Well the week 1.2 workshop has been and gone, and we made it though the symposium okay! I was not on the panel, but it was interesting to see how the 30 minute discussion would play out.

I found it beneficial to hear the perspectives of both our lecturer Elliot and also Esther, Mishell, and Dan share about the readings and their interpretation of them. They discussed the differences between single and double-loop learning, the importance of blogging in learning, and learning the art of noticing.

After the symposium, we brainstormed about which functions of the blogs we would like to know how to use. Our task was then to search the internet to find out how to perform these tasks on our blogs, and then to share what we find with our classmates. I learned how to upload and embed media onto blog posts, and then wrote a post about my findings.

READINGS

The readings for next class were all about Design Fiction, and looking at how people can predict and design what may become a part of the future.

 

One useful definition calls design fiction “an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.”

Excerpt from the Torie Bosch reading.

I found the Bosch reading quite interesting to hear about Bruce Sterling’s experience with Design Fiction. Sterling said one of the most effective types of design fiction has been videos. He said a great example of this is in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a 1960’s film where an iPad-like device is used. Little did they know that 40 years later the iPad would take the world by storm!

It was also interesting to read in the As We May Think reading, how when great ideas are thought of, sometimes it takes a long time before they are economically sustainable. Vannevar Bush explained that a calculating device was invented in the 1700’s, yet at that time it was very hard to produce:

 

The  economics  of  the  situation  were  against  it:  the  labor involved  in  constructing  it,  before  the  days  of  mass  production,  exceeded  the labor  to  be  saved  by  its  use,  since  all  it  could  accomplish  could  be  duplicated  by sufficient  use  of  pencil  and  paper.

However, nowadays the economic environment allows computers and other extremely complicated devices can be rolled out and produced in such a way that a profit can be achieved.

Make sure you check out Dana’s blog on Design Fiction here.