Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

It sounds too 'futuristic' to be true. Now futurists have a university (in Silicon Valley).

Some coverage by TechCrunch and CNet.

And here is a critique by Jamais Cascio, co-founder of WorldChanging.

Art schools can change too. The present goal of studio programs (and of ever more specialized art history programs) seems to be to narrow talent to a sharp point that can push its way aggressively into the competitive arena. But with markets uncertain, possibly nonexistent, why not relax this mode, open up education?

Why not make studio training an interdisciplinary experience, crossing over into sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, poetry and theology? Why not build into your graduate program a work-study semester that takes students out of the art world entirely and places them in hospitals, schools and prisons, sometimes in-extremis environments, i.e. real life? My guess is that if you did, American art would look very different than it does today.

Link to The New York Times article.

Scientific fiction, unlike most examples of sci-fi, includes meaningful surprise. It breaks someone's guessing machine and then fixes it. It is rather a laboratory for thinking, an experiment. Webb gives the example of World War Z here (I am enjoying the award winning audiobook now). Cheap sci-fi incessantly introduces unrelated events in the story line and then wrapping up with 'it was all a dream' or by sending aliens 10 billion years back in time.

Webb says scientific fiction is exploring a chart possible worlds. But which products work in these possible worlds? His proposed methodology (rather than market research) is evolution or crossbreeding (something that we are also encouraged at EDG Konstfack). His take on this is different, taking an existing product, something that works, and changing it gradually towards adjacent alternative worlds. He refers to Olinda, to show how this process works.

Another method that Webb illustrates is by using counterfactuals, imagining worlds that never existed. What would happen if everybody manufactured their own mobile phone?