We’re holding a Design Fiction Worldbuilding Workshop on “The Future of Work”!
“Why?”, you may wonder.
Have you caught all the hub-bub about how Amazon unexpectedly declared suddenly that all corporate employees must RTO — return to office.
Is this the best that ‘Earth's Greatest Employer’ can imagine for what work can look like?
What are their alternatives?
Not the somewhat equally uninspired — ‘Work From Home’ idea, which really doesn’t feel like it’s come from some possible future where the organization of human creative potential is truly new.
Look — I don't have a super-strong opinion, and I'm not looking for an argument on this point at all.
But our ideas about what ‘work’ and ‘organization of human / non-human collaboration to create value’ are about as novel and evolutionary as putting WiFi in kitchen appliances.
They do not imagine new ways of organizing human and non-human collaborators in the pursuit of creating meaningful value.
What I mean by "new" is an unexpected, unanticipated mode of organization.
Whether you 'work from home' or work at a café or RTO — the organization is still the same. The hierarchies are still the same. And you still have a kind of benevolent autocracy with little room for different kinds of networks of value creation with awkward and mostly quite out-of-balance value circulation. (Think of pay inequities, although there can be futures where ‘pay’ is even something quite different.)
Want to discuss this and go through some hands-on worldbuilding?
Want to imagine and construct Design Fiction artifacts that represent new arrangements and considerations?
There are two spots left at Detroit Imagines Harder — our Design Fiction World Building Summit & Workshop coming up soon! 👇🏽
Our Goal?
Discuss, Describe, Debate, Design an artifact that has come from a future in which the creation of value ('work') feels like a world we'd like to inhabit.
The Design Fiction Artifact?
You might be wondering — what kind of artifact that feels like it’s come from a slightly changed world might be a rich, yet still fun and curious thing to create?
We’ve settled on the main artifact
An Employee Manual / Handbook / Onboarding Materials From A Possible Future.
This is probably one of your best chances to actively participate in a Near Future Laboratory project where you can learn hands-on how we ‘do’ Design Fiction.
We’ll have 3 Days of Discussion and Hands-On ‘Doing’ — and of course building our connections and networks.
Special Guest Participants and Activities, including a fireside chat and a screening of Dr. Joseph Lindley's ground-breaking design research project and film, Permission to Muck About.
As of right now there are only 3 spots left!
Do you have any questions?
I’ve got an inbox 👉🏽 https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/contact
