Category: foresight

Scripturient: AI and the future of intellectual property

Mechanical Dolphin

The latest edition of Scripturient, my column for Information Professional magazine, features Alex Roberts of IP Australia, the government body responsible for administering intellectual property (IP) law in Australia.

As director of the agency’s IPAVentures unit, Alex leads a team dedicated to exploring what might be needed for the IP rights system of the future. They use foresight and innovation tools to consider how we regulate “creations of the mind”: everything from literary and artistic works to trademarks, brand names, and protected product designs.

Recently, IPAventures developed a set of scenarios exploring the impact of generative AI on intellectual property – ranging from ever more lengthy and elaborate patent specifications to accelerated ideations by inventors and even changes to the regulation of plant breeding.

You can read more about the scenarios, and IPAVentures’ work, in our interview from the latest issue of Information Professional magazine.

scripturient-julyaug2023v3Download

Human-Land Podcast: Spatial Justice and Realms of Citizenship

Mechanical Dolphin

I joined the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences’ Human-Land podcast to talk about social justice and foresight in spatial planning, and their links to environmental psychology.

As environmental psychologists explore the relationship between human beings and their environments – including how humans shape those environments and are shaped by them in turn – foresight work allows us to explore how that relationship might change in times to come, and how our ideas of what is fair or just in terms of access to different environments might also evolve.

Host Hannah Arnett and I spoke about the IMAJINE scenarios project and the possiblity of an approach to questions of space and justice that brings together a range of disciplines and perspectives on the common ground of the unwritten future.

You can listen to the episode now on Spotify and Soundcloud.

New book: Building the Post-Pandemic University

Mechanical Dolphin

Next month sees the release of the edited volume Building the Post-Pandemic University: Imagining, Contesting, and Materializing Higher Education Futures.

Together with UCL’s Richard Sandford, I contributed a chapter on “Scenarios as a device for forming common futures: plurality and the post-pandemic university”

You can find out more, and pre-order the book, at the Edward Elgar website.

The Conversation: How activity in outer space will affect regional inequalities in the future

Mechanical Dolphin

My latest piece in The Conversation explains how the IMAJINE scenarios used plausible futures to explore the relationship between European regional inequalities and activity in outer space.

You can read “How activity in outer space will affect regional inequalities in the future” here.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Recording: Climate, Justice, and the Strategic Sublime

Mechanical Dolphin

My one-hour lecture for the Romancing the Gothic online lecture series on “Climate, Justice, and the Strategic Sublime” is now available on YouTube.

You can also read more about this topic in my recent piece for Vector, co-written with the University of Galway’s Marie Mahon.

The power of an unresolved chord

Mechanical Dolphin

In New York, I attended a concert, “Concerto per violini: 18th-century Italian virtuosi“, performed by members of Early Music New York (EM/NY).

At the end of the event, EM/NY announced the retirement from public performance of Frederick Renz, the storied conductor and early music expert who directs the organisation. They also announced that plans for future performances by EM/NY were as yet unclear.

The program notes for the event reminded us that, while most people think of concertos as works for solo instruments accompanied by an orchestra, the original definition of the term in the Baroque era, was “a work for musicians playing together.”

Such were the works performed at the EM/NY event, including pieces by Vivaldi, Arcangello Corelli, Pietro Locatelli, and Francesco Geminiani.

There’s a tension within the very name “concerto”: not just the way in which the term has evolved musically, but between the literal Italian meaning “gathering” or “accord” and the Latin derivation “concertare”, which denotes confrontation or battle. There are so many ways we can come together, in collaboration, competition, or opposition – sometimes “either/or”, sometimes “both/and”.

I was reminded of a workshop series which I ran for an organisation facing a challenging strategic situation, thick with uncertainty. Together, we built scenarios to explore how these uncertainties might play out in ways beyond their expectations, assumptions, hopes, or fears.

Those scenarios were then presented to the organisation’s board during an away day. Board members were introduced to the scenario planning approach, worked with the scenario material created by the organisation’s staff and other stakeholders, and then engaged in strategic conversation: what did these scenarios mean for the organisation? How could they inform the decisions which needed to be made?

Read more →

SexTechLab: Foresight, Justice, and the Territorial Body in Time

Mechanical Dolphin

On Wednesday May 10th, I’ll be speaking at the New School’s SexTechLab on “Foresight, Justice, and the Territorial Body in Time”.

How can we explore what lies at the future intersections of gender, race, sexuality, culture, technology, AI, ethics, social justice, and intimacy?

Given that we can’t gather data or evidence from events which haven’t happened yet, how can exploring times to come usefully inform issues we face in the here and now?

What lies beyond hope, fear, expectation, and prediction when we look to what tomorrow holds?

US Geological Survey staff member Joe O’Connor on the Territory of the Navajo Nation, 1965

Find out more at the New School event page.

After Earth Day: New adventures in planetarity

Mechanical Dolphin

This past weekend saw the celebration of Earth Day on 22nd April. Since 1970, the date has provided a moment of focus and celebration for communities and organizations focussed on protecting our environment.

The first Earth Day was shaped by many factors. These included the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill in Southern California, which caused public outrage and helped motivate Republican President Richard Nixon to found the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Earthrise photograph taken by Apollo astronaut Bill Anders in 1968, which has been described as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”.

Earthrise by Bill Anders

Earth Day serves to draw our attention, energising debate and action around what must be done to protect and sustain our planet’s environment. The events from over fifty years ago, which helped to inspire its creation, remind us of the ongoing need to cultivate fresh perspectives, in order to act effectively in these complex and turbulent times.

Read more →

Cranes in the sky

Mechanical Dolphin

Well, it’s like cranes in the sky
Sometimes I don’t wanna feel those metal clouds

Some time ago, I found myself reflecting on Solange’s song ‘Cranes in the Sky’ at the end of a strategy project. Sometimes the best way into something is at an angle; not through the Excel sheets and the PDFs and the ‘lessons learned’, but through a feeling, a stray thought, an analogy, a song or an image which reminds you somehow of the matter at hand.

In a 2017 interview with her sister Beyoncé, Solange explains where the song came from:

“Cranes in the Sky” is actually a song that I wrote eight years ago. It’s the only song on the album that I wrote independently of the record, and it was a really rough time. I know you remember that time. I was just coming out of my relationship with Julez’s father. We were junior high school sweethearts, and so much of your identity in junior high is built on who you’re with. You see the world through the lens of how you identify and have been identified at that time. So I really had to take a look at myself, outside of being a mother and a wife, and internalize all of these emotions that I had been feeling through that transition. I was working through a lot of challenges at every angle of my life, and a lot of self-doubt, a lot of pity-partying. And I think every woman in her twenties has been there—where it feels like no matter what you are doing to fight through the thing that is holding you back, nothing can fill that void.

I used to write and record a lot in Miami during that time, when there was a real estate boom in America, and developers were developing all of this new property. There was a new condo going up every ten feet. You recorded a lot there as well, and I think we experienced Miami as a place of refuge and peace. We weren’t out there wilin’ out and partying. I remember looking up and seeing all of these cranes in the sky. They were so heavy and such an eyesore, and not what I identified with peace and refuge. I remember thinking of it as an analogy for my transition—this idea of building up, up, up that was going on in our country at the time, all of this excessive building, and not really dealing with what was in front of us. And we all know how that ended. That crashed and burned. It was a catastrophe. And that line came to me because it felt so indicative of what was going on in my life as well. And, eight years later, it’s really interesting that now, here we are again, not seeing what’s happening in our country, not wanting to put into perspective all of these ugly things that are staring us in the face.

Sometimes it’s so hard to face the real issue, what the strategist Richard Rumelt might call the crux or the kernel of a situation. Our anxiety about facing up to the truth causes our attention to slip away from harsh reality; we seek comfort in makework that seems to gird us.

Read more →