Project Dryden — an Annual Report from an Energy Future and Project Outersense — a Magazine from a Possible AI Future. Plus, integrating AI, the Near Future Laboratory Discord, and an SSG Digester.

Contributed By: Julian Bleecker

Published On: Saturday, January 13, 2024 at 08:59:32 PST

Two projects are in the air.

1. Project Dryden
2. Project Outersense

Project Dryden Project Dryden is the translation of possible energy futures for a company in the energy sector through the Design Fiction ‘annual report’ transformer. It will work roughly like this:

1. Spend a couple of weeks interviewing/workshopping with key stakeholders inside of the organization and endemic domain stakeholders outside of the organization to gather insights about a variety of energy futures.
2. Given the core value proposition and strategic ambitions of the company, and how can we represent them as if they have come to pass?
3. What are some of the hopes, dreams, fears, and concerns that exist within and outside the organization and how do we represent ehse as if?
4. What are plausible, expected, and unexpected (unknown-unknowns) contingent factors that can collectively be represented as if?

Why is this useful to the Project Dryden team? Simple: Designing and creating an Annual Report, but one that is from a possible future is an effective planning and contingency tool. It’s like Red Teaming your future. It provides a container into which you can represent your ambitions. And it is a physical, tangible artifact that can be used to measure one’s performance against. It sits on a shelf and reminds you everyday what your business hypothesis is, what success looks like, and what the challenges you might face look like — and how you would respond to them. It’s like SWOT Analysis only more engaging, more thorough, and more fun.

Project Outersense This one is a fairly public self-organized project to create a Magazine from an AI Future. I’ve railed on about this. I created a draft proposal that I’ve been circulating. I’d “just do it” on my own, but I think this should be funded by committed and concerned stakeholders within the AI space because it has value beyond my own real drive and motivation to create artifacts from possible futures.