Things like Farday’s Cage: A Bar and Grill are designed fictional artifacts that are created to explore and provoke thought about possible futures. They are not meant to be taken literally or as predictions of what will happen in the future. The goal is to stimulate discussion and encourage critical thinking about the implications of emerging technologies and societal trends.
Much of what passes for futures work these days is trapped in a logic game of highly analytic processes, systems, and methods that grind away at the speculative and imaginative aspects of pondering possibility.
My hope is that with the new “Dispatches from the Near Future” unit of Near Future Laboratory, the increased inventory of imagination-led examples can help us recognize the value of this approach both to augment, complement, and moisten the otherwise dry commercial futures.