Feedback
August 14: Two choices of video concepts for video #1 sent to all stakeholders via email on August 14.
August 20: “The future is not a control room” selected by Riel, and commented here on August 20:
"There is a lot to discuss here - the ideas are rich and not all of the challenges are self-evident. I want to flag something that only appears if we change the agency paradigm from one that is almost entirely focused on design and planning to one that reconsiders the position and role of agency to give more equal weight to emergence and spontaneity. The contrast might be best understood as follows: The
“edge” exists within a system and its peripheral and emergent character is what defines its edginess. But there is also the “edge” which is extra systemic, not on the edge because there is no center, new systems, with new centers and edges may or may not be emerging. Such novelty is unknowable in advance and is very difficult to make sense of from within the existing system, even from the edge of existing systems. To me what getting beyond a control room means is that we become much more accepting and interested in the non-causal, non-narrative based sense making that is rooted in what we already know about center/periphery and adaptation - which must adapt from what exists. The ideas is to crowd surf novel emergence, without knowing if it is center or periphery or has causal origin or direction or meaning. The control room tracks the planes, avoids collisions and plans take-offs. The control room changes when GPS allows all planes to track the other planes, and this is a unknowable and emergent change that comes in from the edge. To paradigm shift out of this view of agency - making better control rooms that integrate the edge - towards a combination of planning and improvisation requires a shift away from the current planning oriented pretensions of agency and a bias towards understanding new things as adaptations or ‘rational’ from the perspective of the old systems. Things happen and we can dance with those phenomena in ways that were not dance in the past. This is being and not-being; doing and not-doing from the POV of discontinuity and non-continuous complex emergent novelty."
August 23: First edit of video #1 presented to Riel
password: controlroom
Feedback From Riel via email: “Getting there! Need to both blow up the control room and affirm the non-narrative of emergence. Not sure exactly how to visualise this but we could add elements like: showing a tree anticipating, an air traffic controller anticipating, a D-Day plan, a Manhattan Project timeline, the famous kennedy go to the moon - as a way to underscore our affinity - desire for this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy approach to the future, look at a copy of the the critical path planning schematics used to build the world trade center and then boom… cliché I know, but it is the proverbial bridge to nowhere. I use images of bridges that just end, without being finished or after having collapsed – with the point – did the bridge builder know that it would simply be abandoned – or that the palace would be a museum, tourists walking on the pyramid, etc. – to reinforce the point that plans don’t reach expected ends, that intentions end up with unintended and that what actually happens is the kaleidoscopic mix of intentional, unintentional, serendipitous, and entirely novel – unknowable and unimaginable until it happened – Eureka! The challenge – how to reconcile our thinking and expectations about how we use the future to the richness of complex emergent reality – to turn unknown into a friend. To find ways to stop saying “I’m optimistic” or the future is “xyz” - such as children, to stop colonising tomorrow or feeling that we should. That not-doing, by embracing spontaneity might be the best way to make a difference, if the aim is to encourage diversification and the capacity to take advantage of novelty as the strategic approach to resilience beyond preservation.”
September 4 (google hangout):
“we cant change how we related to the world if we dont change how we use the future.”
"the need to put future explicility into what we do "
“im going to try to convince you that you will be able to do things differenty if you are able to read. E.g You wont be handicapped wrt other people. Or I can say its compulsory and have to do it for 12 years”
“Demand is not a problem with a knowlab. Problem is ownership and people don’t know what they are asking for.”
To discuss with production team:
How best way to incorporate Riel’s feedback into video #1?
Next step:
propose revised version of script (checked fo feasibility with team) for September 30