The design professions have exploded onto the world scene over the past decade, ushering in a new trans-disciplinarity which is increasingly applied in many contexts. And yet, design is dangerous. Designing in an unconscious way, without understanding or challenging our own design assumptions or biases, or exploring the potential consequences of design decisions, means that…
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Undesign: the power of conscious imagination
I’m going to invite you to take a moment. Look around. Notice your surroundings. Take it all in. Close your eyes and notice the sounds, smells and maybe tastes, all the sensations associated with where you are right now. You’ll be reading this from some sort of device. How does it feel to touch? What…
Systemic Leadership and Strategic Foresight
Action Foresight will be running a course titled Systemic Leadership and Strategic Foresight in January 2020. The course aims to help people develop “Anticipatory leadership“ (leadership through future awareness) and ”Systemic leadership” (leadership through alignment between personal, organisational and societal futures). The course helps participants to use the future to be able to tackle problems creatively,…
Leapfrogging Sustainable Development: Exploring the strategic futures of production and policy through cosmolocal and commons-based design
A cosmolocal and commons based design course was held 0n September 20-21 2019 at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, entitled: “Leapfrogging Sustainable Development: Exploring the strategic futures of production and policy through cosmolocal and commons-based design” The philosophy behind cosmolocalism emphasizes documenting innovation and keeping this knowledge open, so that it can be…
Leapfrogging Sustainable Development: Exploring the Strategic Futures of Production and Policy through Cosmo-local and Commons-based Design
Two aspects of my life are coming together for the first time. My work with a number of collaborators (Michel Bauwens, Sharon Ede, etc) to conceptualize and articulate cosmo-localism, plus my work over the past decade to meld foresight and action through action research approaches. The result is a course on cosmo-local design. We will…
The structural, the post structural and the commons: meta-networking for change
This is a chapter originally published as: Ramos, J. (2016) The structural, the post structural and the commons: meta-networking for systemic change,In Pease B., et al. (Ed)Doing Critical Social Work, Allen and Unwin Introduction This chapter takes up the challenge posed by the editors of this volume, to articulate new forms of critical social and…
Anticipatory Innovation
Innovation is an obsession in our current society. We are enamored with technological innovations, we celebrate innovators. We want to be them. And yet when you look closely at the various crises and risks around the world, it becomes clear that the human propensity for innovation is again and again repeatedly at the heart of…
Linking Foresight and Action
In 2016 I decided to contribute a book chapter on a futures studies perspective on participatory action research, in an ambitious project led by Lonnie Rowell, Catherine D. Bruce, Joseph M. Shosh, and Margaret M. Riel. It was quite a journey. I want to specifically thank them and those futurists that helped me by responding to…
Mutating the Future: the Anticipatory Experimentation Method
We human beings for most of our history have solved the problems of the present. Problem arises, people respond. See problem, act on problem. But now we find ourselves in a new context, beset by not just the problems of the present but as well of the future. These include automation and robotic’s impact on…
Carnival of Futures: one step at a time like this
one step at a time like this are a collective of performance artists who specialize in transforming the “audience” into the performer, through a unique approach to contemporary arts practice. Bridgette Engler and I were approach by one step about a year ago, to ostensibly “help them” with a futures project. Bridgette and I designed…