http://www.changeist.com/changeism/2012/4/3/exploring-object-oriented-futures-at-emerge-2012.html
(...)
"By starting with the object, or the gadget, in some ways we quickly take the focus off of that object and place it more on populating the world around it, rather than creating a world in which our object of choice (whether it’s a product or some irritant we hope to overcome) fits just so, which I think is the unconscious tendency when starting with the universe first, then placing the object we desire within it. It’s something we are familiar with from the play of our younger years—a toy car, a doll, a stick for a sword all give us the jumping off point for a larger adventure and help us imagine the world in which we want them, and ourselves, to exist. To paraphrase Anab Jain from Jonathan Resnick’s recent paper on materialization of the speculative (PDF download), objects help people enter a world by being both immediate and tangible.
"In the end, what matters is having new tools and approaches available to us to shift perspective and try a new way “in” to insight or epiphany, not to let the traditional approaches institutionalize our perspectives on the future. Emerge saw a fresh range of methods entertained, and so engaged a multidisciplinary mix of artists, engineers, writers, coders, film makers, game designers, biologists in the pursuit of imagining new solutions to our systemic challenges. In doing this, the event, its organizers and participants took an important step forward toward opening the door for these fields and others to engage with and add to practices of strategic foresight and design, taking down some unnecessary walls along the way..."
