Futurish

Abstract

There are always reasons why some one writes and distributes a book. The "why" of this book can be answered in at least as many voices as those that have contributed to writing it. The main motivation was to document the Data Ecologies Symposium 2014 organised by Time's Up in Linz, Austria. The subtitle of the symposium was "Tools and Language to think out loud about futures", so Time's invited a range of practitioners to share their thoughts, efforts and expertise on the topic of how futures thinking and every day life intersect. The Book Sprint methodology, described as a "self-documenting conference", seemed like an appropriate way to gather the participants' excitement around thinking out loud about futures.

Here we are: a mixt​ure of playf​ul exp​erts and exp​ert playe​rs, prof​essional pract​it​ione​rs, app​lied theo​r​ists, tang​ent-gene​ra​ti​ng gene​ra​lists and guerr​illa rand​omn​ess-red​uce​rs, trapped in a creepy, Twin Peaky villa deep in the southe​rn parts of Upper Aust​ria tryi​ng ext​ens​ively to summ​arise, to tang​ent​ially coll​ect, to harv​est and weave the outc​omes of the Data Ecolog​ies Symp​os​ium 2014 into a book in just four days. Futurish is a product of this Booksprint. It is a rough-and-ready collection of throughts and propositions related to futures, everyday life, experience and storytelling.

Booksprint participants and external contributors: Alkan Chipp​erf​ield, Barb​ara Rühling, Eva Lenz, Istv​an Szak​ats, Jul​ian Bleecker, Jul​ian Hanna, Justin Pickard, Luis Wohlmuther, Maja Kuzm​anovic, Mara Dionisio, Marta Peirano, Nik Gaffney, Peter von Stacke​lb​erg, Scott Smith, Tim Boykett, Tina Auer, Trevor Haldenby