{"id":9230,"date":"2014-08-29T02:28:22","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T02:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/?p=9230"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:57:11","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T17:57:11","slug":"the-future-silicon-valleys-billionaires-dont-want-you-to-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2014\/08\/29\/the-future-silicon-valleys-billionaires-dont-want-you-to-see\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future Silicon Valley’s Billionaires Don’t Want You To See"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JCB_20082014_195202_7606-Edit\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I want to share with you the latest book project from the Near Future Laboratory. It\u2019s called TBD Catalog\u200a\u2014\u200athe Design Fiction product catalog<\/a> for the normal ordinary everyday near future.<\/p>\n

You can get your own copy of TBD Catalog here in our own shop<\/a>. We’re also a publisher now, in the modern sense.<\/p>\n

TBD Catalog contains 166 products, 62 classifieds and\u00a0advertisements to tell little stories about the world we are likely to inhabit if the exuberant venture capitalist handlers and computer programming day laborers of Silicon Valley have their way.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a future quite different from the perfect, seamless, integrated, one-touch, Cloud-based advertising fakery used to make your pupils dilate with \u201cwantfulness\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aa want for cute connected family robots, software\u00a0and plastic dongles \u2018made with love\u2019 and self-driving cars with\u00a0impish\u00a0earnest eager bumper faces and $9 drip coffee made with algorithmic precision and ordered ahead from an App.<\/p>\n

The future represented in TBD Catalog starts with Silicon Valley\u2019s breathless visions\u200a\u2014\u200aand plops it down on the counter of your corner bodega. This is the future that comes in party colors. It’s the\u00a03\/$1.00\u00a0and buy one get one free future. Got your iPhone stolen? In the TBD future, if you’ve got ‘Find My Phone’ enabled, just\u00a0use your Call For Backup App \u2014 we’ll send some licensed and disciplined toughs fresh back from Spec-Ops\u00a0to knock on doors, fold their arms and growl imposingly\u00a0if necessary. It’s the Uber of semi-private personal security.<\/p>\n

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\"Design<\/p>\n

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\"Design<\/p>\n

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With TBD Catalog our technique\u00a0for employing Design Fiction\u00a0was to follow today’s major “tech” trends and see where their hyperbole might\u00a0likely wind up in some likely normal ordinary everyday near future \u2014\u200a3D Printers; Internet of Things; the Algorithmic Life; The Cloud; Machine Intelligence; New Funding Models; Mass Customization; Etcetera.<\/p>\n

The TBD Catalog future is\u00a0the near future ordinary.\u00a0The\u00a0constant\u00a0low\u00a0power and\u00a0exploding\u00a0battery future. The bad firmware\u00a0bricked $800 device future. The\u00a0lousy customer service phone menu UX\u00a0and\u00a0busted algorithms that send a hundred emails to the same customer and\u00a0shift-reload doesn’t clear the error future. The\u00a0bad monopoly network service conglomerate run like an accounting firm future.<\/p>\n

That world. The one when ‘now’ becomes ‘then’ \u2014 after all the glitzy wearables\/internet-of-things\/self-driving car Kickstarter advertising TechCrunch\u00a0blogger promises dull to their likely normal.<\/p>\n

We did TBD Catalog\u00a0because no one else has done so much to tell a story about the likely future beyond excruciating, mind-numbing white papers, link-bait blog posts and breathless “insights” from strategy agency\u00a0reports that read as though they’re in league with the pundits who all basically work for the startups anyway.\u00a0We wanted a perspective that was engaging, entertaining and probable while also insightful, generative and provocative.<\/p>\n

Take a look around amongst the strata of futurists, insights reports, strategy assessments, TED Talks\u00a0and the like.\u00a0There is little to go on to ruminate about these trends beyond the vague \u201cimagine a world..\u201d fantasy scenarios and dreamy video pitches with earnest mandolin soundtracks. There are scant stories about a world when\u00a0these trend-things are fully-vested within our lives in a way that doesn’t seem like the\u00a0boom-cycle perfect world advertisement where we 3D print fresh licensed Opiline knife sets. The stories we get are\u00a0either perfect utopia futures\u00a0or the robot-zombie apocalyptic busted future with fascist jetpack cops chasing down malcontents.<\/p>\n

TBD Catalog cuts through the middle to tell stories\u00a0from a world where Nobel Prize winning technology is\u00a0sitting on the counter of your corner liquor store in 23 different colors, all with a keychain and instructions on how to entertain your cat. This “ordinary” story is the one we’re working towards. These are the stories that are\u00a0in short supply.\u00a0Stories about our\u00a0world when the extraordinary idea makes its inevitable journey to become\u00a0the\u00a0ordinary\u00a0commodity thing that occasionally needs repair or a software patch for a security flaw.<\/p>\n

TBD Catalog creates these sorts of stories by hinting at the implications of today\u2019s \u2018disruptions\u2019\u200a\u2014\u200aby representing the kinds of products and services we might imagine in the near future and implying little corners of that near future world and\u00a0the\u00a0social lives around it. In TBD Catalog each product, service, classified advertisement and customer review is a bit of Design Fiction\u200a\u2014\u200aa mix of trending topic plus designed object plus a small evocative story-description. Each Design Fiction\u00a0is a little story about life in our likely near future world.<\/p>\n

What are some of the stories in TBD Catalog?<\/p>\n

TBD Catalog tells a story about a world in which every household has as many 3D printers as they now have electric toothbrushes, and a lease-licensed 3D printer material waste disposal unit.<\/p>\n

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\"Design<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Algoriture<\/a><\/p>\n

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TBD Catalog reveals a\u00a0world with\u00a0bland \u201cAlgoriture\u201d algorithmic literature optimized for trends, tastes and expectations and written by Amazon\u2019s data analytic-fed intelligent bots rather than normal, human authors.<\/p>\n

What about a world in which algorithms are so trusted, we allow them to find a playmate for our children, or the perfect \u201csoul mate\u201d for ourselves when we turn 18.<\/p>\n

\"Internet<\/a><\/p>\n

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MeWee Monitor hints at what an Internet of Things world might look like if everything\u200a\u2014\u200athe glass you drink with, the bar stool you sit on, and the bathroom door you lock behind you and the chamber pot you sit upon \u200a\u2014\u200ais connected to everything else, and lets the world know what it\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n

Why did we do a product catalog from a likely future? The Near Future Laboratory is of the opinion that whatever \u201ccomes next\u201d should be prototyped not just in hardware and software (which we do, and enjoy) but through compelling, engaging, tangible moments that play out near future scenarios. Not only the spot-on-perfect advertiser-scripted scenarios, but the more likely and realistic moments as well. This sort of prototyping has imminent value as a means of shaping an idea, reflecting on contingencies, making things better and feel more full-vested in the world.<\/p>\n

Design Fiction\u00a0is a form of prototyping an idea. It’s a way of\u00a0\u200areflection\u00a0that can\u00a0take an\u00a0idea,\u00a0trend\u00a0or\u00a0concept and intimate it in a more\u00a0material form\u00a0that can generate conversations that then reshape the idea into something better. Design Fictions have a remarkable ability to make that materialized concept come to life in a much more embodied way than specifications, one-pager or items in a PowerPoint bullet list. TBD Catalog\u2019s Design Fictions take\u00a0the promise of extraordinary and weird Silicon Valley aspirations and turn them into the normal and ordinary props that come to life as part of our everyday lives.<\/p>\n

Design Fictions have exceptional value from a pragmatic perspective. They are more than entertainment. Design Fiction can operate as a viable approach to design itself \u2014 a form of exercising hunches without committing to full-blown execution. Design Fiction can find the tangential implications and alternative possibilities of your instincts \u2014 and then show a path forward towards sketching, testing and materializing your ideas. As a catalog in which your idea might exist in the future. As a fictionalized quick start guide. As an instruction manual or bug report. As a blogger’s review or customer service script.<\/p>\n

Design Fiction is a creative instrument. It is truly a form of prototyping. It is an approach to design and strategic foresight that is actually generative. Design Fictions provide the basis for viable ideas, even in the idiom of satire. In their second reads, they become more\u200a\u2014\u200aeach of the 166 products has a \u201c..huh\u201d moment. There are dozens and dozens of Kickstarters in here, surely. And a few things in TBD Catalog we here at the Near Future Laboratory have actually prototyped\u200a\u2014\u200afor real. Even some we’re pursuing after having our own “..huh..that could work..” revelation.<\/p>\n

Let me be clear \u2014 we here are\u00a0not opposed to the \u201cnext new thing.\u201d\u200a We are eager to entertain. But also \u2014 we focus on creating ‘next new things’ everyday. TBD Catalog is meant to remind us that every cool trend, every ‘wow’ gadget, and even some\u00a0Nobel Prize-winning technologies become entertainment devices for our house cats or a faster way to stream crappy online ads. We need those kinds of likely near future representations \u2014 as alternative as they are to the glowing reports in your favorite trends blog \u2014 to focus ourselves on\u00a0the challenges this world faces in light of\u00a0rapidly changing behaviors, expectations, desires, rituals and algorithms.<\/p>\n

Welcome to your near future normal ordinary everyday.<\/p>\n

======
\nBuy TBD Catalog<\/a>
\nCheck out the work kit we used to create the products<\/a>
\nRead more about Design Fiction<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to share with you the latest book project from the Near Future Laboratory. It\u2019s called TBD Catalog\u200a\u2014\u200athe Design Fiction product catalog for the normal ordinary everyday near future. You can get your own copy of TBD Catalog here in our own shop. We’re also a publisher now, in the modern sense. TBD Catalog … Continue reading The Future Silicon Valley’s Billionaires Don’t Want You To See<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,16,47,49,50],"tags":[1188,1166,1165],"yoast_head":"\nThe Future Silicon Valley's Billionaires Don't Want You To See - Near Future Laboratory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2014\/08\/29\/the-future-silicon-valleys-billionaires-dont-want-you-to-see\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Future Silicon Valley's Billionaires Don't Want You To See - Near Future Laboratory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I want to share with you the latest book project from the Near Future Laboratory. It\u2019s called TBD Catalog\u200a\u2014\u200athe Design Fiction product catalog for the normal ordinary everyday near future. You can get your own copy of TBD Catalog here in our own shop. We’re also a publisher now, in the modern sense. 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