The Backpack and The Device

The Backpack

Whether from a Four Futures exercise (see here) or from a different source, participants choose a desirable future. Focusing on the future they've chosen they are encouraged to imagine that a normal denizen of it slips coming down the stairs on the way to work, spilling their backpack/bag onto the sidewalk. What's in that backpack? What is the backpack itself like? What material is it, and the objects within it, made of? Which daily objects are needed to survive and thrive in their chosen future? What will the person need throughout the day? How will they (un)lock their door? Pay for coffee? Communicate with their friends? Receive work related information? How (far) will they travel? What will the weather be like? Attendees are allowed to speculate on wild technologies but should keep items "mundane" from the perspective of their future (that is, items readily available to a wide part of the population rather than to elites).

Once they have a list of objects (3-10), the attendees choose one or two objects to dive deeper into. How are these objects made? What do they cost? What company fabricates them? What are the costs associated with the items? Who sacrifices for their production? How do they shape and change the lives of those who use the objects? Here, the attendees can be encouraged to get creative, drawing logos, user-guides, branding, and so on for the one or two products they have chosen to focus on. They then present their work to the group, diving deeper with them about what it means to use the object and the likes.

For example, a backpack in a future where religion becomes extremely widespread might contain a digital book of prayers, an AR rosary, and an ever-burning votive candle. How does digitizing prayer change the relationship of the devoted to the text? How does the rosary’s ability to project images on the surrounding spaces change the role of urbanity in the religion’s practice? These are only some of the questions that can arise between the groups and help flesh out the future to which these items belong.

The Device

As an optional addition to the exercise above, The Device offers another opportunity for cross-pollination. After the participants share the results from The Backpack exercise, they choose an object from another group’s Backpack and add more detail to it. Participants should be encouraged to pick one object which the previous group did not flesh out in the previous exercise. During this process they can draw the object, think about its functions, design, worth, what it’s made of and how it was produced as well as how and how often it is used by the owner. This Device can problematize the future depicted by the previous group, add to it, reinforce it, or take it in unexpected direction but it should be relevant to it in some way (that is, don’t completely re-write the future selected by the previous group; The Device should fit in with the other objects in The Backpack).