working notes of Future Fabulators

• prediction_markets
• can we use predictions to help separate/isolate important, predictable events within a “A Nonpredictive View of the World”? (cf. fragility → robustness → antifragility)
• what is the question? can it be answered diceisively at a particualr point in the future? what is at stake? what are the consequences or impacts?

• divination / invocation

20140206 Having done several scenario workshops, it seems that the most powerful aspect of the process is the realisation that people usually live in multiple scenarios today - which makes them laugh in recognition, but also helps distill the issues very quickly. How 'futuristic' or accurate the scenario narratives end up being doesn't seem to matter so much. The realisation about their present situation already gives a sense of awareness what's going on and where they'd like to be. It makes the future more open or malleable in a way. So for us the question is how do we emphasise and support this renewed sense of agency? Prehearsals, scenario testing, 'how do we get from here to there' excercises are a good start, but more research is needed.

20140205 While editing scenarios on the libarynth it became apparent how tricky it is to keep a consistency in information and layout of the scenarios. The scenario database we're planning to make should make this easier. Components that seem to be needed in all scenarios:

• what is the question?
• what are the scenario axes?
• sometimes we have a short answer to the question (usually created after making the scenarios)
• how far in the future does the scenario take place?
• scenario description
• genaral image(s)
• more specific/clarifying images
• links to the pages of related scenarios (and a 'parent' page that describes the workshop goals etc. - not sure if we should include this in the database?)

should we try to contextualise the scenarios directly in the database?

• a section with links to projects/theories/examples of (the beginnings of) this scenario already taking place today
• section on how the scenario is turned into a prehearsal (could be in the form of a 'day in the life of…“?
• reflections on the prehearsal
• etc.

or should we keep the database only as a 'short story collection'?

• open formats > closed formats
• utf-8 > ascii/latin-1/etc+
• documents
  • utf-8 text or ODF (libreoffice, openoffice) for editable docs
  • pdf for reference & archiving
  • VUE for diagrams
• semi syncronous; email, twitter, irc (freenode → #ff ?)
• asyncronous; dokuwiki, django, gitlab
• algorithmic sketching; racket, common lisp, python, git
• online
  • libarynth for text, tangents and collation → http://libarynth.org
  • flickr for image matter → https://secure.flickr.com/photos/foam/
  • vimeo for video matter → http://vimeo.com/fo4m
  • zotero for library and references → https://www.zotero.org/groups/foam_library
• potentially
  • tumblr, cargo, diasp, other?
  • prediction book
  • wikipedia

• various scifi threads re. possible future cultures, shifting relation between humans & their environment, exploration of 'biosphere dividend'. near and far futures
  • bloom, ventus, mars trilogy, incrementalists, etc+
  • “A History of the Future in 100 Objects ” » notes and quotes
  • 'the culture' (iain_m_banks)
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture
    • notes_on_the_culture
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ideas_in_science_fiction
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_ideas_in_science_fiction
• The Hermetic Library reading room » http://hermetic.com/reading-room/
• Erwin Wagenhofer's movie about the crisis of creativity in education: http://www.alphabet-film.com/
• Christine Wilks talking about text as a way for developing character depth; http://www.riders-project.net/research/videos/christine-wilks-taking-text-out-of-the-box.html (This probably belongs elsewhere, but…)
  • performing text on screen
  • Varytale http://varytale.com
  • “Text becomes the equivalent of subtitles” - is this a good thing?
  • Very based around computer games.
  • “Character is a black box” - in PNs, we can only be based on interpretation based on behaviour and its artefacts, not on explicit exposure, unless we have things like “Dear Diary…”
  • Note: Prehearsals are first person narratives, PNs are third person. Thus a Prehearsal can have “more” introspection in some sense.