When powerful people and organizations design images of the future, they are desiging a future for themselves. In that process, they leave the rest of humanity with a future that looks more like what I would call an “undesigned negative image” of those designed futures.

#Thread

This thread builds on things I’ve argued before but has been sparked by this great essay by @mockitecture (via @nils_gilman):

“If companies control the image of the future, then they control the future itself, and can control the infrastructure.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/05/jeff-bezos-elon-musk-spacex-blue-origin

When I teach courses on design futures, and specifically when I use the slightly stronger phrase in Spanish “diseño de futuros” (i.e. "design of futures"), I always put forward an idea that often encounters some pushback but is perfectly captured in the quote above by Shaw.

Design futures is not merely the use of design artifacts (and design methods) to explore and materialize images of the future. In designing images of the future, of course, one is implicitly or explicitly engaged in a project of trying to steer change towards preferable futures.

As I wrote (in Spanish) here, in doing so, one is injecting intentionality in one's relationship to possible futures and, thus, it may be argued, one is trying to "design the future." https://medium.com/@j_camachor/el-futuro-como-objeto-de-intenci%C3%B3n-73675f379c86

The pushback — which is of course quite reasonable — responds to the fact that the idea of "designing the future" sounds incredibly ambitious, hubristic, and thus somewhat naive. How could anyone aspire to "design the future" if we often fail at designing products and services?

The problem explored by @mockitecture is an excellent case in point. As he explains, "a majority of the compelling and visible ideas about tomorrow are being conceived and developed by a tiny minority of ultra-wealthy individuals and private-sector companies."

The issue, as he shows, is that this is nothing new. Corporations and powerful individuals have been doing it for decades (if not centuries) quite effectively. GM's Futurama, he explains, "contributed to the public consensus that led to the 1956 interstate highway system."

Arguably, another example of corporations' capacity to design the future (even without the need to explicitly produce images of the future) is how oil companies like Exxon knew about climate change but covered it up thus producing the present crisis in which we live. #ExxonKnew

The examples above illustrate a couple of interesting points about the problem of "designing the future."

The first point is that the problem may not be so much about the capacity of individuals and organizations to bring about the futures they prefer but that such capacity...

... is always modulated and very often erased by the capacity of other individuals and organizations to bring about the futures THEY prefer. Thus, the problem of designing the future is fundamentally a problem of distribution of power.

For this reason, it is a problem of design in general — even when it is neither focused on images of the future nor explicitly oriented towards long-term futures. Design futures, like design in general, is politics, as I argued here. https://medium.com/@j_camachor/how-design-is-politics-5418d9077df0

The second point is that when, as Shaw writes, "billionaire capitalists are designing humanity's future" they are, in fact, I would argue, merely purporting to design a future for all of humanity. In fact, as we know, they are merely designing a future for themselves.

But what happens to the rest of us when, given their greater power, these billionaires and corporations design their futures? As I argued at the top, the rest of us are left with a future that looks like an undesigned negative image of the designed futures of the powerful.

What I mean is that, when powerful agents design their preferred future, the future that remains for the powerless is composed of externalities, waste, leftovers, etc., i.e. the negative complements of the positive futures of others. Think of Elysium or the slums in Downsizing.

That is why, as @mockitecture rightly concludes, "it is crucial that we do not leave the image of the future in the deciding hands of tech billionaires." As designers and futurists, we need to empower other individuals and organizations to design their own (images of) futures.
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P.S. On that last point, empowering people to imagine futures doesn't require throwing out the baby of modernity and human hubris with the bathwater of billionaire's imagination.

The importance of that is expertly argued by @stephwakefield_ here: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/337991/anthropocene-hubris/