Syd Mead on the Future

OK, I am just being an aggregator with this post, but here is an interesting short film, 2019: A Future Imagined, with Syd Mead (legendary designer from Blade Runner, Aliens, Tron) talking about his views of the future of technology and design.

2019: A Future Imagined from Flat-12 on Vimeo.

Creating an Idea Factory

Creative thinking is an essential part of foresight and understanding how the future may emerge. The creative process, corporate innovation, ideation and brainstorming techniques have always interested me - especially ways to connect those disciplines to the exploration of the future. I am in the process of helping to develop and re-conceive an online course on creating problem solving, so I'll be posting some interesting articles and some of my thoughts here over the coming months.

There was a good article recently posted on Fast Company's website by designer Jon Kolko entitled "Cultural Values That Will Make Your Office an Idea Factory". The article advocates "playfulness" at work by encouraging divergent thinking, altering and removing constraints, generating outlandish ideas, creating an environment where "creative flow" can be achieved and empowering individuals to act independently if so motivated. Good goals to strive for if you are in the design field or any other industry where ideas drive the organization.

The Frontier Is Everywhere...

Sitting in a blizzard, working from home, I stumbled upon this video today. "NASA – The Frontier is Everywhere” is a video created by Reid Gower for NASA, but not by NASA, or at the request of NASA (but they should have made it). It was modeled after Michael Marantz’ short film, Earth: The Pale Blue Dot, and it features Carl Sagan’s voice. You can find more information on the background of the video at mental_floss. Like previous space exploration videos I have posted, this is an extremely optimistic view of a long-term future for humanity. I feel we, as a civilization, need more of this type of positive, visionary thinking.

Futurist Colleagues on Coast to Coast AM

Some colleagues and friends of mine from the University of Houston were recently on Coast to Coast AM to help kick off the new year. I'll admit I haven't listened to the entire show yet, but it was great to hear that Peter Bishop, Andy Hines, Terry Grim and Garry Golden got a chance to be on the show. They discussed techniques for long term forecasting and some emerging trends.

Strategic Planning + Futures Studies

Link to a good journal article on the "Intersection of Strategic Planning and Futures Studies: Methodological Complementarities" [LINK].