Rebecca feels bleak. The amateur is precisely that. They do it as a hobby. Your difference is you want a way to turn a passion in to a profession. Right now our graduates find good work, easily, not necessarily because of production skills but the raft of other skills and understands that you bring to the table. How to collaborate, how to work in/on the network, how to think creatively and critically even when it is all change. This is what the degree will give you, and these are the employable skills. The gifted amateur doesn’t have these.

In relation to my comment that something “turns up and things flip”. This does not dismiss design fiction. Design fiction is one way we make and think those things that will make this difference. It is only a contradiction is you want to be the person playing catch up to the world out there, or you want to contribute to helping change it.

Holly enjoyed it, and yes, it’s very Q and A isn’t it? Patrick took away the comments from Brian and Adrian about experience design, the experience economy, and that is is what you need to develop and understand (to I guess partially alleviate Rebecca’s bleakness). Shannen took away the ways in which design fiction (let’s call it speculative thinking, as I think Elliot’s observation that we have to be able to imagine and envision the future as media makers is very astute, and Brian’s recognition that design fiction lets you think very differently, and creatively, about what counts as evidence as ways to shift it out of ‘design’ and into what we do) helps you think ahead, even three years, while William remains estranged.

Jake joins the content question with double loops, crack cocaine, information and what he’s going to do next. (Notice I didn’t include Jake and crack cocaine in the link text, this is important because Google pays a lot of attention to the text that is the source of a link.) James is still disappointed, wanting more perhaps vigour, but it’s the first time so much like the first Q and A, the first IQ (which is pretty laboured), it takes time.

Kate liked the symposium in its first guise, and has written some good introductory notes around Actor Network Theory. This is a very influential theory in technology studies as it provides a way to think about the technology/ies as being participants and causal entities, without having to decide that it is all ‘defined by technology’ or ‘defined by culture’. In ANT culture and technology are actors. Samuel has a good list of take aways, particularly like the phrasing that “content is not king, connection is”. Anna also picks up the stuff about experience. This, I really don’t know how to make it plain, is also how you need to approach uni and your learning. Anyone can package the content, and there is now no scarity of access to media making tools, so that leaves the experience that we can offer. Same with media. If we can all make media, why do I use yours? Olivia, too, has a list of take aways around design, futures, and speculation. Finally, Zoe has a very succinct, but broad, list of things that mattered – agency, context, looking back to understand forwards.