been a systemic lack of participatory engagement and consultation with the different publics, including communities along transportation routes, tribal communities that resist nuclear waste, and state policy-makers (Endres 2012).

In 2010, a “Blue Ribbon Commission for America’s Nuclear Future” was appointed by President Obama to make new recommendations for storing SNF. After two year of meeting with local, national, and international community stakeholders and policy-makers, they recommended that the DOE pursue a CBS approach to managing SNF. In 2015, the DOE initiated several initiatives for gathering public input into creating a CBS process, including several roundtable forums with invited speakers from nuclear communities, tribal representatives, and anti-nuclear activists. The DOE also contracted with the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) group based at ASU to create a public forum for discussion of elements that would inform the creation of a CBS process that would be held in early 2017 (Richter et al 2022).

After the presidential election in 2016, the DOE cancelled all CBS projects, including the ECAST project, citing a shift in executive priorities. In 2021, President Biden resurrected the CBS process, with a request for public information for a CBS process for interim waste storage. It is an ideal time to re-examine the work that the ECAST project did in relation to understanding the major concerns of CBS, which include ethical/legal, logistical, and bureaucratic issues, such as:
1) Ethical/legal concerns, including: defining risks and benefits of nuclear waste, how to collectively define consent, how can consent be provisionally given/ withdrawn, what amendments need to be made to the NWPA to allow for broader conversations for CBS;
2) Logistical concerns, such as: What constitutes a community, representation of a community, and flexibility over intergenerational political, social, and environmental change;
3) Bureaucratic hurdles, such as: milestones for CBS, transparency in communication and information, how to build trust in agencies, creating an independent agency, and conflicts with existing policies.

A CBS process should ideally “flip” the existing model of engagement, by focusing on equity and justice for present and future generations as an outcome, in creating a resilient system of SNF management. We will discuss our recommendations for both the CBS process: including a focus on collectively produced milestones rather than narrow timetables, a DOE process that focuses on growing the capacity and capabilities of local communities, rather than a final repository, and the creation of an independent agency that can broker public and federal interests. Ultimately, we hope that any approach to SNF management that focuses on public engagement, participatory technology assessment, and equity and justice will also be of use to other complex sociotechnical issues.



References:
Carter, L. Nuclear imperatives and public trust: dealing with radioactive waste, in: Resources for the Future, 1987.

Endres, D. Sacred land or national sacrifice zone: the role of values in the Yucca Mountain participation process, Environ. Commun. 6 (3) (2012) 328–345.

Jasanoff, S. & Kim, S.H. Containing the atom: sociotechnical imaginaries and nuclear power in the United States and South Korea, Minerva 47 (2) (2009) 119–146, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-009-9124-4.

Richter, J., Bernstein, M. J., & Farooque, M. (2022). The process to find a process for governance: Nuclear waste management and consent-based siting in the United States. Energy Research & Social Science, 87, 102473.

Abstract: Monument Public Address System AR is an interactive augmented reality (AR) documentary revolving around an expanding collection of audio interviews about the past, present, and future of confederate and colonial monuments across the United States. The interviewees include activists, scholars, students, planners, community organizers, and other artists. Some have discussed feelings of exclusion when they see confederate and colonial imagery. Others have evaluated the symbolic violence of the monuments in relation to ongoing racist systems. And others have described potential liberatory sculptural works as replacements.

The author-artist’s goal in creating this project is to engender thoughtful individual and collective experiences and to support critical and ongoing engagement with public memory and the political, social, and cultural processes responsible for public spaces. As Ana Lucia Araujo, historian and professor at Howard University, writes, “All monuments emerge and disappear because of political battles that take place in the public arena. Likewise, public memory is always political” (Lucia Araujo, 2020).

In terms of a participant’s experience of the AR media, once they download and open Monument Public Address System AR on their mobile devices, they will discover 3D virtual objects and animations superimposed on the world around them. When they interact with these objects, short sections of the audio interviews are triggered and play. As they listen to the interviewee’s narratives, participants can explore the virtual animations in relation to the surrounding physical space.

Abstract: A screening / critique / collaboration with Necessary Tomorrows, a podcast and feature documentary by Brett Gaylor.

Necessary Tomorrows is a documentary project that uses science fiction to explore alternatives to our oncoming dystopian future.

Necessary Tomorrows will explore futures that at first seem like fantasy: animals are people, colonialism is over and capitalism is banned from outer space. After we meet activists in the real world trying to make these futures a reality, will we see the present differently?

Abstract: The world annually generates 2,010 million tons of urban solid waste, per person and each day there is a per capita average of 0.74 kilograms. According to the World Bank1 global waste will grow by 70 Percent by 2050. Companies such as Starbucks2, Coca Cola3, Tetra Pack, and many industries (such as the fashion industry) have plans to become net zero waste companies between 2035 -2050. However, waste accumulation will continue increasing, without taking into account the waste generated during the COVID-19 pandemic in which the percentage has considerably increased.

The waste of the world's largest megacities is a massive sustainability challenge, and produces 12% of the world's waste alone4. The city that generates the second most waste worldwide is Mexico City.

Mexico City is the 5th most populated city in the world with 21 millones 581,000. Many live in a trendy district called Cuauhtémoc, which has a large number of cultural and recreational areas appealing for foreign tourists; but is also one of the districts that generates more garbage in the city. In this district, approximately 13 million tons of waste is generated daily.

Mostly since pre-hispanic era, Tepiteños have been the outcasts of the city and they have struggled to cling to and preserve their roots and customs. This neighborhood has survived by taking what is discarded and destroyed and has restored value to these discarded things. Before the terms “upcycle” and circular economy were created, they have embodied a culture where waste is transformed into value, which has allowed the neighborhood to survive until today. The area’s rich history of artistic expressions, combined with its imaginative ability to reuse materials and its geographic size, makes the neighborhood an ideal candidate to explore the futures of the circular economy as a cultural practice that indeed already exists, but which prefigures a global future in which the idea and definition of waste is transformed or even obsolete; and to understand what behaviours and knowledge which have been discarded by modernity and industrialization can be scavenged as a resource for all of humanity and to tackle the waste problems we face.

This research seeks to address the problem of waste in its root cultural dimension, by looking at cultural intangibles: meanings, narratives, behaviors, languages, images in which we can learn from the discarded cultural resources of Tepito. how discarded knowledge and behaviors can be “upcycled”? How can what has been discarded by modernity be reclaimed in the present? The project seeks to recover pre-industrial, pre-colonial and pre-modern images, knowledges and voices as a resource to present and future generations. In upcycling cultural resources it seeks to find narratives to design more vibrant societies that are plural in their possibilities: "thinking about design from the political ontology also allows us to determine its relationship with the decolonial project of moving towards 'a world where many worlds fit'" (Escobar, 2016, p. 72)

Abstract: From Algorithms of Oppression into AfroRithms of Liberation with Afrofuturism: Claiming Space in Future Worlds in the Pluriverse, real to imagined into the reel.

Abstract:
How can new media, VR/AR, immersive experience design and games be deployed to activate better futures?

We propose a techniques workshop using an imagination forecasting game we call AfroRithms from the Future, a collaborative, design thinking, storytelling game that centers Black and BIPOC perspectives. 90 minutes is optimal and up to 45 participants is ideal. Technical requirements include providing our card decks, a wifi and computer access with a larger projection screen if possible with the internal game application we use with the game to amplify the experience. In groups of 4-5 players, we will collectively select two future tensions out of six tension cards to form a new world. You are travelers of the multiverse exploring possible futures and creating exciting new artifacts to send back out to all other parallel worlds. The game is simple. Have a conversation about the future and activate your radical imagination! The game ends when you as a collective have decided on the best artifact to share with the rest of the multiverse.

Our Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities require tools to imagine and create engaging futures. Picture never seeing yourself in visions of the future and infrequently even as Black superheroes. Less than two percent of professional futurists are BIPOC. Globally, futures practices rarely consider BIPOC communities unless they are tied to corporate-oriented consumerism. Future visions of healthcare traditionally have rarely addressed race and gender, instead erasing core identities along with sacred ancestral community knowledge.

Afro-Rithms From The Future, a game centering BIPOC imagination, generates artifacts from the future--amplifying community futures to reveal solution spaces for BIPOC issues. Afro-Rithms From The Future as a forecasting game suggests that by changing the traditional white, patriarchal normative gaze of racism and lens through which we usually view the world, we aim to change the societal “game” to expand alternative perceptions of the world through Black and (BIPOC) perspectives where Black and BIPOC futures are central and matter. The term Afro-Rithms is intentional to acknowledge the leading editing role that algorithms have attained especially on our social media platforms. We want to acknowledge the ubiquity of algorithms in our lives and ensure that Black Diasporic and Africana perspectives shape and create new algorithms to expand the aperture of cultural perspectives within our digital society. Afro-Rithms From The Future shifts our digital lens that usually reinforces, perpetuates dominant inequities to enable us to expand our range of possible and more equitable, liberating multiverses. Ruha Benjamin in Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools For the New Jim Code refers to the persistent bias in algorithms as the “new Jim Code, the employment of new technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era”. Afro-Rithms is designed to counter the new Jim code with algorithms of liberation.


In playing the game, we propose using it as a springboard to explore the question: How do we claim Black, Indigeous space in Virtual Reality (VR), in the metaverse? While Neal Stephenson’s novel Snowcrash established the dystopian concept of the metaverse in 1992, one year later in 1993, C. Tsehloane Keto argued that the only way forward is a global pluriverse that respects our innovation and a non-hegemonic approach that embraces our humanity (Reynaldo Anderson, Black Angel of History exhibition, 2022). By focusing our attention on the power of the avatar, the graphical representation of a user’s character persona in VR and its interaction within intentional communities created in VR, our aspiration is to embody the avatar with affordances or powers for liberation that in turn bring, and extend them back into the analog world. Claiming space in virtual settings and VR has historically already encountered one of its most racist moments against a Black actor developing one of the most ubiquitous Avatar personas of all time: Jar Jar Binks. The actor Ahmed Best playing Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars we can assert was one of the first virtual iconically Black alien avatars that provided the CGI (computer generated imagery) imprint for all other virtual characters on screen to follow. Literally, the DNA of a Black actor and their intergalactic persona provided the technological pathway for precursors for virtual character development especially in film and arguably in VR.

This workshop connects to several of the conference themes as it aspires to decolonize futures by amplifying individual and collective agency in imagining the future to center traditionally marginalized voices and offer alternative visions of the future. How can we democratize community and organizational infrastructures to promote futures thinking and anticipatory capacity building? We envision games like this one to catalyze and engage communities in creating annual exercises in reflecting a network of imagination that can translate into legislative agendas and address societal challenges. We know that play in particular is a critical element of harnessing and augmenting the role of emotion in terms of feeling the future and having an immersive embodied and experiential journey to travel to the future and bring that future into the present. Our hope is that participants leave the workshop with an increased capacity to imagine the future and realize their own initiative to act as signals of the future as well.

Panelists include Lonny Brooks, who brings his lens as a professor in Communication and Foresight, scholar of Afrofuturism and in futures game design; Ahmed Best, who will act as facilitator of the game and contribute his deep insight into Black innovation and his own theatrical improvisational expertise he deploys as a Fellow at the USC program for performance studies and as a theater director; and Jade Fabello, who will assist in running and facilitating the game as well amplified by his own writing practice, as a speech writer and former editor of UT Austin’s Spark magazine. Lonny J Avi Brooks is the primary contact: lonny.brooks@csueastbay.edu and at 510-778-2067.

Abstract: Abstract:
Globally, post-development perspectives challenge the hegemonic vision of development and its derivative notion of sustainable development. We perceive the emergence or re-emergence of these initiatives and philosophies as a result of decolonized anticipatory processes. For instance, in the Global North, degrowth and ecofeminism anticipate futures where economic growth and patriarchy do not belong. In Latin America, Buen Vivir and the rights of Mother Nature are embedded in national legislations of Andean countries. In Brazil, post-development alternatives are not mainstream yet. However, the country with its nearly 300 indigenous peoples and languages is fertile ground to examine options to decolonize futures. This paper asks: 1) How present in Brazilian culture are post-development philosophies from elsewhere? 2) How do selected Brazilian indigenous peoples anticipate? 3) How elements related to 1 and 2 are being/can be incorporated into futures literacy programs in the country? Our results indicate that blending anticipatory practices of Brazilian indigenous peoples with those related to post-development alternatives in the Global North and South, and mainstreaming them through futures literacy, will be essential for the emergence of decolonial futures.

Discussion:
Currently, the global debate about planetary well-being and better futures is structured around two possible trajectories: following an orthodox development model or opting for sustainable development. However, encompassing the many dimensions of a desirable future within these modern/post-modern options narrows the possibilities for alternative solutions. In contrast, the development paradigm is not universally accepted, given that premises – such as unlimited economic growth – and practices – such as to underestimate developing nations -, are challenged by other worldviews (Escobar 2015). As a consequence, a set of alternatives to development originated both from the Global South and North are increasingly being adopted and put into practice. These can be clustered under the name of post-development, gathering the renewal of ancestral philosophies, and concepts emerging from social movements, in the name of a more ecologically wiser and socially just world (Kothari et al. 2019).
The rise of such movements can be related to the re-emergence of sustainability as a moral value and possible utopia within our societies (Scarano 2019), especially regarding the human agency of imagining what those desirable futures might look like (Tonn 2021). In the Global North, degrowth and ecofeminism anticipate futures where economic growth and patriarchy do not belong. In Latin America, most of the post-development movement draws inspiration from ancestral indigenous knowledge, as reflected in philosophies such as “Sentipensar”, “Buen Vivir”, “Sumak Kawsay”, “Via Campesina” and others (Kothari et al. 2019). For example, the rights of Mother Nature are embedded in national legislations of some Andean countries (Acosta 2016). Given that anticipation can be understood as a forward-looking attitude and the use of the former’s result for action (Poli 2017), we perceive the advance of these initiatives and philosophies as a result of decolonized anticipatory processes.
Even though Brazil displays continental dimensions (it is the biggest Latin American country - and houses the world’s largest biodiversity as well as almost 300 different spoken languages), post-development alternatives are not as mainstreamed in the country as they are for its neighbors. However, this rich and diverse scenario is a fertile ground to examine options to decolonize futures. In this sense, indigenous philosophies and other Brazilian post-development emerging concepts can be crucial in anticipating decolonizing futures and facilitating educational practices in futures literacy, enlarging “possibilities for yet-unimaginable alternative futures to emerge” (Amsler & Facer 2017). Given this context, the present paper seeks to answer the following questions: 1) How present in Brazilian culture are post-development philosophies from elsewhere?; 2) How do selected Brazilian indigenous peoples anticipate?; and 3) How elements related to 1 and 2 are being/can be incorporated into futures literacy programs in the country?
The first question is being addressed through a systematic review of literature on post-development, focused on contents being produced/used in Brazil. Using key-word oriented research on multiple databases, and the previous experience from a similar experiment conducted by the authors on global scientific literature around post-development transition discourses, an analysis of the current Brazilian scenario is possible. Results demonstrate that the incorporation of post-development concepts in Brazilian territories is still incipient in comparison with other Latin American countries.
Nonetheless, ancestral knowledge derived from the perspectives of indigenous peoples is becoming increasingly relevant to the creation of futures. In order to investigate how these groups anticipate, Brazilian indigenous literature and digital materials are being studied. Some examples are books by authors Davi Kopenawa and Ailton Krenak, as well as works derived from Selvagem and LivMundi (seasonal events focused on futures literacy and dialogues) (Kopenawa and Albert 2010, Krenak 2019, Pãrõkumu and Kẽhíri 2019). Many of their anticipatory practices come from the exploration of their subconscious through intuition, dreams and reminiscing; others might be reached through storytelling and/or ritualistic practices – aspects not usually included in modern society daily life from which we could benefit.
Finally, the last question aims on the construction of the technical expertise to reflexively use the future to perceive and inform actions in the present through education (Facer & Sriprakash 2021). Anticipated future states of the world may require present changes in behaviors (Tonn 2021), thus, formal educational processes dedicated to futures literacy will be required throughout the world. In Brazil, the topics investigated above are being incorporated in local festivals and gatherings – in spaces such as Selvagem and LivMundi. However, they are not encountered in many formal educational institutions. This shall be examined even further by the authors, mainly observing if post-development and/or indigenous practices can be incorporated into formal educational spaces.
In conclusion, our preliminary results indicate that blending anticipatory practices of Brazilian indigenous peoples with those related to post-development alternatives in the Global North and South, and mainstreaming them through futures literacy, will be essential for the emergence of decolonial futures in Brazil and elsewhere.

Abstract: This curated session invites participants to explore how imaginaries of digital technologies embedded within personal, domestic, productive, and public spheres implicitly pose particular social values as trade-offs (e.g. security vs. privacy, efficiency vs. care). By utilizing a critical feminist approach with reference to the work of, e.g. Harding (2004), de la Bellacasa (2017), Wajcman (1991), and Haraway (2019, 1988), this session aims to sketch possible futures for the anticipation of ‘smart’ technologies, as specifically feminist imaginaries. The session is led by School for the Future of Innovation in Society students Toby Shulruff, Elma Hajric, Ben Gansky, and Farah Najar Arevelo, each of whom are interested in exploring how the ethics of emerging ‘smart’ technologies across scales and contexts are shaped by the ways that social values and implicit constructions of gender relate.

In line with the conference theme “Politics, Justice and Ethics of Anticipation” and the question "Which worldviews, principles or practices are involved in ethical– and unethical– anticipations?" this session will engage with a feminist approach to how the discourse and practice of sociotechnical ethics across scales and contexts are shaped by gendered imaginaries. Examples of technologies we hope to discuss include implants and wearables that monitor sensitive information in and on the body, technologies in the home used for domestic violence surveillance and control, employee surveillance through emotional recognition technologies and voyeuristic use of cameras, and location tracking and transportation infrastructures in city contexts. How do framings of anticipated ethical considerations (fail to) consider both the gendered experiences of potential stakeholders and the situated perspectives of the anticipators?

Visions of ‘smartness’ across contexts and scales often fail to consider gendered vectors of harm (Daniels, 2009; Leitão, 2019; Levy & Schneier, 2020; Parkin, et al., 2019; Slupska, 2019; Slupska & Tanczer, 2021; Tanczer, et al., 2018; West, Kraut, & Chew, 2019). For instance, scholars have noted that values of safety and security are frequently pitted against privacy. Privacy discourse, however, often fails to address how gender conditions an individual’s exposure to harms arising from digital systems (e.g. Allen 2011) and how gender’s intersection with vectors of race, indigeneity, and disability shape and amplify distinct forms of vulnerability, resulting in a distribution of ‘smart’ technology-driven harms that fall predominantly onto already-marginalized groups (see, e.g. Abdur-Rahman & Browne, 2021; Benjamin 2016; Broussard, 2018). Building from critiques of the insufficiencies of the current ethics discourse around ‘smart’ futures (e.g. Mattern, 2021; Sadowski, 2020; Sadowski & Bender, 2019), we aim to foster a productive space wherein critical feminist perspectives might lead to alternative methods for surfacing and framing ethical issues in anticipated ‘smart’ futures.

In particular, we are interested in addressing the following questions and cultivating a robust discussion for anticipating ‘smart’ failures through a feminist lens: How do foresight practices aarive at framings of tradeoffs in values? How do these framings channel possibilities for ethics inquiry in the present? What would it look like to reconstruct these imaginaries through a feminist ethics of care? Our hope is to generate ways for alternative imaginaries to reshape ethics discourse around ‘smartness’ in sociotechnical systems utilizing a feminist approach.

Format: Open Space
We will hold this session in an Open Space Technology format, which gives agency to participants to navigate the conversation according to their own interests. We’ll open the session with a brief presentation to frame the conversation, then shift into parallel breakouts that will aim to reframe imaginaries of values trade-offs in sociotechnical systems across a variety of scales, from the body to the home to the workplace to the city. We’ll reconvene at the end to invite participants to share insights, questions, and tensions emerging from each breakout conversation. We are open to facilitating this session in person or in a virtual format depending on the health and safety needs at the time of the conference.

Contributors:
Elma (she/her) is a PhD student in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, and NSF-NRT fellow in Citizen-Centered Smart Cities & Smart Living. Her work centers on problems with regards to surveillance and digital ethics, with an interest in human rights approaches to building data governance responses, especially in the context of Smart Cities and emerging technologies. Her research also includes an emphasis on investigating narratives and sociotechnical imaginaries of ‘Smart’ Cities.

Farah Najar Arevalo is pursuing a PhD in Innovation in Global Development at SFIS, where she earned a MSc in Global Technology and Development in 2019. Farah also holds a BA in International Relations from the ITESO University in Mexico. She is interested in the study of smart cities, and urban infrastructures through feminism in order to understand how these technologies impact the lives of women and non-normative users of urban technologies.

Ben Gansky (he/him) is an artist, designer, and researcher. He is currently a PhD student in the Human and Social Dimensions in Science and Technology program at ASU and an NSF NRT fellow in Citizen-centered Smart Cities. His research focuses on the history, theory, culture, and politics of data infrastructures, as well as the relations between participatory democracy and sociotechnical systems. He is the executive director of Free Machine, a nonprofit collective developing policy provocations and participatory experiences that invigorate civic engagement at the intersection of emerging technologies and progressive politics.

Toby Shulruff (she/her) works to build the capacity of communities to understand, make choices about, and ultimately shape the technologies that are woven into the fabric of our lives. Toby is a student in the MS Public Interest Technology program in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. Toby’s research includes the role of trust and safety work within technology companies as internal governance, the privacy and safety risks of everyday and emerging technologies including IoT, and the role of Public Interest Technology in global futures. Toby works at the intersection of technology and gender-based violence as Technology Safety Project Manager at the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

Abstract: Biospherefutures.net is an online database to collect and discover social-ecological scenario studies from across the world. Its goal is to enhance social-ecological scenario research and teaching, and contribute to assessment initiatives at national, regional, and global scales. Biospherefutures responds to recent calls for more inductive, bottom-up scenarios approaches for environmental assessments. Together, the case studies can be used to explore the various ways in which the future might unfold, give insight into the diversity and plurality of people's expectations and aspirations for the future, and help understand interactions between people and nature in different contexts. Furthermore, by providing access to existing scenarios, methods and other researchers’ experience and advice, Biospherefutures seeks to reduce the difficulty and costs of building new scenarios. Social-ecological scenario planning requires integrating multiple types of knowledge, utilizing diverse methods, and managing relationships with a variety of people. Comparing scenario approaches and building a self-reflective community can make it easier for practitioners to design processes that meet scientific or local goals, as well as ensure that methods are chosen that provide a good fit to a wide variety of contexts. In this talk, we first describe the rationale for the database, introduce the database and the criteria we use for selecting examples for inclusion. We present a synthesis of the examples included in the scenarios to date, highlighting emerging patterns and possible avenues for further research. We end with a call for contributions. We invite the creators of social-ecological scenarios to use and contribute to this database. The utility of this database and its potential to enhance the community of practice will increase as the number of cases in the database increases, and the ability of people to access and use resources contained in the database is improved.

Abstract: In response to climate change and the Anthropocene, Forlano (2017) argues that design needs to practice posthumanist issues to achieve the plural futures that people can imagine. Posthumanism raises the question of our need to form and be conscious of cultures that care about nonhumans. Meanwhile, the artificial intelligence scholar also argues a transformation from AI to MI (Multiple-Intelligence) that considers the collaborative relationships between humans, artificial intelligence, and natural intelligence (Fox, 2017). Most of the current research on speculative and anticipatory design is based on human-centred perspectives. There is a need for a collaborative-relationship-centric view to exploring futures to break the existing dualism that separates the artificial world from the natural world (Morton, 2018).

I will present a solar-powered interactive installation of light that may appear in different city corners as artificial intelligence or creatures. It could release different light with various effects according to the surrounding environment. Data generated by the surrounding environment may include humans, climate, and nonhumans. Furthermore, the light emitted could interact with humans and nonhumans in light interactions with emotional or biological effects. It could be an artificial public installation that humans share with other living things as part of converting solar energy and the natural world. This interactive installation may discuss and imagine the possibilities of future urban public facilities that are not human-centred by creating an urban scenario and human feeling.

This design idea shows the possibility of design as a research tool through materializing future scenarios. An installation that transforms data into light effects may extend the human's perception system and experience as an alternative way of knowing. The design installation acts as a data hub, which may also interact with remote participants in VR or AR, breaking the binary of physical and digital.

By presenting this design idea, I hope to get transdisciplinary feedback about more possibilities for urban facility design in the context of the Anthropocene and climate change. Also, I would like to get more opinions based on future-oriented approach to biocomputinonal design and my further research.

Forlano, L. (2017) ‘Posthumanism and Design’, She Ji, 3(1), pp. 16–29. doi: 10.1016/j.sheji.2017.08.001.
Fox, S. (2017) ‘Beyond AI: Multi-Intelligence (MI) Combining Natural and Artificial Intelligences in Hybrid Beings and Systems’, Technologies, 5(3). doi: 10.3390/technologies5030038.
Morton, T. (2018) Being ecological. Kindle Edition. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Abstract: Gender equality as one of the Sustainable Development Goals, needs a platform strong enough to overcome the present crisis of inequality and violence against women and girls worldwide because predators’ presence is everywhere:

-At home: According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 137 women around the world are murdered daily by a family member.
-In relationships: Some 15 million adolescent girls (aged 15-19) around the world have been forced into sexual relations by their partners, ex-partners, boyfriends, romantic partners, or husbands. According to data collected in 30 countries, only 1% of them have sought professional help.
-In "traditional" communities: 200 million women and girls between 15 and 19 years of age have undergone female genital mutilation. In most of these countries, the majority of girls were mutilated before the age of five.
-In human trafficking and exploitation networks: Women and girls account for 72% of the victims. More than 4 out of 5 women are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
-In the street: In a multi-country study conducted in the Middle East and North Africa, 40-60% of women reported experiencing sexual harassment on the street (mainly sexual comments, harassment/following, or obscene stares).
-In universities: A study conducted at 27 universities in the United States in 2015 revealed that 23% of female college students had been victims of sexual assault or sexual misconduct.
-At work: A national study conducted in Australia shows that almost 2 out of 5 women (39%) who have participated in the labor market during the last 5 years have been victims of sexual harassment in the workplace. In 79% of the cases, the perpetrators were men.
-On the Internet and networks: One in ten women in the European Union report having experienced cyberstalking since the age of 15, including having received unwanted, sexually explicit, and offensive e-mails or SMS messages, or inappropriate and offensive attempts on social networks.
-In public life and politics: In a study conducted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 39 countries in 5 regions, 82% of women parliamentarians surveyed reported having experienced some form of psychological violence (comments, gestures, and images of a sexist or sexually degrading nature used against them, threats or harassment at work) during their term of office. Almost half (44%) claimed to have received threats of death, rape, assault, or kidnapping against them or their families.

This representative sample shows how important is to start building new ways to approach gender equality as a capacity to detect, question, and eradicate stereotypes and prejudices in the private and public sphere, this is where future studies and especially futures literacy has a powerful role. How can communities be empowered to create and act on their own futures against gender-based violence? What impedes and enables engagement with a 50/50 future agenda? What’s the political role of governments to promote progress towards a more just and equal future? Which worldviews, principles, or practices are involved in the unethical treatment of women and girls around the world, and how they could be eradicated? These are some of the questions where futures literacy as a capacity for personal and collective transformation has a lot to contribute.

In order to start questioning the way women and girls have been unfairly treated throughout history, a basic theoretical foresight on the use of the future provides us with a required anticipatory capacity to think about the future, while looking for solutions in the present. This conception allows people, society, and governments to stop repeating more of the same when it comes to achieving substantive equality.

The Future Literacy Framework enables the correlation between ontological, epistemological, axiological, and practical dimensions about anticipatory systems and processes while cutting across different disciplines. This transdisciplinary knowledge base provides the possibility of co-creation on collective intelligence processes, something crucial when we talk about finding solutions to violent practices against women and girls involving society in all spheres and levels, because nobody can change something that is not considered to be wrong.

This approach allows reflecting on repetitive patterns that have not been effective in achieving equality, giving rise to reflection on new possible futures, building other narratives, and expanding possibilities in the present from a vision of the empowerment of women and girls towards a sustainable change in the world.

Abstract: Abstract
This presentation extracts an ethics of probability from the scientific process of climate modeling to explore technology’s possible contribution to a decolonial politics of climate anticipation. The argument advances in three stages, beginning with an overview of the critiques that cultural studies has leveled against probability as a concept and practice. Scholars such as Anna Tsing (2005), Arjun Appadurai (2013), and Bernard Steigler (2015) claim that probability statements, calculations, and scenarios across the information technology sector perpetuate a modern, unethical “machinery of risk,” in which neocolonial and neoliberal regimes of diagnosis, counting, and accounting inform modes of anticipation and the social imaginary of the future. The second part of this presentation claims that, within the machinery of risk, climate change becomes anticipated through what Potawatomi scholar Kyle Powys Whyte calls “crisis epistemology” (3). For Whyte, crisis epistemology describes knowing the world in such a way that any alternative sense of the present (i.e. a climate-changing present, a present of alternative social realities) is experienced as new and, consequently, as an unprecedented crisis requiring urgent resolution and society’s return to a previous and approved state of being. In the context of climate change, crisis epistemology highlights dominant ideologies’ fear of displacement as human populations begin to reorganize through climate adaptive practices focused on advancing collectives into resilient and climate just post-carbon futures. Crisis epistemology thus reveals the unethical political dimensions of anticipation; any progress towards a more just future is impeded by the anticipation of the future as the near-past, that is, as the re-stabilization of norms (and, by extension, their systemic inequities and inequalities).

Climate models challenge what has so far been cultural studies’ blanket critiques of probability. Climate models are systems of differential equations programmed to calculate the probability of future climate impacts and visually simulate their movement on a world map. They function as a metonym; while it is impossible to prophetically see into a climate-changed future, witnessing the movements of climate model graphics allows a spectator to visualize and imagine a warmer planet at local and global scales. Climate probabilities are thus spiked with an affectual current that calls for audiences to think—even momentarily exist—in the future anterior as they anticipate atmospheric and environmental change and consider its social and personal implications. Climate models narrate the present as a time that will have been and stake a claim to the ethical and practical importance of living the changed future now, as opposed to living the future as the normative past or present. In doing so, they highlight the as-of-yet undefined and thus un-prescribed actions in the present that will serve as metaphorical steppingstones to the future event of successful and just climate adaptation. The ethics of probability sits along these blurred lines of causality.

The final section of this presentation unpacks an ethics of probability and places it in partnership with black feminist writer adrienne maree brown’s anti-racist and empowering notion of emergent strategy. Epistemologies of crisis and machineries of risk indulge a limited sense of futurity that counter the ability to both anticipate and realize alternative futures imagined by contemporary anti-colonial, emancipatory, and justice-based social movements. In contrast, the ethical injunction of climate model probabilities—anticipate and live the future as a politics of difference—places a perpetual emphasis on emergence as a collective way of stepping into a new future to transform “the future of the collective before it occurs” (Bryant and Knight, 42-43). For adrienne maree brown, the concept and practice of emergence is an ontological burgeoning within the indices of intentional adaptation and intersecting worlds. Strategies of an emergent ontology include a shift from a culture of strategic planning to one of strategic intentions that, in brown’s words, “grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for” (7). Ultimately, this presentation argues that a climate model ethics of probability diagnoses anticipation as a political condition and anticipates adaptation through a politics of difference.

Connection to Future Studies
In its focus on an ethics of probability, this presentation deepens existing literature on the ontology of the future (Poli, 2011; Poli, 2021) by highlighting how forms of anticipation impact the nature of being through their relation to time. I take an intersectional approach to anticipation by braiding two grammars and their ontological facets: the future anterior referred to in mainstream future studies (Bryant and Knight, 2019; Poli, 2021), with its focus on “how to use the future” in decision-making and social organizational processes (Appadurai, 2013; Poli, 2021: 2); and the future anterior utilized in postcolonial, indigenous, and anti-racist disruptions of the ontological architecture of oppressive regimes (Campt, 2017; Rifkin, 2017; Povinelli, 2018; Whyte, 2020), which emphasizes the importance of performing anti-racist reality, “that which is not, but must be” (Campt 17). My emphasis on the capacity of climate models to help conceptualize ethical futures challenges and deepens the very scarce scholarship on climate modeling in the context of future-thinking. Hastrup and Skrystrup in The Social Life of Climate Change Models consider the role of climate models in anticipating nature but not in anticipating more socially just futures (2013). In her ethnography Friction (2005), Anna Tsing critiques climate models’ totalizing representation of the planet, which facilitates policymakers’ easy forgetting of past, present, and future local social-environmental realities. Importantly, however, climate models and their probabilities do not only circulate at the level of geopolitics but also at the level of collective future-making endeavors within the general public, who relate to climate model probabilities through different, uniquely situated standpoints. In her excellent book Thinking Like a Climate (2020), Hannah Knox considers what happens to people’s understanding of themselves, of others, and of the future when “confronted with climate as a ‘techno-nature’ (Escobar 1999), as a phenomenon that does not fall neatly into a category of either immediate materiality or abstract representation” (5). My presentation explores the relation between these two categories through the anticipatory capacity of climate models’ ethics of probability.

Connection to Conference Themes
This presentation explores several of the thematic questions suggested in the conference CFP, including:

Politics, Justice and Ethics of Anticipation
How is power wielded in anticipatory practices?
How do the political dimensions of anticipation promote or impede progress towards more just futures?

Decolonizing Anticipation
How is anticipation connected to emancipation, revolution, activism and social movements?

Creativity, Innovation, and New Media
What IT systems are being used to create future narratives, and what types of affordances, limitations and trade-offs do they enfold?

Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition, 2013.
brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press, 2017.
Bryant, Rebecca and Daniel M. Knight. The Anthropology of the Future. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Campt, Tina M. Listening to Images. Duke University Press, 2017.
Hastrup, Kristen and Martin Skrydstrup, editors. The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature. Routledge, 2013.
Knox, Hannah. Thinking Like a Climate. Duke University Press, 2020.
Poli, Roberto. “Steps Toward an Explicit Ontology of the Future.” Journal Future Studies, 16.1 (2011), 67–78.
Poli, Roberto. “The Challenges of Future Literacy.” Futures 132 (2021), 1-9.
Povinelli, Elizabeth. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Duke University Press, 2016.
Rifkin, Mark. Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination. Duke University Press, 2017.
Steigler, Bernard. Automatic Society, translated by Daniel Ross. Polity Press, 2015.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press, 2005.
Whyte, Kyle Powys. “Against Crisis Epistemology.” Accessed February 24, 2020. https://kylewhyte.cal.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2020/07/Whyte-Against-Crisis-Epistemology-2020-1.pdf.

Abstract: For the past decade, cities have been looking to nature-based solutions to combat environmental issues that impact the quality of life of city dwellers. This presentation will introduce a university-community partnership to improve greenspace in Phoenix, AZ. Greenspace is an important component of combating climate change in this desert city as native vegetation can provide cooling, among other benefits. In this project, a group of researchers from Arizona State University partnered with a school teacher from Academia del Pueblo, a middle school that serves predominantly Latinx and low-income students, to imagine better and greener futures for their community. Through the use of participatory action research techniques such as photovoice, scenarios, and storyboarding, middle school students named concerns and strengths of the community and envisioned desirable futures. We call our process ‘barrio innovation’, which is an approach to innovation based on design thinking but rooted in and driven by community. In this presentation, we reflect on our journey, which is emergent and continously co-evolving, and invite others to reflect on the power of anticipatory tools in community settings.

Abstract: Transformational change, or “comprehensive and non-linear system changes to make society into something qualitatively different from what it is today,” is necessary to motivate rapid reductions in GHG emissions and adapt to large and disruptive changes in the structure and function of physical, ecological and social systems in urban areas. However, anticipating and planning for transformational change in cities has been a challenge for climate action planning, which is the practice of assembling policies, projects, and programs to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and build resilience to the inevitable impacts of climate change on specific regions, organizations, and populations. This study explores how rigorous analysis of community co-produced, positive visions of urban futures can help cities reimagine climate action planning and lead to more just and innovative outcomes. We accomplish this by developing a tool to estimate how urban development policies affect long-term GHG emissions from transportation and energy use in buildings and applying it to six community co-produced scenarios envisioning resilient and sustainable futures for the Phoenix, AZ, metropolitan region. The proposed process can help communities overcome a major barrier to preparing for a climate-changed future by expanding the possibilities considered in climate action planning.

Action by local governments is critical to stabilizing GHG concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere and adapting to the impacts of climate change. More than two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions originate in cities,, and more than half the world’s population lives in cities, a proportion that is estimated to grow to 68% by 2050. Furthermore, the impacts of climate change - including physical changes to Earth systems such as sea-level rise and increasing frequency of extreme weather events, as well as accompanying economic and social disruptions - are also concentrated in cities. Despite wide agreement that “[c]ities simply will not be able to confront these challenges and lead the way in mitigating climate change without transformation”2, local governments too often produce climate action plans that fall far short of the urgency and scale of the climate challenge.

The main barriers to transformative change in climate action planning are a lack of ambition and capacity. Assessments of local climate action plans have found that their GHG-reduction targets are often so modest as to be merely symbolic,. For example, member cities of the Global Covenant of Mayors represent 21% of the global urban population and have made commitments to reduce city-level GHG emissions by 4.2 Gt of carbon-dioxide equivalent by 2050, but that total that falls far short of what is needed to keep global warming from increasing more than 1.5 degree Celsius beyond pre-industrial levels. A study of U.S. climate action plans found that local governments often do a poor job accounting for uncertainty and exogenous change when it comes to future demand for fossil fuels7. Instead, there is a tendency for climate action plans to reflect the assumption that “tried and true” land-use and transportation strategies will allow local governments to reach their GHG-reduction targets or to codify actions they have previously planned or implemented. Compounding these problems, climate action plans are “seldom implemented fully”1 due to widespread resource and capacity constraints among local governments and the voluntary nature of most climate action plans - with few, if any, penalties for noncompliance.

Reimagining the future of cities via community co-produced scenarios opens new possibilities for climate action planning and empowers communities to create and act on their own futures. The process of creating visions for sustainable urban futures necessitates engaging with plural futures, while the ability to quantify the likely outcomes of climate change-mitigation actions allows communities to set the scope and ambition of their own efforts and monitor the results.

Abstract: This paper will explore the rise of NFT’s as a commencement of a second avant-garde movement in art and society. NFT’s, the blockchain and the continued melding of real and virtual space through paradigms like the metaverse present new social, economic and creative architectures. However, beneath the rise of NFT’s and the proliferation of the blockchain in image culture, lay complex practical, philosophical and ethical ramifications for the ownership, use and lifespan of images in digital space. Specifically, this paper will explore the relationship between NFT’s and image appropriation. This examination will explore the NFT/appropriation paradigm from both a creative, art perspective and practice, real-world implications for issues like non-consensual image sharing, deep-fakes and revenge pornography. This paper will theorize how NFT’s could act as a “digital finger-print” beyond ownership, allowing individuals greater control over their images in digital space, while also exploring how this could affect creative practice and cultural dialogue through artistic appropriation. Ultimately, this paper aims to anticipate the contentious boundaries and intersections between image ownership, appropriation, theft, deep-fakes and non-consensual image sharing as they relate to NFT’s and a new digital avant-garde.

Abstract: For this conference on anticipation and the future, I prose to first detour into the past: to the rise of anticipatory practices. For anticipation has a history: historians and literary scholars have argued that, prior to the nineteenth century, to speculate about the future was considered madness, but the upheavals of the French Revolution, industrialization, and a seeming speeding up of time and consequent “increased weight of the future” (Koselleck) changed this. Moreover, the publication of Darwin’s evolutionary theory appeared to remove teleology from human history to instead render the future a product of chance (Miller). As a result, the tale of the future became “an established genre” (Alkon) by 1850, with the second half of the nineteenth century seeing a flowering of speculative literature: in France, with the rise of the roman d’anticipation in the 1860s and in Britain, a blooming of utopian fiction that moved visions of alternate ways of being from other places to other times – specifically, the future (Wittenberg).

However, though this obviously extensive scholarship on the rise of speculative practices has traced the myriad reasons for its emergence, it has engaged less with what might be termed the “political” angle of such speculation. Both in the academy and without, science fiction is frequently lauded as a resource for opening up new horizons of possibility and envisioning alternatives to our present ways of being in order to solve our current crises. But, focusing on the wildly popular and widespread Extraordinary Voyages of Jules Verne, which were published at the moment of, and led the vanguard on, the rise of future-oriented speculative fictions, I explore how these anticipatory visions can also foreclose possibilities as they are conscripted in service of nationalist imaginaries and hegemonic ideologies.

Verne is oft understood as an apolitical writer, particularly in the anglophone world, where a history of hack job translations has positioned him as “merely” an entertaining writer of children’s adventure stories (Evans). Famously, Verne’s publisher Hetzel made him excise anything too “political” in order to appeal to the widest possible demographic; thus, for example, Captain Nemo’s nationality was changed from Polish to Indian in order to better appeal to Verne’s strong Russian market. Yet Verne’s futuristic visions of heavier-than-air flight, submarines with military capabilities, electricity within domestic spaces, and other marvels were often appropriated by contemporaries to stoke nationalist sentiment, participate in spectacles of statehood, and affirm the validity of the current regime during a century that saw a heavy turnover of such regimes. Examining Verne’s oeuvre as well as the rhetoric around contemporary socio-technical debates in the periodicals of the day, I show how, in a period when serious speculation about the future was coming into being, such speculation rendered visions of the future heavily value-laden.

This begs the question, which I am eager to explore in discussion and dialogue at the conference in addition to doing so through this paper: how might even the most equitable futures that we imagine as solutions to our current crises be appropriated to maintain current systems and institutions? We evoke anticipation for its revolutionary and disruptive potential (that is even the idea that underlies this conference), but if even the most disruptive and anti-hegemonic visions can be appropriated and assimilated into (and in support of) hegemony, what can we do about that? How do we deal with the significations inscribed onto our alternative visions of the future?

Works Cited

Alkon, Paul. 2002. Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology. Routledge.

Evans, Arthur.1988. Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Novel. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Koselleck, Reinhart. 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Future. New York: Columbia University Press.

Wittenberg, David. 2013. Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative. New York: Fordham University Press.

Abstract: Abstract

To foster transformative change toward sustainability goals, a major priority of urban change agendas worldwide is the realization of future visions which feature nature-based solutions (NBS). Many academic scholars have developed frameworks for describing the capacities which support transformative urban change. However, few studies characterize how urban NBS researchers and practitioners have (and can) operationalize these frameworks to proactively build the capacities necessary to navigate change toward normative sustainability goals. What are the pathways that enable or constrain the realization of positive, nature-based futures? The NATURA network’s ‘Nature-based Pathways Working Group’ is addressing this question by analyzing the role of transformative governance capacities in enabling pathways toward nature-based transformations. We use the transformative governance capacities framework developed by Hölscher et al. (2019) to identify how governance actors and activities have enabled the emergence of system-level conditions that support capacities for nature-based, transformative change. Hölscher et al. identify four transformative climate governance capacities: i) stewarding capacity, ii) unlocking capacity, iii) transforming capacity, and iv) orchestrating capacity. We adapt this framework to include a longitudinal perspective, mapping the role of governance activities and capacities in key inflection points which engender pathways toward urban NBS case studies. Our analysis also allows for the analytical exploration of how different transformative capacities and their outcomes interact through time. Through workshops and interviews conducted from Spring to Fall 2022, our group will collect and code case studies of urban NBS projects narratives, as told by NATURA network practitioners and researchers. We have created a visual storytelling process to interactively map respondents’ case study narratives and visualize their project pathways through time, according to the transformative capacities supported.

At Anticipation, we propose a curated session to present our case study database, pathway visualizations, and begin a discussion on how comparative pathways evaluations can support future anticipatory action. This session will explore the analytical possibilities of our comparative pathway analysis by centering questions such as:
How does pathway comparison reveal patterns in how transformative capacities have enabled NBS transformations in diverse contexts?
How can evaluative pathway perspectives guide actors’ proactive development of capacities?
What is the role of storytelling and narrative in characterizing transformative pathways? Whose narratives were represented and whose were excluded? How does this affect comparative analyses?

Connection to Conference Themes

This session will explore the interplay between two conference themes, anticipatory capacities and temporality, to link transformations theory, storytelling methods, and practice. NBS visions and their pathways are normative and vary according to actors’ narratives, problem-framing, and positionality. Using visual storytelling to collect and code practitioners’ narratives, this session will explore the perspective of the storyteller in defining normative transformation goals and pathways. How do narrators identify key inflection points and transformative capacities in their system’s pathway? Which actors (and whose activities) do narrators commonly perceive to be instrumental in facilitating transformative change? How does time differentially drive project pathways between diverse case study contexts (and narrators)? What kind of anticipatory knowledge can be gleaned from retrospective pathway analysis, and for who? Session participants will leave with a greater understanding of how NBS practitioners in international contexts interpret the pathways to transformative change. Participants will also be invited to engage in ongoing collaboration with this work through the NATURA network.


Format and Agenda

We propose an interactive, hands-on session structured according to the following goals:
Brief presentations by curators (5 mins each, 30 mins total): Curators will lead presentations introducing the work through interdisciplinary interpretations and introducing discussion questions. Presentations will describe the project’s methods and conceptual underpinnings, introduce two case studies to highlight how pathways vary between diverse governance contexts of and framing of the narrator, and speak to how retrospective pathway analyses can support future action. Dr. Liliana Caughman will present on her work on process tracing (which she will also present as a paper talk), describing how retrospective process analyses such as this can be used for future forecasting. To accommodate presentations from group curators unable to travel to Tempe, we will require facilities which support presentations via Zoom.
Intro to pathways (5 mins): Curators will introduce case study pathways to participants through physical timeline visuals and graphics on posterboard.
Small group discussion questions (30 mins): Participants will self-organize in smaller groups with curators according to interest in discussion questions introduced in curator presentations. Participants will be encouraged to visually annotate pathway graphics to demonstrate how their group discussion question would inform or problematize cross-case analysis.
Informing future pathways (20 mins): Small groups will reconvene as a large group. Each small group will restate their discussion foci and and describe how their interpretations varied due to analytical perspective. Participants will discuss the opportunities and challenges this evaluative dataset presents in informing future action and pathways toward transformation.
Wrap up and invitation for continued collaboration through NATURA (5 mins)


Curators

Session curators comprise the ‘Nature-based Pathways’ Working Group in the NATURA (Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene) project (https://natura-net.org/nature-based-pathways). NATURA is an international ‘network of networks’ which aims to enhance collaboration and synthesis across communities of research and practice. Our working group is a collaboration between members across disciplines, career stages, and geographies. All team members are motivated to enhance diverse collaboration to understand pathways to nature-based solutions through interdisciplinary networks such as NATURA, the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Network (UREx SRN), and others. Research and faculty members in our group include Dr. Niki Frantzeskaki (Regional and Metropolitan Governance and Planning, Utrecht University), Dr. Nancy Grimm (School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University), Dr. David Iwaniec (Urban Studies Institute, Georgia State University), Dr. Marta Berbes-Blasquez (Environment, University of Waterloo), and Dr. Tischa Munoz-Erickson (USDA Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry). Dr. Liliana Caughman (Earth System Science for the Anthropocene (ESSA) Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Arizona State University) is also leading a related paper talk connecting this work to future pathways entitled “​​Process Tracing the Future: Decision-maker conceptualizations of urban just transition pathways to sustainable and resilient positive futures”. Robert Lloyd (Urban Studies, Georgia State University) and Amanda (Mandy) Kuhn (School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University) are graduate researchers in the NATURA and UREx SRN networks. Mandy Kuhn will be the main person of contact for this session and can be reached via email at alkuhn@asu.edu.

References

Hölscher, K. (2019, September 6). Transforming urban climate governance : Capacities for transformative climate governance. Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Abstract: In the midst of a climate emergency, radical reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions has never been as urgent. Despite the state of urgency, the internationally prescribed mechanisms to develop Nationally Determined Contributions and plan for decarbonization are currently untenable. Mainly focused on expert and model based extrapolative projections of past carbon emissions, these methods do not enable countries to deal with the uncertainty of rapidly changing environments and the complex systems that make or break emission reduction measures. As a result, the majority of UNFCCC member countries prefer to play it safe, and maintain their mitigation ambitions low.

Foresight practices are increasingly used to anticipate and imagine how countries will be affected by climate change, how risks can be avoided, and to robust climate strategies. Anticipatory climate governance takes a closer look at the politics of anticipating these climate futures, by analyzing how and why anticipatory practices are used, who is involved, and what mechanisms are used to steer policy choices.
Transformative environmental governance literature analyses the governance processes of systems that are close to surpassing the thresholds of climate change and relates these to regime shifts that enable more sustainable outcomes. Scholars indicate a lack of case studies investigating transformative governance in practice to understand the indicators for regime shift, the governance components, institutional structures, and capacities needed to foster new regimes.

This paper bridges transformative environmental governance with the anticipatory climate governance community in order to critically study a regime shift within the government of Costa Rica. The new regime comes in response to the global call for ambitious climate goals and the lack innovation in international guidelines and national customs to plan for emission reduction.

Through a process of semi-structured interviews and desk research, we analyze the characteristics of the former planning regime and the indicators that motivated a shift. We identify structural changes made to establish a new regime; what capacities were needed; what anticipation practices are used within the new regime, and how; what advantages they have towards former methods; who are involved in these processes; and what steering mechanisms exist to link these practices to policy choices and international agreements to reduce emissions.

The analysis in this paper can be used for future research on the role of anticipatory practices and regime changes in climate change governance and transformation processes. The paper contributes to the conference theme Politics, Justice and Ethics.

Abstract: In a highly uncertain environment, anticipatory thinking has been demonstrated as an approach to strategically guide adaptive problem solving. Though anticipation is hard wired into human thinking at a subconscious level, using it to actively guide problem solving, particularly problems and decisions with long term implications, is a skill that is best learned. Yet the skill of anticipatory thinking is not one of the a core focuses of our educational system in the United States. This session will introduce a method of teaching about anticipatory thinking using web based interactive models in the classroom or group settings. In the Colorado River Basin, planning for water sustainability is increasingly being impacted by a wide range of highly uncertain factors and trends ranging from climate change to political will. An anticipatory approach to developing and managing water policy will be critical to the Basin’s future water sustainability. The Decision Center for a Desert City developed a simplified interactive interface to a water supply and demand model, WaterSim, that is being used to introduce secondary and university students as well as public groups to exploratory scenario analysis to anticipate the future of water sustainability. This workshop will introduce participants to the web based interactive tool, the curriculum used in the classroom and group meetings, have participants conduct an exercise using the tool, and then have a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.

Abstract: In an attempt to support pro-democracy activists in Myanmar, the shadow government announced in December 2021 that it supports the use of the cryptocurrency Tether as the official currency. Since this digital currency prevents tracking, it allows the National Unity Government, the opposition residing outside the country, to transfer funds, payment of salaries, and the purchase of weaponry during the ongoing civil war that reignited after the military coup in February 2021. Perhaps more symbolically is how a call to use alternative digital ways of financial transactions directly undermines the sovereignty under the military regime. People in Myanmar also found other ways to use finance, such as, the refusal to pay taxes, boycott of businesses owned by the army and the national lottery.
This study aims to demonstrate the power of the people in reshaping financial resources by dismantling government control. This paper also contributes to a better understanding of the fluidity of digital financial systems and the ways through which people are able to convey their values and anticipations of the future. This research will be based on pilot data from a mixed method study examining how Myanmarese diaspora networks have shaped since February 2021 and the role of standardized financial narrative and technologies.
The focus on finance in global development is particularly important since it has historically been a problematic system that continues to design futures producing speculative communities or communities that have to deal with increasing uncertainties. In Myanmar, efforts to nurture uncertain futures and oppressions created bare lives, lives that emerge as a physical paradox where on one hand the absence of protection by the military government underlines the sovereign stronghold over security, dignity and quality of life. Hence, at all times life remains a subject in the imagination of the institutes even when that means social exclusion and physical harm. In this work we seek evidence that allows us to understand better what the tipping point is that leads to reshaping the economic and political futures (see Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou).
Finance has been successful in portraying future economic value that should be taken advantage of. For example, since the creation of the black-scholes model in 1973, and the offering of option based derivatives, societies, people, and institutions who can afford it, were able to design various insurances against future shocks, economic downturn and hence contribute to the hidden system of oppression. Leaving the remainder of the unhedged society with lotteries as a way to imagine a secure future. More problematic is that the financial system has found ways to embed price calculations of the future in almost any element of people’s lives, from ways we price food to the ways we communicate about future economies. Financial technology in particular contributes to this development by creating new spaces in which the idea of broken future promises and extractive powers are part of the calculation.
In order to negotiate with uncertainties communities tend to speculate about the future, an act that is relational and therefore based upon cultural values and how others understand or envision the future. When communities are unable to create some insurance for the future they will reach out to historical narratives that align for example with populism, nationalism (see Arjun Appadurai), racism as an insurance for the future. However, when people are able to share living experiences through new ways of communications, communities form new imaginations. Futures that could lead to counter-speculative movements wherein the digital technology is used to express the connectedness and find ways for socioeconomic changes, even when it seems counter-productive at first (see Orozco and Yansura, 2008).
These transformative ways in which finance can dictate lives and the growing reach of financial technology has changed social networks and has created digital imagined communities (see Benedict Anderson). Communities that use the increasing uniformity of the narrative around finance, as presented in digital financial education literature to translate and communicate living experiences. The understanding of money’s role in sovereignty and human development and the ways in which financial systems can thrive, even when promises about the future are broken, makes it a powerful component for marginalized people to use to their advantage.

Abstract: How can community and organizational infrastructures develop anticipatory capacity building? Social accounting offers a promising path. Whereas financial accounting destroys generative potential in communities and organizations by failing to recognize intangible assets, resource flows, and recirculation across multiple scales (individual, organizational, network, community, and global), social accounting accommodates interdependence and regenerative flow through a fractal architecture.

This multi-level utility makes dynamic stability possible through a relational topology that scaffolds endogenous resource creation, recirculation, and community development over time. Social accounting’s relational orientation facilitates endogenous resource creation by recognizing both tangible and intangible assets (e.g., social, moral, and natural capital) as proxies for individual, organizational, and community capabilities. Strategic infrastructure design choices catalyze and channel transformation of latent potential (e.g., spatial proximity) into realized actuality, e.g., the development of social capital, trust, and cooperation (Castillo, 2016). This endogenous resource creation makes growth and development possible by increasing materials (e.g., biomass, physical structure), network capacity, and information (Jorgensen & Fath 2004).

Socio-economic-technical progress become possible through continuous expansion and reconfiguration of resources in ways that counteract entropy (the tendency toward decay and increasing disorder) and producing negative entropy (decreased disorder) through self-organization, recombination, selection, and processing across different scales. Social accounting’s relational network topology promotes resource recirculation by transferring and recirculating energy across scales. The transfer of energy across trophic levels over time enables production of increasingly higher qualities of energy, with quality being the ability to produce greater outputs relative to inputs (Odum 1971).

Social accounting’s integrative design reframes capacity building as the development of multiple forms of capital across multiple levels (Castillo, 2016). This increased generative capacity promotes open-endedness, the capacity to produce novelty continuously through variation, innovation, and emergence (Castillo & Trinh, 2019). Social accounting's broader lens gives system designers, infrastructure architects, and futures thinkers new capacity to construct more functional anticipations and to perceive the expected information, overcoming current perceptual limits of financial accounting.

Select References
Adams, A., Zenil, H., Davies, P.S.W., & Walker, S.I. (2017). Formal definitions of unbounded evolution and innovation reveal universal mechanisms for open-ended evolution in dynamical systems. Scientific Reports 7(1), 1–15.

Banzhaf, W., Baumgaertner, B., Beslon, G., Doursat, R., Foster, J. A., McMullin, B., … White, R. (2016). Defining and simulating open-ended novelty: Requirements, guidelines, and challenges. Theory in Biosciences, 135(3), 131–161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12064-016-0229-7.

Castillo, E. A. (2016). Beyond the balance sheet. Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership, 6(3), 287-303.

Jørgensen, S. E., & Fath, B. D. (2004). Application of thermodynamic principles in ecology. Ecological complexity, 1(4), 267-280.

Abstract: AI is an omni-use, potentially transformative technology, and as machine learning becomes increasingly advanced, the scale of its impacts increases correspondingly. The AI/ML (machine learning) community is facing difficult questions about how to publish research responsibly, to maximize the benefits while mitigating risks of malicious use, unintended consequences, accidents, and other harms. One of the main hurdles is the need for coordination - there is a broad spectrum of views on the issue, yet responsible publication norms will only be effective if they are adopted widely across the community.

In the past year, experimental developments have shown the AI research community beginning to come to terms with the potential negative consequences of their research. In 2020, the NeurIPS machine learning conference required all papers to carry a “broader impact” statement examining the ethical impacts of the research. In another first, Nature Machine Intelligence began to ask submissions to carry an ethical statement when the research implicates identification of individuals and related sensitive data. These approaches, while commendable, are far from broadly-accepted with open questions around optimal implementation. This uncertainty only makes the need for the community to come together to codify best practices on anticipating downstream consequences, more urgent.

Integrating critical reflection into the research process needed to proactively mitigate the harms of AI will require a coordinated community effort, including experimentation with ethics review processes, research on the impacts of such processes, and venues where diverse voices within the AI/ML community can share insights and foster norms.The pace of AI research and its potential for misuse means we cannot wait long for a much broader commitment to conduct ethical review across venues.

However, the AI research community is not the first applied sciences field to consider the impact of research on society - lessons on anticipation from other dual-use fields can deeply inform AI researchers. Receiving feedback on building capacity to anticipate, existing tools that can encourage better reflexivity in technology design and research, and general strategies to get better at anticipation will be very valuable. Especially feedback around how to facilitate anticipation at scale among young researchers will be interesting to hear more about and is deeply in line with the themes of the conference. Another point of interest is critically thinking about anticipating the impact of AI on marginalized communities.

Abstract: The early years of futures studies were informed by a concern with time horizons beyond the human scale – with topics such as the impact of nuclear war or chemical pollution on long-future generations. The concept of the ‘long-term’ was engaged as a technical problem (can it be envisaged) an ethical responsibility (how to care for such futures) and an opportunity (can it be managed and exploited) (Andersson, 2018). As both anticipation theory and futures practice have evolved, however, they have tended (with some notable exceptions, see for example Galtung & Inayatullah, 2001; Tonn 2021) to refocus attention towards futures conceived within the timescale of the individual, the political cycle or, in the case of anticipation in biological traditions, the organism. This is a temporal frame that is demonstrably inadequate to engage the more-than-human timescales of contemporary challenges – from ecological and climate degradation to the questions raised by the emergence of biosynthetic life forms – as well as the (still) ongoing threat of nuclear conflict and its temporally extended legacies.

This session aims to explore what it might mean to systematically anticipate in the scale of deep time – to grapple with what Kathryn Yusoff calls the changed conception of the human as a form of ‘geological life… a collective being and subject capable of geomorphic acts; a being that not just affects geology, but is an intemperate force within it’. It seeks, equally, to respond to Michelle Bastian’s critique that dominant temporal frames do not help us to ‘tell the time’ in the slow emergency of climate change – and that coordinating human and more than human timescales are essential to the continuation of thriving human and more than human worlds. (Bastian, 2012)

To explore this challenge of how we might begin to develop a theory of deep time anticipation, we bring together four different perspectives: Facer’s attention to pedagogies drawing on feminist and non-western theories of time as tools to widen the temporal imagination; Tonn’s attention to cognitive barriers to thinking in more-than-human timescales; Sandford’s exploration of political and civil society practice; and Fuller’s exploration of the moral and ethical issues of ‘taking responsibility’ in these times.

The session aims to open up the question, central to this conference – if we are interested in Just Futures, what is our responsibility and capacity to think and engage with justice at the scale of deep time?

The contributions

Keri Facer (Professor of Educational and Social Futures, University of Bristol; Professor of Education for Sustainable Development, University of Gothenburg) will explore two key concepts: the temporal imagination (the way in which we relate to and conceptualise time) and temporal pedagogy (strategies for teaching with and through time). She will explore how the temporal imagination has been narrowed to particular conceptions of linear, quantifiable and individualised time in western schooling practices and the implications this may have for anticipatory practices over deep time. She will draw on a series of experimental programmes she is developing with artist Solveig Settemsdal and educator Penny Hay, to to explore how we might begin to feel and sense deep time in the present. Her contribution will focus specifically on an attempt to connect with deep time through material practices in the body, and to consider what it means to engage affectively with more than human temporalities. The contribution will draw on breath work, sculpture and participatory body work as well as insights from relational physics, to begin to both conceptualise and physically sense the embodiment of time at a different scale from the human life span.

Bruce Tonn (Senior Researcher Three3 and Professor University of Knoxville) argues that while there are many calls to care for future generations, there few attempts to systematically develop the capacity to understand the nature of the threats that such future generations might face over deep time or to develop our capacities to fulfil these obligations. He argues that eight forms of cognitive dissonance plague efforts to achieve this next phase of human development, from the difficulty of imagining time several thousand years hence, to the resistance (political and personal) to identifying with the ‘other’ over the self, to the tension between desires for open futures versus the creation of firm commitments. He explores how some of these forms of dissonance arise when individuals attempt to reconcile commitments to meet obligations to future generations, which feel firm and claustrophobic, with desires for culture freedom and cultural change. The balance of his contribution will explore solutions to overcome or at least ameliorate to a satisfactory extent cognitive dissonances associated with caring for future generations and anticipatory thought. The list of potential solutions will include the organisation of safe forums to discuss why we should care about future generations; development of metrics and scorecards for meeting obligations to future generations – to provide concrete goals that can be measured in current time; emphasizing that maintaining options is an important obligation to both current and future generations.

Ted Fuller (Lincoln University, Editor in Chief Futures) : Responsible Anticipation of Deep Time
This paper looks at the history of conceptualisations of deep time, understood as geological time, in western traditions of thought. In particular it explores how traditions of geological thinking have oriented western thought towards a view of deep history as the system designed to maintain the habitable Earth, a (Deistic) mechanism keeping the world eternally suitable for humans. A “system in which wisdom and benevolence conduct the endless order of a changing world – what a comfort for man…” (Hutton, 1785). In contrast, the Anthropocene demonstrates that while geological earth is not dependent upon human kind for its continuity, the humanly habitable earth is. This constitutes a ‘flip’ in the anticpatory model, and indeed, adds a new temporal element to anticipation. Anticipation is thus a nexus of relationships between human time, ecological time (Rosenzweig, 1971) and deep time. Fuller will explore the moral and ethical implications of this - drawing on Ord (2020) and MacAskill (2021) to explore the moral case for a longtermism that is able to think with deep time.

Richard Sandford, UCL: Long-time versus deep-time thinking
This paper will explore two competing conceptualisations of more than human timescales in futures and anticipatory thinking. It discusses the forms of ‘long-time’ approaches that are exemplified within modernist projects like the Long Now Foundation and the long-termism endorsed by the ‘efective altruism project’, as well as in social innovation groups such as the Long Time Project and policy initiatives like the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. He will argue that these projects, despite their very often different visions of society and change, construct a far future by extending temporal grids (whether clock time or generational sequences) out from the present in ways that project the interests, values and categories of the present forwards, historicising past and future in a way that distinguishes between things ‘happening now’ and ‘happening later’. In contrast, ‘deep time’ approaches seen within popular non-fiction (Gordon, 2021; Farrier, 2020; Raffles, 2020; Macfarlane, 2019) and more academic projects adjacent to geographical and anthropological fields of enquiry — offer encounters with time that allow for ways of stepping outside the temporal grids used to construct ‘long time’. In deep time, temporality may be layered and multiple, relative, irregular, uncertain, and ahistorical, making the world strange through unconformities. Deep time, in this sense, situates us, not outside processes taking place in some other time, but within the same processes that brought oxygen to the planet’s surface and will some day end the movement of tectonic plates. Rather than extend ourselves further along a sequence that begins in our present, deep time offers an opportunity to develop a sense of the world being continually produced through unfolding processes working at many scales and paces. The paper will explore what putting these two approaches into dialogue might offer as resources for replacing modernist notions of time for those that offer the potential for more deeply transformative change.

Format: Face to Face/Hybrid (one of the presenters will participate remotely). The symposium will comprise four interlinked (short) presentations, that will then form the basis of a collective process of sense-making with the delegates that will comprise both an open discussion and a material and embodied practice to support engagement anticipation at the scale of deep time. 90 minutes would be ideal to enable both presentations to have enough space and for hands on material practice with the delegates. A room that has movable furniture to allow for reconfiguration during the session would be helpful but not essential.

Abstract: This paper introduces Deep Listening, a novel research agenda for the study of the communication infrastructure within the planning and implementing of climate adaptation procedures, which can support anticipatory governance (Guston, 2014). It argues for the urgency to develop a systemic approach in understanding how frontline communities (those, often Indigenous groups, that experience the effects of climate change first) interact with mediating institutions. Deep Listening is presented in five components: 1) knowledge sharing (mutually agreed upon protocols for data production and use); 2) holding space (co-creating spaces where institutional actors and communities can exchange, learn from each other and discuss); 3) the production and sharing of climate imaginaries (where local or Indigenous knowledge and community values are respected); 4) sensemaking with a diversity of perspectives and scientific data; and 5) evaluation and monitoring support to assure accountability and to assess quality of information. Based on a literature review of adaptation studies, the case is made that the deep listening approach can enhance the sense of procedural justice and mitigate maladaptive outcomes.

Abstract: This symposium brings together scholars working across Politics, Education, Urban studies, Literature and Innovation to explore the distinctive role of storyworlds in the processes of imagining, navigating, reshaping and ultimately acting to create alternative futures. Where the field of Anticipation Studies has been dominated by attention to ‘models’ of the future (deriving from traditions in biological sciences) and Futures studies has been concerned with the systematic construction of alternative scenarios, this symposium will explore instead the looser generative idea of the ‘storyworld’ as a site and practice of anticipation – in other words, the creation of a world in which multiple stories can be told. In particular, it will explore how storyworlds might provide a generative framework for developing democratic, critical and reflective anticipatory capacity amongst young people, politicians and civil society.

We understand a storyworld as a ‘world in which multiple stories that can be told’ – in other words, the creation of an environment that offers a participative quality that allows multiple narratives to emerge. The illustrative example is perhaps fan-fiction where participants are enabled and encouraged to develop new stories set within a particular ’world’. We might also, however, see it in experimental environments such as the ‘Museum of Carbon Ruins’ – a platform for Climate Imaginaries that enable participants to generate new accounts of fictional pasts from the standpoint of an imagined future world after fossil fuels. We could also see this in the broad genre of vampire narratives – where a key conceptual idea can be taken up, embroidered, mobilised and applied in multiple settings. The concept of the ‘storyworld’ could also be applied to conspiracy theories, ranging from the global conspiracy narratives of Qanon to the eschatological predictions of endtimes in millennarian cults. Indeed, the ‘storyworld’ may be central to how we make sense of the world as humans, as we see in young children’s reading practices.

Our aim in this seminar is to interrogate the concept of the storyworld – comparing it to concepts of ‘modelling’ in Anticipation, ‘scenarios’ in Futures studies, ‘narrative’ in Futures Literacy – and to explore its potential for participatory, democratic and critical engagement in thinking about futures. We will do this from multiple perspectives – looking at how children and young people encounter and engage with storyworlds in relation to futures of climate change; interrogating the use of storyworlds in the envisioning and exploration of sustainable (or otherwise) futures in civil society action; connecting to ancient traditions of myth making and oral storytelling.

We will also explore how storyworlds might become sites for action, drawing on the recognition that knowledge needs to become personally meaningful in specific settings if it is to become actionable (Hulme, 2009; Jasanoff, 2010) and examining how and whether storyworlds allow participants to unsettle the everyday and taken for granted, to ‘estrange themselves’ from contemporary society in ways that open up cracks of possibility in the edifice of the world as given and to develop ‘heightened sensitivity to the mutability of the world, and with that, a sense of one’s own capacity, however modest, to nudge things in one direction or another’ (Candy, 2010: 164).

Contributors

Professor Keri Facer (University of Bristol & University of Gothenburg).
This contribution will explore the role of interconnected practices of oral storytelling and mythmaking as a mode of encounter with ambivalence and uncertainty in a shared and inherited storyworld. It will examine the link between such encounters and the development of ‘negative capability’ – in Keats’ 1817 terms, the capacity to engage with ‘uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’ . The paper will explore whether such a capability offers a distinctive anticipatory stance towards the future that is particularly important in contemporary conditions.

Professor Anna Lyngfelt (University of Gothenburg)
How do children encounter stories and engage with them to develop storyworlds about futures of climate change? This is explored through booktalks about two picturebooks, that approach climate change differently. To be able to achieve a participative quality that allows multiple narratives to emerge, ‘shared reading’ is used (Gallagher, 2017).

Professor Johannes Stripple, Dr Alexandra Nikoleris (Lund University, Sweden)
This contribution will explore the Museum of Carbon Ruins as an exemplar storyworld. Since its inception, the Museum of Carbon Ruins has been ’on tour’, meeting different publics in a diverse set of venues — from universities, art halls and museums and to science centers and churches. Building on recent interviews with hosts and curators, we would like to explore the extent to which Carbon Ruins has allowed for a participatory, democratic and critical engagement in thinking about futures.

Dr Josefin Wangel (SLU, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)
For this session I’m developing an essay, i.e. an attempt, at making sense of how two commonly used anticipatory tools ¬– models and stories – give shape to anticipatory practices, and how this in turn shapes what (and whose!) futures are explored and articulated. This is not to say that one is better than the other, but an ambition at better understanding and articulating the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
On the one hand, understanding models as representations of possible pasts, presents and futures, ‘none of which are true but some useful’, all models can be said to be stories – and all stories can be said to be models. On the other hand, models are not stories (and vice versa) since they build on two radically different logics and practices of representation. Whereas model-making demands establishing system boundaries and relations, as well as demanding a translation of all ways of knowing into that which fit the model (or, the modelling software), stories are integrative, flexible, and dynamic. Stories, support the kind of open-world, open-ended imagination articulated by Italo Calvino as ‘a kind of electronic machine that takes account of all possible combinations and chooses the ones that are appropriate to a particular purpose, or are simply the most interesting, pleasing or amusing.’ In a way this essay can be seen as a continuation of previous works (Wangel 2021; Wangel et al. 2019), but rather than moving ‘forward’ I suspect that I will spend a lot of time doubling back, composting, and staying with whatever troubles I come across.

Professor Stuart Candy will act as discussant for the symposium.

Link to Conference Themes
The session speaks specifically to theme 4 (critical anticipatory capacities) and its exploration of the nature of literacies as a resource in anticipatory practice; to theme 5 on creativity, innovation and new media, in deeping exploration of the role of story and imagination in anticipatory practice; and to theme 1 on public futures, as many of the stories and storyworlds discussed in this session are associated with public practices – of education, of policy-making, of civic dialogue and debate.

Format
This hybrid session (Facer & Candy plan to be be physically present at the conference) will include short presentations from the presenting teams, a curated dialogue between the presenters on a set of key themes – likely to include: the relation between story and storyworld, between model and narrative, and the question of pedagogy and emotion. In addition, the team will develop a set of narrative prompts – drawing on their prior work on storytelling and anticipation - to stimulate active participation and exploration of the key themes by the delegates in the session.

Abstract: The Rehabilitation Futures Critical Worldbuilding workshop is a 90 minute workshop optimally designed for a maximum of 25-40 participants. During this workshop, participants are invited to step into a speculative future in which an asteroid impact causes everyone on earth to develop a disability at some unknown time within their lifetime. This premise empowers us to rethink disability and rehabilitation as core, socially shared, and lifelong experiences.

The methodologies of this workshop are grounded in practices developed with a community of co-researchers at the University of Southern California’s Worldbuilding Media Lab, led by Professor Alex McDowell at the School of Cinematic Art; as well as in collaboration with Professor Marientina Gotsis of the USC Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center and the USC SMART-VR CENTER. Although originated in the context of Hollywood production design, worldbuilding has since expanded to comprise a broadly collaborative process for designing holistic worlds. This process draws from research across multiple disciplines to produce deeply reflective fictional scenarios, resulting in multiple solutions or products. Worldbuilding utilizes a generative process in which prototypes and design outcomes emerge from intensively collaborative workshops with user groups. The outcomes of these workshops range from the familiar to the futuristic, emphasizing direct engagement with the needs of individuals and communities.

Cechanowicz’s extrapolations of worldbuilding into critical worldbuilding expand these practices by utilising critical play, focusing on social justice and the ethics of credit in collaborative design, and active engagement with embodiment and identity. These workshops use storytelling tools in shared fictional worlds to help participants concretely and playfully challenge and inspire concepts of who they are, who they can become, and how they can shape their world. In this regard, the workshops are proactively focused on helping participants shape their own health and wellness.

Abstract: This paper will present on-going research to understand the role of science fiction in influencing the social construction of real world technoscience, not just as a one-off but as an on-going process of co-production. The primary example/case study that this paper will propose studying this multi-looped process is through the Metaverse, an all-encompassing term for a versions of an interconnected virtual worlds that contain digital venues, and digital objects and are explored via avatars, or 3d representations.

While there has been literature on technosocial imaginaries and vanguards, and the significance of science fiction’s influence on inventors and on specific technologies, much of the existing literature has stuck to examples of one-way influences. Several concepts that are particularly relevant are the Science Fiction Feedback Loop and the role of the adjacent possible, as well as its intersection with Applied Science Fiction, a set of techniques for forecasting and using science fiction as a form of scenario planning and a type of anticipation. This paper will show that these concepts, along with STS concepts such as the stabilization of an artifact, the social construction of technology, even the evolving role of identity across multiple domains as cyborgs, when applied to the metaverse, resulted in successive waves of inspiration and development, as shown in Metaverse 1.0 (historical attempts to build the metaverse) and Metaverse 2.0 (the development of which is currently happening) .

This paper argues that techno-futuristic visions are realized incrementally, and then these real world innovations then influence future science fiction writers, who then influence the next wave of technoscience development as the adjacent possible is expanded through the development of technosocial infrastructure (science and technological developments upon which new innovation and applications are based). This relates to the concept of modifiabile futures For the metaverse in particular, we can see how the initial set of imaginaries (such as Snow Crash and cyberpunk classics) led, as the adjacent possible expanded to include broadband and graphic cards, to the wave of Metaverse 1.0. Then, as both video games, MMORPGs and VR/AR technologies developed; these were incorporated into a second wave of science fiction (such as Ready Player One and a whole subgenre of gamelit), which in turn inspired entrepreneurs and innovators to build Metaverse 2.0 (which is what we are currently hearing about in the press today).

This paper will argue that we are seeing this kind of social construction in process with the Metaverse. This type of social construction involves both visionaries and imaginaries and the various elements of market adoption and basic research that makes the next wave of development possible. These waves show how while an artifact may stabilize and lose interpretive flexibility, further advancement of the adjacent possible, and incorporation of the technology into new visions of the future in the form of new science fiction, sparks future waves of interpretive flexibility and stabilization, again using the metaverse as an example.

Abstract: Constructions of Africa’s urban futures are strongly dominated by smart city imaginaries. These imaginaries are articulated through a number of new city developments emerging across the continent. With their focus on attracting foreign capital and tourism through “world-class” infrastructure and technology, these urban imaginaries illuminate the hegemonic power of corporate and high-modernist ideals and their influence on reimagining Africa’s urban future through a techno-utopian lens. Many urban scholars have deconstructed these techno-utopian imaginaries for being completely at odds with the existing African city, calling instead for urban visions that are embedded in place-based needs and preferences. Despite this, there is little in terms of concrete alternatives that challenge the smart city imaginary. This has led some scholars to believe that the critique of smart city imaginaries can be deepened and extended through engagement with speculative fiction. In line with these sentiments the purpose of this study is to examine the role of Africanfuturism, an emergent sub-genre of speculative fiction that centers African people and narratives, to illustrate the limitations of dominant smart city imaginaries. In doing so, the study also hopes to illustrate how such fictional works can assist in the constructions of counterhegemonic imaginaries that offer alternative ways of knowing, living and being in the future African city. This will be carried out via an exploration of the Eko Atlantic project, a smart city imaginary that is presently materializing in Lagos; and Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon, an Africanfuturism novel set in Lagos. Through this exploration, the study aims to examine what these two divergent imaginaries of Lagos can reveal about dominant socio-technical imaginaries that coalesce around the smart city, and how Africanfuturism can be deployed to form the formulation of alternative visions for African urban futures that subvert dominant normative ideals regarding Western modernity and what the future African city should look like. Further, I argue that by drawing strongly upon the traditional, cultural and historical elements that Africanfuturism showcase, exists a potential to develop truly postcolonial future visions for African cities.

Abstract: Building off the work of Roberto Poli (2010) and neo-institutionalism (Friedland & Alford, 1991), the challenges of rethinking fundamental social metaphors and values will be explored. The case will be made that we are entering post-normal times (Sardar & Sweeney, 2016, 2020) which presents additional challenges for whole systems transformation. Anticipatory social systems theory (Miller, 2018) will address the challenges of PNT as related to existing “unknown unknowns” associated with and requiring emergent solutions for global transformations. A queering futures approach (Fleener & Coble, 2022) will serve as a launching pad for “making strange” critical approaches to social transformation to explore ethical shifts that transcend power and dualistic polemics, guiding more equitable, just, and fair futures.

Abstract: This paper presents my first-person arts-based Action Research on anticipation and change in the conditions of change for decolonizing futures-to-come.

Feminist politics and ‘minor’ politics are always entwined with questions of time, futurity, becoming, and the generation of the new where a more nuanced temporal literacy could help better theorize the many ways we think about time and the future because different ways of anticipating simultaneously enable and disable, elucidate and occlude, and that creates differences that matter: some ways are more colonizing, more in the service of perpetuating what is, while others open horizons for diverse lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994).

My project is grounded in a critical posthumanist (Braidotti, 2013) and feminist new materialist understanding of the entangled spacetimemattering of the world and my emergence within it, how our desires can be co-opted (though never permanently) by current regimes of control, and how to think the interstices and spacetimes of possibility for open, decolonial futures by attending to the multiple temporalities, affects and materialities in a present thick-as-felt. It is a critical and affirmative feminist post-activist minor inquiry which aims to swerve away from current dualisms by embodying the rhizomatic movement of grasses, water lilies and wasabi plants with underground and underwater root systems that grow in vectors without origins or destinations.

Unlike the arborescent structures of ‘royal science’, rhizomes are nomadic, creative and subversive – like weeds. As an ethico-onto-epistemology, it necessarily draws on post-qualitative and experimental methodologies of inquiry (e.g., Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; St. Pierre, 2011, 2013; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005) – and plays with different conceptions of time - challenging the dogmatic, common sense, representational, “everybody knows” (Hein, 2017) image of thought. In my work, professionally and academically, I’m interested in disrupting commonsensical assumptions of how things ought to be because such commonsensical assumptions have mostly proliferated interrelated ecological and social ‘accidents waiting for a place to happen’, as evidenced by the current Russia/Ukraine crisis. Experimentation, open-ended processes that allow something genuinely new - something fugitive - to come into being (as opposed to neoliberal capitalist ‘nextness’) means for me breaking with the dominant linearity of past/present/future and freeing desires, intensities, and flows to improvise the unforeseen.

And what is the craft of the nomad? Felting. Felting is a textile practice produced and used by many non-Western (e.g., Central Asian) cultures for rugs, clothing, yurts, and decorative arts. As the story goes, my ancestors were a mix of the nomadic equestrian Bulgar warrior tribes that flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century AD, one stream subsequently merging with previously settled Thracian and Slavic tribes to establish the First Bulgarian Empire in 681. The etymology of the ethnonym Bulgar is believed to derive from the Proto-Turkic root *bulga- ("to stir", "to mix"), which with the suffix -r implies a noun meaning "to become mixed". Other scholars have added that bulğa might also imply "stir", "disturb", "confuse" and some interpret bulgar as the verb form "mixing". Thus while a "mixed race" theory is one possibility, scholars consolidate around the interpretation that "to incite", "to rebel", or "to produce a state of disorder", i.e. the "disturbers" was a more likely etymology for migrating nomads.

‘Autofeltnography’ is my arts-based practice of reflective, reflexive, diffractive and generative felting/writing. As a Bulgarian, I take my practice of autofeltnography to hold this double meaning of “bulgar”: both ‘mixed’ (impure) in an Anzalduan and Lugonesian sense of ‘mestiza’ or ‘curdled’ subjectivity – as well as ‘disruptive’ in a post-activist sense of problematizing the status quo and unsettling foreclosures for the openness of new horizons. “To unsettle something is to open it up to possibility” (Springgay & Truman, 2019). It’s a kind of ‘carnal knowing’ of travelling nomads – we are rooted in our ‘felts’ but we flow. Movement is the signature mark of the nomad – yet she isn’t homeless. She is ‘unhomed’ (Bhabha, 2002) and creates a home in the interstices between art, research and temporality – a reformulation of a/r/tography. This is not only a practice of the in-between for intentionally styling an active subjectivity-in-process but also a bridge toward constructing ‘minor’ affective solidarities, alliances and futures in the folds of old assemblages for worlds-to-come.

When my hands are busy, my mind relaxes and thinks differently. As a relational practice and method, autofeltnography engages the mutuality between the human and more-than-human world, organic and inorganic matter, and the elements: water, earth, fire and air. Becoming-animal, becoming-grass, becoming-rain, becoming-felt. The ‘auto’ here is not the self-study of a unified and transparent self but often a meeting with the otherness within the assemblage. Engaging with an artful practice of intimacy as an ethics of care is a way of de-centering the human and paying attention to time. In felting, where agency is markedly distributed, the fibers can be felt as very much alive in our intra-action (Barad, 2007). Human mastery is emphatically not at the center: the felting/writing assemblage has a life and time of its own, out of joint.

Finally, autofeltnography is my way of reframing my professional practice through embodied inquiry for anticipating abundant futures as an ‘a/r/temporalist’ rather than a futurist. “Artistic interventions can offer different experiences of futurity, attuning bodies to develop techniques to think about the limits of our temporality and to think beyond them to a different future.” (Springgay & Truman, 2019). I use “a/r/temporality” as a neologism to depict this ‘queering’ of time by artistic intervention and as a challenge to chronopolitics. A/r/temporality does not synchronize with the dominant understandings of progress time and hence performs ‘futures’ and ‘historicity’ otherwise.

The paper touches upon all six of the conference themes: Public Futures; Politics, Justice and Ethics of Anticipation; Decolonizing Anticipation; Critical Anticipatory Capacities; Creativity, Innovation and New Media; Time & Temporalities.

Abstract: Memory and anticipation should not be approached as separate faculties but as components intertwined within the cognitive process establishing coherence for individual perceptions in the present.

“The [psychological] structure is always only effective at the current moment, and the past data that are used at the moment are related to the actualization of projections into the future. In the present, and only in the present, there is a coupling of that which is commonly called memory with that which is normally called an expectation or a projection - or, if one thinks of actions, a goal”. (Luhmann 2009, 144-145.)

In this view, time occupies an ambivalent position – firstly it can help in addressing the complexity as a way to “actualize more relations sequentially,” but, secondly, by doing that it adds to a number of relations and thus to the complexity of the system.

The paper discusses three alternative models of time: based on Hans U. Gumbrecht’s work (1999) on two alternative chronotopes (socially constructed temporalities): (1) the “historicist chronotope” and (2) the “broad present chronotope” as well as the third option (3) based in second-order cybernetics and systems thinking - mostly referring to Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann’s work.

The paper addresses the question of how the chronotopes will have been affecting designing.

1.

The historicist chronotope is rooted in interpreting and self-reflexive subject, bodiless and detached from the object of observation. A subject is located in the present, which is a short moment of switch between past and future. The subject leaves the past behind and moves on towards the future and is endowed with an agency to choose from future opportunities. Past events gradually diminish. A historicist narration represents the past while embracing different perspectives – multi-perspectivism is neutralized and an observer position is hidden. The historicist narration provides confidence in the necessity of events (contingency is neutralized.) Time is considered an independent agent of change – everything changes in time.

2.

The broad present chronotope (Gumbrecht, 1999) is based on embodied subject, whose way of operation rests on the direct sensual experience of reality. While in the historicist chronotope time is the dimension where negotiation of subject/object relationships takes place, for the broad present chronotope the main locale is space. It recognizes materiality and a body as a basis of cognition. Representations are replaced by direct encounters with the world. It becomes impossible to escape the past - there is too much material stored related to the past that cannot be ignored. Thus the present is a conglomerate of simultaneities of past material. It gives rise to, what Gumbrecht calls, the “production of presence.” It is a notion, that questions the overwhelming importance given to hermeneutics within humanities. The hermeneutic attitude tends to see every cultural phenomenon only as a carrier of meaning. Instead of the “experience of presence” is an intense feeling of the immediacy of sensual contact with the objects. The production of presence is a non-representational and non-meaning-producing event.

3.

The chronotope implied in systems theory and positivist/constructivist worldviews has been based on radical temporality. It consists of discrete presents, moment to moment events of no duration. However the present offers views towards future and past - a memory of past and anticipation of future - both guided by meaning constructed in/for the present as a difference between past and future. An observer looks for patterns within recurrent processes of activity and feedback. Identification of the patterns is needed to build a coherent view of assumed reality in present. Along a similar line of thought, von Foerster proposed the concept of objects as tokens of eigenbehaviors - invariances in observation and sensing of the environment by an observer over a prolonged timespan - leading to eigenforms. Systemic cognition creates temporality. The notion of time is a social systems’ construction, which allows a self-description and differentiation from the environment - an oscillation between self-reference and hetero reference allows temporality to emerge.

DESIGNING AND SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED TEMPORALITIES

As the historicist chronotope supports the inevitable necessity of changes, it is an ideal context for design decisions, which are meant to solve particular problems. This goes in line with the definition that designing involves explicit predictions about preferred future states (Simon, 1996) based on some regularities identified in the past. The design process is, according to this view, a goal-oriented activity aiming at “completeness and perfection” (Landgraf 2009.)

Designing in the context of broad present chronotope would be oriented towards simultaneous conception and presentation similar to improvised performance. If it contributes to the production of presence, its meaning-making and representational capabilities would not be the main and only ways it relates to the world. Starting from the contingent beginning a design can follow its emerging program, which further will govern its construction and completion. This is a conditional process as opposed to a goal-oriented approach — proper decisions are defined according to particular given conditions. Contingency is opposed to completeness. The design constructs its reality, concepts, also signs.

Design seen through a systems theory lens may be considered as a social functional system of society (cf. Luhmann, 2013). Its re-production is based on communications and meaning. Design implies an innovative approach by an evolutionary change in meaning, which creates opportunities for richer connectivity and increasing complexity of society. Design as an operationally closed system observes its environment according to its terms following a self-induced program and is blind to other aspects. So, in the context of designing, the question: “Which pasts for which future presents are of importance for the observer?” (Luhmann, 2013) - might be referring to the inherent relativity of design decisions.

DESIGN MELANCHOLIA - OR IMPLAUSIBILITY OF DESIGING

From a vantage point of the systems-oriented approach, the second-order observer is able to see aspects of designing leading to potentially unexpected consequences and disillusionment. This view makes explicit that:

- no designed models of a future are to be fulfilled (actual future states cannot be predicted as the very act of prediction changes the future conditions;)
- the increasing complexity of society, in which design takes part, do not necessarily lead to better adaptation to the environment;
- the disintegration of a notion of a person allows speculating on design prospects when "a user" is not a central focus of designing;
- the notion of an object is questioned - distinctions become a central focus (eigenforms);
- it is impossible to control and directly influence trajectories of systems development.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foerster, Hainz von (2003). *Understanding Understanding*. NewYork: Springer.

Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich (1999). Epiphany of Form: On the Beauty of Team Sports. *New Literary History*, 30: 351-372.

Landgraf, Edgar (2009). Improvisation. Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen (Eds.) *Emergence and Embodiment.* Durham; London: Duke University Press.

Luhmann, Niklas (2013). *Introduction to Systems Theory*. Cambridge: Polity.

Luhmann, Niklas (2009). Self-Organization and Autopoiesis. Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen (Eds.) *Emergence and Embodiment.* Durham; London: Duke University Press.

Luhmann, Niklas (1978). Temporalization of Complexity. R. Felix Geyer and Johannes van der Zouwen (Eds.) *Sociocybernetics.* Leiden; Boston; London: Kluwer.

Simon, Herbert (1996). *The Sciences of the Artificial*. Cambridge: MIT.

Abstract: Anticipatory methods are determined by highly subjective, culturally dependent concepts not only about ‘the future’ itself, but also about ways of its description in social theory; resulting disputes within the community reveal how futurists have engaged in epistemological discourse to shape futures studies as a field. Growing social complexity is changing the methods and paradigms of applied social sciences such as futures studies ideating, informing and enacting social change. Resulting images of the future do not only reflect changing futures epistemologies, but also changing conceptions of time. This paper presents time concepts traditionally rooted in futures studies, and ideates possible advancements to the understanding of time and temporality shaped by material-discursive practices within contemporary dynamic realities.

Abstract: In the search for new forms of future-making and the rise of regional and local futurisms (like Afrofuturism, African futurism, Gulf, indigenous, and Sino futurism, among others). The absence of Latin America in the future-making is the gap that this project attempts to fill. The region has had institutions dedicated to foresight and strategy for half a century. (Medina, Cabrera and Castaño, 2014). It has a rich space for speculation for creators and policymakers and to engage local communities and knowledge, particularly around environmental and political governance. Nevertheless, those ways of futuring seem to be out of the discussion when discussion about new forms of future-thinking and future literacies may offer in the diversity of possible futures. (Aquino, Muller, Swartz, 2021) As the Mexican scholar, Guillermina Baena has denounced, “Latin America is the gray zone of futures studies.”
In this paper, I argue that the ways of future-making of Latin America are also multiple and diverse as the region. I describe, based on the analysis of interviews with professional future-makers from the area (such as foresight practitioners, speculative designers, science fiction writers, and strategic policymakers), that Latin American Futurism deals with structural constraints about future capabilities that have been neglected in the anticipatory literature until now. (Sagasti, 2004; Poli, 2015) In addition, those several of those professional works independently of networks or communities of practices that may enable a more prominent recognition in the global scene. Finally, Latin American Futures are grounded on different images of technologies: like social technologies (Dagnino, 2010; Thomas, Fressoli & Becerra, 2011) that resist traditional understandings of socio-technical systems that have been used in contemporary foresight.
This project stands from the Studies of Science and Technology (also known as STS); to connect the intellectual traditions about critical knowledge-making of Future Studies and the local expressions and trajectories of future-making in Latin America. This piece contributes to linking the histories and methods from Latin American Futurism with the global conversations about alternative futures, the need to resist unique futures, as well to acknowledge the multiple forms in which Latin American professionals and their collaborators have approached the incoming temporalities from the peripheral position that Latin America tends to have on the discussions about technological progress and development. In that way, the existence of Latin American Futurism is offered as an umbrella term to explore the past and current practices of the future, describing the most salient elements, and showing some examples from creators and foresight practitioners that are looking what the region can provide to the rest of the world.

Abstract: What will the future of food be like, and who gets to decide? In the last decade, a new set of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have brought Silicon Valley style innovation and business practices to the food system, offering visions for the future that now circulate across fast food restaurants, grocery stores, and the media. Their top-down, technology-centric approach treats food more or less like software, and or at least like any other consumer good circulating through contemporary economies. In the process, they frame eating public(s) as passive end points in a system imagined as amenable to whatever disruptive innovations can garner enough capital to make the transition from promissory narrative to edible reality (Guthman and Biltekoff 2021; Lupton and Turner 2018; Wilbanks 2017). We see this top-down approach to imagining the future of food as a non-disruptive disruption (Goldstein 2018): it fails to offer a novel vision for public participation in imagining, setting the direction for, or governing the food system. Instead, this top-down approach imagines the public as “consumers in waiting” and approaches communication solely in order to secure acceptance of potentially controversial technologies (Biltekoff and Guthman In Revision; Rajan 2006).

We understand that this top-down approach has reproduced historical and environmental injustices into food systems and ecologies (Hatch, Sternlieb, and Gordon 2019) in ways that pre-determine which types of tastes are ascribed to which bodies (e.g. Hobart and Maroney 2019). We start from the premise that the intersection between body and foodstuff is more than a site for eliciting desire; rather we understand the sensory labor occurring when body and food meet (Spackman and Lahne 2019) as a powerful site for activating new anticipatory practices and making public already-existing anticipatory practices overlooked by current anticipatory regimes and their sensory politics (Spackman and Burlingame 2018). In short, we use tasting as a method for performing how one might “remake” participation in food futuring (Konrad et al. 2016; Chilvers and Kearnes 2021).

In this 90-minute Techniques Workshop, we bring together insights from anthropology, food studies, science and technology studies, food science, sustainability, and environmental policy and management to explore how using embodied anticipatory approaches — in this case, edible stories, coupled with experiential gaming — influences how and where people can imagine themselves influencing the future of food. These approaches, developed individually and refined through collaboration at the University of California Humanities Institute-funded Unbounding food futures: an experiment in co-conjuring workshop (April 2022), invite participants to use taste and smell as starting points in anticipatory practices. Each of the activities asks, in different ways, “What if the food system was open to your taste or tinkering or power and agency at any point. Where would you enter? What would you do? What would the result taste like? How would it relate to what you currently experience and to what others – human or not – experience?”

By situating the future of food through individual eaters’ desires, fears, memories, cultures, religions, and such, this suite of techniques connect anticipatory practices around food with eaters’ pasts, presents, and anticipated futures (c.f. Dolejšová et al. 2020; Voß and Guggenheim 2019). Our approach seeks to address lacunae around whose food futures matter, lacunae entrenched through consolidation of food production over the twentieth century and further solidified by the current technocratic turn in food futuring. It additionally works to address the disenfranchisement implicit in the “vote with your fork” ethos popularly promoted by some food activists. We are especially concerned with creating methods that acknowledge the complexities in forwarding specific food futures centered around a universal concept of justice, when instead we see a need for approaches centered in the promotion of cultural as well as physical reproduction (Hoover 2017).

Participants in this 90-minute session will participate in two embodied anticipatory practices. First, they will be invited to participate in a role-playing game. In this game, participants will be split into teams. Each team will select a role within the food system, a future food systems scenario, and a set of challenges. As participants work through the challenges, they will be prompted to think of the food system not as closed, but rather open to their individual and group taste, tinkering, power, and agency through prompt cards.

In the second activity, participants will be invited to use the insights from the game to develop a “flavor story” (Spackman, 2020) – an edible argument about what they anticipate the future they present would be like. Stories will be composed using off-the-shelf products, an approach that simultaneously highlights and critiques the current limitations of the food system. We theoretically and methodologically draw on sustainability insights around system lock-in and constraints (Kuokkanen et al. 2017; El-Sayed and Cloutier 2022), the twentieth-century tradition of readymade art (Gildersleeve and Guyotte 2020), and a recent turn to using transversal media as a mode of activating aesthetic and epistemological shifts (Bauer 2021) in practices of speculating about the future.
Finally, participants will be invited into co-reflection alongside the curatorial team to explore the strengths and weaknesses of these embodied approaches in activating new anticipatory practices and making public already-existing anticipatory practices.

The organizational team anticipates this workshop will work best with a maximum of 30 participants.

Bauer, D.B. 2021. “Playing with Dolls: Experiments in Transversal Media and Speculative Making.” The Digital Review, September. https://doi.org/10.7273/qfey-da16.

Biltekoff, Charlotte, and Julie Guthman. In Revision. “Conscious, Complacent, Fearful: Agri-Food Tech’s Market-Making Public Imaginaries.” Science as Culture.

Chilvers, Jason, and Matthew Kearnes. 2021. “Remaking Participation in Science and Democracy.” Science, Technology, & Human Values, Remaking Participation, 45 (3): 347–80.

Dolejšová, Markéta, Danielle Wilde, Ferran Altarriba Bertran, and Hilary Davis. 2020. “Disrupting (More-than-) Human-Food Interaction: Experimental Design, Tangibles and Food-Tech Futures.” Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 993–1004.

El-Sayed, Sara, and Scott Cloutier. 2022. “Weaving Disciplines to Conceptualize a Regenerative Food System.” Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 11 (2): 1–29.

Gildersleeve, Ryan Evely, and Kelly W. Guyotte. 2020. “Readymade Methodology.” Qualitative Inquiry 26 (8–9): 1122–30.

Goldstein, Jesse. 2018. Planetary Improvement: Cleantech Entrepreneurship and the Contradictions of Green Capitalism. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.

Guthman, Julie, and Charlotte Biltekoff. 2021. “Magical Disruption? Alternative Protein and the Promise of de-Materialization.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 4 (4): 1583–1600.

Hatch, Anthony Ryan, Sonya Sternlieb, and Julia Gordon. 2019. “Sugar Ecologies: Their Metabolic and Racial Effects.” Food, Culture & Society 22 (5): 595–607.

Hobart, Hiʻilei Julia, and Stephanie Maroney. 2019. “On Racial Constitutions and Digestive Therapeutics.” Food, Culture & Society 22 (5): 576–94.

Hoover, Elizabeth. 2017. “Protecting Our Living Relatives: Environmental Reproductive Justice and Seed Rematriation.” E-Flux Architecture. 2017. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/exhausted/379296/protecting-our-living-relatives-environmental-reproductive-justice-and-seed-rematriation/.

Konrad, Kornelia, Harro van Lente, Christopher Groves, and Cynthia Selin. 2016. “Performing and Governing the Future in Science and Technology.” In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by Ulrike Felt, Rayvon Fouche, Clark Miller, and Laurel Smith-Doerr, 465–93. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kuokkanen, Anna, Mirja Mikkilä, Miia Kuisma, Helena Kahiluoto, and Lassi Linnanen. 2017. “The Need for Policy to Address the Food System Lock-in: A Case Study of the Finnish Context.” Journal of Cleaner Production, Towards eco-efficient agriculture and food systems: selected papers addressing the global challenges for food systems, including those presented at the Conference “LCA for Feeding the planet and energy for life” (6-8 October 2015, Stresa & Milan Expo, Italy), 140 (January): 933–44.

Lupton, Deborah, and Bethaney Turner. 2018. “Food of the Future? Consumer Responses to the Idea of 3D-Printed Meat and Insect-Based Foods.” Food and Foodways 26 (4): 269–89.

Rajan, Kaushik Sunder. 2006. Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Spackman, Christy, and Gary Burlingame. 2018. “Sensory Politics: The Tug-of-War between Potability and Palatibility in Municipal Water Production.” Social Studies of Science 48 (3): 350–71.

Spackman, Christy, and Jacob Lahne. 2019. “Sensory Labor: Considering the Work of Taste in the Food System.” Food, Culture, and Society 22 (2): 142–51.

Voß, Jan Peter, and Michael Guggenheim. 2019. “Making Taste Public: Industrialized Orders of Sensing and the Democratic Potential of Experimental Eating.” Politics and Governance 7 (4): 224–36.

Wilbanks, Rebecca. 2017. “Real Vegan Cheese and the Artistic Critique of Biotechnology.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 3 (April): 180–205. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2017.53.

Abstract: The context of the fourth industrial revolution is stressing national economies and decision-making processes in diverse ways. For companies, the main challenges are the inclusion of disruptive technologies in the production process and how to adapt their procedures and operation to remain competitive (Valencia et al., 2019). For governments, the challenges are diverse and include understanding and promoting the digital economy to sustain international competitiveness. In contrast, they must sustain the conditions in the workforce to engage in new economic activities and manage employment problems coming from technological disruptions (Didier, 2021). At an individual level, workers must deal with high uncertainty on their educational decisions and how to catch up with the new trends of the labor market. All those challenges signal a pathway by which workers experience a transition from traditional occupations to more technology-related jobs, with its consequences for their family welfare and the whole social security system.
The world economic forum has proposed a strategy to cope with the mentioned challenges, calling for a "reskilling revolution" (Cann, 2020; World Economic Forum, 2019). Reskilling revolution aims to decrease the gaps between the current individual and system capabilities and the requirements of the emerging economic activities created by technological adoption. This approach connects the industries and national competitiveness with the future of work and industries' performance. Still, the reskilling revolution is mainly based on private initiative and tends to neglect which kind of roles the government and individuals can play in the fourth industrial revolution.
What can the government do to support workers' labor transitions during technological change? That seems to be the key question for public affairs scholars and practitioners. However, analyzing policy pathways and alternatives requires more specificness in analyzing employment-education-productivity than general assertations applicable for industrialized countries. For example, developed countries have experienced an extensive process of deindustrialization guided by offshoring to emergent economies (Autor et al., 2008; Goos et al., 2014). However, in the case of Latin-American countries, the deindustrialization process came from the failed import substitution policies and the lack of competitiveness in manufacturing industries. Those differences create some conflicts on the imaginaries regarding what implies the "futures of work," the "skills and jobs of the future," and finally, what alternatives the governments must support workers' futures.
This paper focuses on a specific condition for policy development: how the educational systems and labor realm will interact and coordinate in the scenarios brought by the technological change. I will use the case of Chilean educational system expansion to discuss and problematize how the labor realm understands and recognize credentials as coordination devices. This analysis will be fueled by the comparison of employability and wage-premium of formal education credentials compared to unformalized credentials from the training system.
This paper contributes to the debate on the future of work in three ways. First, the paper problematizes the de-formalization of educational credentials (multiple providers, non-formal education institutions) and how that could inform new labor and educational policies to enhance the coordination of the educational and labor market. The second attempted contribution is to discuss to which extent the trends and policy solutions developed in industrialized nations could be translated to the context of less developed countries. The third contribution is to explore policy alternatives and futures regarding workforce capabilities and how the government can support labor transitions in the context of the fourth industrial revolution.
References
Autor, D. H., Katz, L. F., & Kearney, M. S. (2008). Trends in U.S. wage inequality: Revising the revisionists. Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(2), 300–323. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest.90.2.300
Cann, O. (2020). The Reskilling Revolution: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Education for a Billion People by 2030. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/press/2020/01/the-reskilling-revolution-better-skills-better-jobs-better-education-for-a-billion-people-by-2030/
Didier, N. (2021). Are we ready? Labour market transit to the digital economy. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, 147797142098334. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477971420983347
Goos, M., Manning, A., & Salomons, A. (2014). Explaining job polarization: Routine-biased technological change and offshoring. American Economic Review, 104(8), 2509–2526. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.104.8.2509
Valencia, E. T., Lamouri, S., Pellerin, R., Dubois, P., & Moeuf, A. (2019). Production planning in the fourth industrial revolution: A literature review. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 52(13), 2158–2163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.11.525
World Economic Forum. (2019). Towards a Reskilling Revolution Industry-Led Action for the Future of Work (Issue January). http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Towards_a_Reskilling_Revolution.pdf

Abstract: Sohail Inayatullah argues that a creative minority (Inayatullah, 2008) often shapes the most broadly and commonly heard narratives of the future. This research explores and applies the role of qualitative design research methods in making futuring accessible, experiential, collective and democratic by building on methods and techniques in design research and futures studies to create a design probe called Plause.

The context of this research was the changing conditions of work that many workers experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. While anchoring in the condition of restaurant workers, for the final set of contextual inquiries, the interest in the topic of ‘work’ was inspired by how several professions changed fundamentally during the pandemic, not only giving us a glaring glimpse of the future of work but plunging us into an alternative way of working that brought to bear some of the fault lines that already existed in the way we work, how our organizations are structured and inclusion of the worker’s voice.

Plause evolved from the insights and techniques of research used while conducting 7 contextual inquiries with workers who had faced changes in their work and delved in their hopes, fears, to generate images of a preferred future and understand their sense of agency in driving change in their organizations and communities.

The game has four key elements: values, trends, change and encounter. It urges players to reflect on the values that drive them to work, imagine trends and change that may emerge in the future and stage hypothetical encounters that can inspire shaping of equitable policies to mitigate unforeseen change.

Abstract: As the recent report of the International Commission on the Futures of Education (ICFE, 2021) argues, anticipating education futures has profound implications for the present. Images of the future can play an important role in shaping education policy and practice. Education also has a role in shaping futures for people and for the planet through its contribution to sustainable development. Ideas about sustainable futures and sustainable development are also highly contested. The aim of this paper is to develop conceptual understanding of how we may conceive of education for sustainable futures. The paper will commence by setting out how competing ideas about sustainable futures and sustainable development can be conceived in terms of struggles for hegemony and in the context of the current organic crisis of global capitalism. The second part of the paper provides a review of contemporary narratives of sustainable futures that are evident in the literature. It is possible to identify within contemporary debates about sustainable development five ‘narratives’ about sustainable futures, each with differing implications for education. Exponents of the dominant, growth-led narrative advocate for futures based on the idea of ‘inclusive green growth’. This narrative provides continuity on orthodox, Western, modernist views of progress and development but is contested by environmentalist narratives that point to the unviability of growth-led models (in however ‘inclusive’ or ‘green’ a form). Environmentalists propose alternative visions of sustainable futures with implications for education. Rights-base narratives along with those inspired by the capability approach of Sen and Nussbaum also provide alternative views of sustainable futures based on the realisation of human rights and capabilities respectively for existing and future generations. It will be argued that although environmentalist, rights-based and capability inspired narratives can each provide important insights for conceiving sustainable futures, they are, like the dominant growth-led narrative situated largely within Western modernist thinking. It is this grounding in the Western episteme (ground base of knowledge) that decolonising narratives seek to disrupt. The silencing or (in de Sousa Santos’ terms) epsitemicide committed under the name of European colonialism on indigenous and other non-Western ways of knowing the natural and social worlds has also severely constrained the possibilities for a plurality of possible sustainable futures to emerge as envisaged by the ICFE. Education has been centrally implicated in these processes of erasure but also has the potential to contribute to new ecologies of knowledge that can transcend the limitations of Western monoculture and equip all learners with the resources needed to imagine and to realise a plurality of sustainable futures. The paper concludes with some overarching reflections on how struggles over education for sustainable futures can be linked to wider struggles for social, environmental and epistemic justice.

Abstract: In a drive to achieve Net Zero emissions, UK transport decarbonisation policies are predominantly focussed on measures to promote the uptake and use of personal electric vehicles (EVs). This is reflected in the COP26 Transport Declaration signed by 38 national governments, alongside city region governments, vehicle manufacturers and investors. This focus on technological, market-based, individual-level “solutions” to complex environmental and social problems is alluring. However, it is potentially problematic in the reality of complex, interconnected socio-technical systems in which many different, and potentially conflicting, collective and individual, social and environmental goals exist and interact. Emerging evidence suggests that EVs present multiple challenges for air quality, mobility and health, including risks from non-exhaust emissions (NEEs) and increasing reliance on vehicles for short trips. Understanding the interconnected links between electric mobility, human health and the environment, including synergies, trade-offs and differential impacts on different groups, requires an inclusive, whole systems approach to transport policymaking.
We describe the use of Participatory Systems Mapping (PSM) in which a diverse group of stakeholders collaboratively constructed a causal model of the UK surface transport system through a series of interactive online workshops. PSM is a participatory modelling approach which allows rapid production of models from stakeholder knowledge, without the need for empirical data. The resulting models, or “maps”, can contain factors and interconnections from any domain, qualitative or quantifiable. They can produce an integrated picture of how unanticipated consequences of interventions could play out in a system. By connecting different stakeholder’s knowledge of different parts of the system into one model, we can uncover potential long causal chains and indirect effects that span completely different parts of the system, that no one person might have predicted and would thus often not be anticipated in policy or intervention design or appraisal. Crucially, they capture what matters to stakeholders in the system, both with regards to desired outcomes and the causal interconnections that exist.
We will present the map and its analysis, with our findings illustrating how unintended consequences of EV focussed transport policies may have negative impacts on air quality, human health, community liveability and important social functions of the transport system. And how these impacts may disproportionately affect already marginalised communities who may not have the resources to themselves purchase EVs and participate in the imagined personal EV future. Further, how these impacts may cause positive feedback effects, or so-called vicious cycles, in which increasing EV use suppresses other alternative forms of transport or modes of existence in within communities.
We will discuss how participatory causal modelling techniques could be used to facilitate effective policy design and appraisal in ways that take account of and work with system complexity and take account of multiple different needs and desired futures. Finally, we will open a conversation about how participatory mapping approaches might be used in participatory system design contexts to empower stakeholders to both envisage possible futures for their complex systems and to engage in participatory “steering” approaches. Developing their own potential, workable interventions that leverage system complexity to steer their complex systems towards the outcomes which they have chosen.

Abstract: Anticipation is a critical capacity that becomes increasingly important in uncertain and complex times as it enables us to better understand how our context might be changing. However, the value of anticipation lies not in the anticipation itself, but in the ability to utilise the insights and reflections that the process of anticipation generates. The thinking process on its own is not necessarily valuable – anticipation that results in paralysis (paralysis by analysis) is such an example. Anticipation comes to its own when it is combined with the doing process, i.e. the ability to take strategic action and adapt. It is in the process of doing, and thereby using the outputs that anticipation has generated, that value is created.

The value of anticipation is further amplified when this critical capacity is combined with other complementary ones such as systems thinking, emotional intelligence and psychological awareness. We have reframed these as foresight, topsight and insight.

Foresight involves anticipatory capabilities, exploring ideas about the future. Without foresight, the trajectory into the future is blind. Topsight requires systems thinking, a systemic understanding of the complexities of our environment. Without topsight, the overview of the dynamics of the wider system or competitive landscape, no individual or collective is likely to be able to anticipate well. Insight involves a deep understanding of the self, our place in the world as well as our mental models, assumptions and blindspots. Without insight of the ‘self’, whether individual or collective, the path taken is unlikely to be aligned with internal values and purpose. Each of these capacities on its own is of high value. However, it is the combination of these three capacities that form the data gathering thinking process and the contextual knowledge necessary to inform smart, strategic action.

Thinking (or policymaking) alone is insufficient—it is the doing that matters. We term this strategic action, a process of context-specific judgment regarding the appropriateness of available information together with strategic decision-making regarding when and how to take action that is both timely and appropriate. This process is iterative and acknowledges that we are operating in dynamic environments where the external context does not stop changing. Therefore, strategic action will generate further knowledge – both acquisition of new knowledge or jettisoning of obsolete knowledge – that will inform and guide future action.

In our opinion, the combination of these skills – foresight, topsight, insight and strategic action - can be collectively viewed as an intelligence. We term this anticipation intelligence, or AQ. While cognitive intelligence, termed IQ, was considered to matter most in the late 19th and early 20th century, emotional intelligence, termed EQ, came to the fore as the world globalized. The 21st century demands a new form of intelligence with a focus on the future, AQ.

In today’s increasingly complex and uncertain world, change has become a constant. As individuals, groups, institutions, systems and cultures have greater likelihood of need for adaptation, AQ becomes all the more critical. AQ is, in our opinion, first and foremost an individual skillset. AQ can empower the individual, providing them with the tools necessary to navigate a turbulent future, and the potential for increased wellbeing, greater agency, and more ability to interact constructively within society.

Without such intelligent individuals, there cannot be collective intelligence. Any collective, whether organisations, communities and governments, are groups of individuals. Clearly, there is significant potential for AQ in these contexts. In fact, it might even be essential, because the growing ‘trust deficit’ affecting organisational and institutional levels can undermine their ‘license to operate’.

Societies, governments and businesses made up of individuals with high AQ will have high collective AQ—the ability to make wiser decisions faster and more economically than those that don’t. Integration of AQ will be very different from traditional modes of knowledge transfer, and would require new ways that enable open-minded engagement and harness the learning of multiple individuals with high AQ into a collective AQ. Yet the value would be immense. A society where AQ is valued is more likely to find ways to make wise decisions that ideally help it to flourish, or at least ensure its survival. A government with many individuals with a high AQ is more likely to make policy decisions that have a longer-term, more holistic outlook – which in turn is likely to gain greater societal acceptance. An organisation comprising individuals with high AQ is likely to be more adaptive and resilient to its environment.