Another one about the future and disruptive technology. Bruce Sterling on Beyond the Beyond refers to the When Everything is Programmable Digital Stories of the Institute for the Future. It’s a nice example of the use of vernacular video (video by Howard Rheingold) for telling provocative but plausible stories about the future.
Not only the content interests me here, but also the narrative format which is being used in order to enable discussions and hence the preparation of those possible futures. I guess it would be possible to integrate virtual environments to help telling these stories or to discuss them.
Even though I did not do it on this occasion, note how easy it is to re-publish these videos using the embed-code, while it would be far more difficult or impossible to do so with a 3D immersive environment.
I’d like to add a little note here regarding the importance of making it easy and straightforward to distribute information and experiences. In fact, week 8 of the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course (CCK09) was about Openness and Transparency. We discussed Alan Levine’s project Amazing Stories of Openness, which does just that: telling the stories of great things which happen when people, institutions, companies en organizations open up. Of course, there is much more to be said about this (as whether it sometimes is not preferable to have a walled garden, and what business models openness makes possible or impossible).
Roland Legrand