Did you miss our conversation with Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter? Register here to watch this episode of PRINT Book Club.
In Assembling Tomorrow, Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter explore the intangible forces that prevent us from anticipating just how fantastically technology can get out of control and what might be in store for us if we don’t change our tactics. If we ever needed this book, it is now, because our seemingly ceaseless capacity to create rubs up against our limited capacity to understand the impact of those creations.
Armondo Veve illustrated the book’s striking cover and interior. The dandelion on the cover might look organic at first glance, but you soon realize soon it has a mechanical quality. The ambiguity of the seeds —they could be taking flight or landing—draws your curiosity. “Dandelions don’t assemble, they disperse, and the dispersing is what leads to growth elsewhere (a different sort of assembling),” says Doorley.
Readers will enjoy the surreal nods and winks in Veve’s interior illustrations. His complex and layered approach perfectly accompanies mind-blowing expansion of the book’s main question: In the collapsing relationship between humans, technology, and the planet, what do we leave behind and what are we creating as we move along?
We’re in an era of runaway design, Carter says. It’s like a runaway train flying down the tracks. Often it will crash and cause destruction. Runaway design is invisible and we don’t know where it’s headed. Sometimes we won’t even know something has crashed, until we see the effects of the crash. This is where design fiction comes in.
Listen in to learn more about the authors’ concept of design fiction, its principles and processes, and some fascinating frameworks to consider. Carter explained that designers must use their imaginations as a way of putting ourselves in front of the train; to write versions of the future to see how we like them. In this future versioning, interesting questions arise, like:
- If you could resurrect a dead loved one, would you?
- Could you love an AI?
- Is our imagination our last private data pool?
We also delved into the importance of idea diversity, our socialized patterns, leaning away from monoculture, the startling rate at which we’re losing languages, and data’s relationship to power.
There was so much to this wide-ranging discussion with Carter and Doorley, more than we can illuminate here. We hope you’ll tune in, grab hold of a thread that connects with you, and see what questions rise to the surface.
Register here to watch the recording.
Haven’t purchased a copy of Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future, From the Stanford d.school? You can order one here.
All images by Patrick Beaudouin.