Last night, the neighbour’s dog started barking at 0247 and has just recently stopped. It’s been a really busy time but it always feels like it’s a busy time. However, the result of this business is a couple of things I can actually share with you publicly, below! Now listen, I’m sorry about all of this. It is much worse than we thought and it’s all a bit much and sort of numbing and I think there’s an agreement (at least amongst people I talk with) that ‘what else is there to say?’ There isn’t anything so I hope you’re weathering through.

Five Things

1. A Union for Hopeful Technologists

Not only do I love the idea of ‘hopeful technologists,’ I also love the idea of a union for them. Being skeptical of the claims of mainstream technology often gets you branded as a luddite by tech bros or critihyper by people with substacks. It can be hard to hold the line that technology can be incredibly socially useful if deployed with thought and consideration. So Rachel Coldicutt wants to build a union of people working on this at a time when the stakes are as high as they’ve ever been and the context as unforgiving as it’s ever been. Go fill in a questionnaire here.

2. How did we get here?

Organisations are no longer only treating design as an embellishment; they are embedding it into their core business strategy. This shift places designers in the boardroom, working alongside senior leaders to shape aspirations and define the path to achieving them.

Gemma Lord here on how designers have infiltrated the most senior levels of business and organisation. It’s obviously something I’m keenly aware of and think about a lot. Lord makes the point that there’s a natural progression from the systemic approach and understanding to user and design needs that maps to complex strategic thinking. The difference, she suggests, is that in many cases, the role of the designers here is less about solving problems than helping leaders understand and navigate ambiguity. Again, this all readily comports with my experience at Arup. What’s missing for me though (and she indicates may be at the root of the problem of the IDEO design thinking philosophy) is the lack of critical thinking and politics.

I’ve argued before that painting everything with the design brush misses the reality of politics. In the same way that reducing all problems to problems of technology diminishes or erases the political dimension that underpins most social problems, uncritically framing design as a solution to complexity does the same. Leaders will do almost anything they can to avoid the ‘p’ word and especially the ‘P’ word but the reality is that underlying most problems is politics. Most things are political decisions enacted through technology or design and addressing design alone doesn’t do anything to elucidate or challenge the underlying politics.

So this is the other faculty of design that I’d attach to the piece: (Good) designers are (usually) great at starting from first principles; challenging their own and their clients/users’ assumptions, including their politics and beliefs about change. In the increased attentions given to designers in navigating complexity, they also need to be emboldened to challenge the underlying beliefs, assumptions and intentions of their leaders, not just providing a novel way of confirming them.

3. The Evil Housekeeper

I’ve never heard of the Evil Housekeeper. I love a new thought experiment. Dan Hon has written a piece for MIT about the DOGE wrecking ball, the impact on US government and what to do about it. Basically that even technical systems are founded on social norms (‘they wouldn’t break that rule, would they?’) and that actually, yes, when they do break those rules, there’s nothing to stop them. Reminds me a little of Milgram’s Subway Experiment in which he just walked up to people and asked him to give up their seat, and they usually did.

It’s interesting that there’s not much coverage of what’s going on domestically in the US on UK news. I wonder how much of this is an intentional avoidance of rubber-necking and avoiding giving him oxygen. I only hear about it from US friends and podcasts.

4. AI for Future Cities

Ok I’ve been incredibly busy because as well as writing you little missives, making little pictures and spouting hot reckons in public I have a real job and sometimes I can share the outputs from that real job such as the launch of AI for Future Cities. The last two years I’ve been doing a lot of work with Arup leadership on how we respond to and navigate AI, in a non-hypey, thoughtful way. There’s lots more to do there but along the way we thought, well; what does this mean for the places and people we work with in cities and so the publication was born. The dynamics of the way Foresight works is changing a lot and we’ve learned a tough lesson off the back of a few years of long, in-depth, rigorous reports and wanted to move on to do something snappier and more provocative.

Anyway, first issue issue is up there, go and enjoy. Next one on Energy should be out end of April. A real joy to work on and it’s getting great feedback.

5. Future of Making

Another bit of the team (and I input a little bit) have been cracking on with our Future of Making exhibition which launches next week. Now I don’t min telling you that this is the product of a few years of work and has transmogrified a lot over that time to this point. I’ve been helping a little with the writing of stories and zines for the exhibition and supporting the team in being a sounding board for some of the design choices.

Come and visit this exhibition hosted by Arup University’s Foresight team, exploring possible 2050 futures through interactive artefacts and stories, and showcasing the work Arup is already doing to transform our relationship with materials. The exhibition will be open until April 11th. Get in touch to book in your visit or a guided tour: foresight@arup.com.

Upcoming

• I’m doing this talk, this evening! This very night! Design, imaginaries. All that jazz. Free to just click on the zoom.
• And then on March 16th I’m doing a conversation with Future Days on the blue jobs website.

Short

• There’s might well be 3.8 billion obese adults by 2050, mostly driven by India and China.
• Alabama is turning a coal power plant into a battery storage plant. You see? You can just do this stuff no problem.
• In India you can just buy a gun through WhatsApp. I imagine that’s the case in a lot of places.
• California has granted legal right to indigenous tribes to practice cultural burning, a pracitce which historically reduced wildfires.
• It’s almost too hot to grow chocolate and coffee. Or at least it’s getting more expensive.
• I’t s a long piece but Ed Zitron ties together a bunch of things to suggest Microsoft pulling out of data centres expansion.
• China wants to be nuclear fusion dependent by 2050.

Ok that’s all. The child is pulling on my arm to go and I guess that’s my sign from the universe that it’s time to go. This is the third week in the row I’ve done this on time, maybe the rhythm is restoring. Love you.