For weekend readers, a post where I try to track down #AI and #ChatGPT #metaphors - let me know in the comments if find more blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencep…

Founders of the Future of Life Institute so concerned with 'existential risks' of AI & authors of the 'pause AI' letter met with Natanyahu a few months ago. Good thing they got $660M of crypto money to help us avoid 'AI existential risks' which apparently don't include genocide.

New post in Utopian Pulses Urban Futures Studio—Around the future in eighty worlds (inspired by Julio Cortázar)—musing about the shape we give to “the future”—is it a cone? double cone? tree? matryoshka doll?—and how this shapes what we can possibly imagine uu.nl/en/opinion/aro…

Interested in designing technologies for sensitive settings & engaging vulnerable users in design research?
Join our #CHI2024 course 'HCI Research in Sensitive Settings' w/ Maarten Houben, Sarah Foley Kellie Morrissey Rens Brankaert
More info: maartenhouben.be/chi24-course

Design researchers — do you use the DRS Digital Library? dl.designresearchsociety.org

We're looking to understand how we can improve it and would love your thoughts—a quick survey here forms.gle/XbHWZbzoqE8uxj…

New post—my notes on the utopian classroom: uu.nl/en/opinion/not…

1—TEACHING TOMORROW TODAY
2—DENYING THE 'ONE-WORLD WORLD'
3—PREFIGURING COLLECTIVE EXPECTATIONS
4—CULTIVATING UTOPIAN DESIRE
5—BECOMING UTOPIAN WITH SOCIETY

Inspired also by works of Jesse Ball & lola olufemi

Utopian Pulses: Experiments in Social Dreaming — a new blog series from Josie Chambers Urban Futures Studio, starting with an exploration of musical transformations in the context of the International Sustainability Transitions conference and its community

Steve Williams & I are curating a track for IST 2024: 'Reimagining nature and the arts in sustainability transitions'. Share widely and submit your paper by Feb 16! transitionsnetwork.org/ist-2024/call-…

In 2021 we published the first edition of 'Coding Art' a book on creative programming, written directly for artists and designers. It has been going well, so now we are delighted to announce the ✨second edition✨. #creativecoding #processing #p5js #genart

Was your paper on methods in HCI rejected at #CHI2024 ?
Implement the feedback of reviewers carefully, revise it, and submit an extended abstract to our special issue on methods in the journal Interacting with Computers.

(I do wonder if some of the obsession with voice interfaces is connected to the image of 20th-century male business tycoons with secretaries - real men don't touch buttons! they shout at someone else to touch buttons!)

A tipping-point for me. Hugely disappointed with how The RSA management is choosing to run a progressive, pioneering institution into the ground—how it treats its staff RSA Union, and now whom it (apparently) is inviting to its table. FRSA since 2008 but I can't support this.

Also grateful for the contributions Dan Dan Lockton / @danlockton.bsky.social has made to #systemicdesign via the RSDsymposium since 2017 rsdsymposium.org/?s&_sf_s=lockt…. *Personal favourite* Old Rope: Laing’s knots and Bateson’s double binds in systemic design bit.ly/3t7pBib [Cheryl May]

Glad for ImagineSustainability TU Eindhoven Industrial Design to have been able to contribute in a small way to this brilliant course from Urban Futures Studio —

I wrote about (Be)longing and the need to resignify it better in the midst of all that has been happening: jonastorrens.medium.com/6a4d4c516fa3 Thanks to Joost Vervoort 🌌 Charlotte Ballard and everyone that has helped me make feel belonging and helped me think about this along the way. Share pls!

Wonderful to launch our Creative Collectives for Utopia zine today Urban Futures Studio. Download your copy here!
uu.nl/en/research/ur…

In our latest DRSelects, we speak with Dan Lockton Dan Lockton / @danlockton.bsky.social, DRS Executive Board member, on his DRS Digital Library selections emphasising design tools for imagination and critical co-investigation. Read the full piece here: designresearchsociety.org/articles/drsel…

Great new Sustain.fm podcast from brilliant Steve Williams (Drusnoise) on how sound & music can fit together with sustainability transitions — inc interviews with Josie Chambers Nx Joost Vervoort 🌌 & me, based on the amazing IST 2023 performance
sustain.fm/radio

Our evening 'Utrecht - City of Imagination?' was the best! Around 60 participants from organizations throughout the city mapped imagination infrastructures and discussed access, power, the underground and the mainstream, and Utrecht's international role. To be continued!

Great to share my thoughts on how environmental histories connect to environmental futures, through an interview with Valeria Zambianchi of Environmental History Now. envhistnow.com/2023/11/21/env…