In a few hours I’ll be doing a session at SXSW ‘08 called The Futurist’s Sandbox: Scenarios for Social Technologies in 2025, with my colleagues Wayne Pethrick, Jamais Casico, Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagan. As the title suggests, we’re presenting four “experiential” scenarios that explore how social technologies might evolve over the next few decades.  What are experential scenarios? They’re scenarios that engage the audience in the narrative of the future story; as such they’re much more interesting to tell (and watch) and give you a hands-on feel for what the future might look like, rather than a written story in which you’re left to imagine the details in your head. Since we have the last session of the conference and I fully intend to go directly from there to the nearest party, here’s a sneak peak at my scenario, called Can You See Me Now?

As information technologies continue to propagate the world, the electronic exhaust of our click stream is generating unprecedented amounts of metadata.  Rather than a useless by-product however, metadata is a valuable resource, an untapped gold mine of previously invisible patterns, intentions and relationships.  How can we recycle and repurpose metadata to expose the hidden layers of connections between people, objects and environments? In the future will we use metadata judiciously, or will we create a world of information obesity?  How will social technolgies instantiate themselves in a world scaffolded by metadata?  Maybe they’ll look something like this:

The Unauthorized Lifelog of Cory Doctorow, Volumes 1 - 6 (pre-release, March 2025)

Turn objects into Blogjects with DNA Markers, customizable with your DNA

The new bling: iCandy contact lens stream up to 5000 info channels directly to your eye

The Emotional Forecast

Protect yourself against anger mobs with Anger Away!

More notes on the session and descriptions of all the scenarios will be up soon.  Many, many thanks to Pinkergreen Design for creating the above future artifacts!

I asked my 6 year old nephew recently what he wanted to be when he grew up.  After considerable pause and reflection he said: “Well, I think I’ll either be a professional football player or a paleontologist.  Or maybe I’ll fix trucks.” Ask an adult the same question and the response is usually filled with self-absorbed navel-gazing.

It’s no surprise that the youngest among us often think the most imaginatively and optimistically about the future.  So it’s great to see a project that taps into the creative genius of children, at least in part. The “Fifty Forward: Metro Atlanta’s Futures Forum,” is a planning initiative to explore possible future scenarios for Atlanta via public forums to encourage people to think about the needs and goals of the region in the future. As part of the project a group of fourth and fifth graders were asked to think what the region will be like 50 years from now and to send a postcard to the future. Here are a few:

Tristan’s Postcard to the Future

We come in peace.

We are sorry that we polluted the sky and water.

We are also sorry that we brought aliens. But, we have new transportation like flying cars, hover boards and jetpacks.

Your pal, Tristan       

Eva’s Postcard to the Future

Dear Future,

I love the way you get around!!! It’s cool how the work buildings are connected. The monorail will help a bit with the traffic accidents, since it stops everywhere.

The future is really cool!

Your friend, Eva

Michael’s Postcard to the Future

Hey you in the future,

I think there will be slides to everything so you can get to places quicker. Do you like that future?.

Cars, space ships, anything you can think of ….all you have to do is ask, and it will be yours.

And, best of all, there is a “life” tree, so you never die.

Thanks, Michael

This fabulous video compilation of postcards and interviews with the kids should be required-viewing for every lawmaker (and not just in Atlanta). One can only hope that Atlanta’s decision-makers embrace exploring the future of their city as creatively as these kids.

Just in case you didn’t know, South by Southwest Interactive just launched its interactive panel picker for SXSW 2008. The panel picker is a cool way for you to shape the programming for SXSW Interactive 08. There are over 600 panel proposals to peruse and you can vote for all of the panel proposals that you want to attend, pique your curiosity, or are proposed by folks you know. All you have to do to cast your vote is register for a *free* SXSW voting account.

Why all the info about registering and voting?

We submitted two different panel proposals:

Content 2.0: Social Media Evolved

Panelist: Sandra Burchsted, Michele Bowman, Jerry Paffendorf, and Jon Lebkowsky

Description:

Web 2.0 is transforming into Content 2.0. Learn about three social media projects that illustrate this rapidly evolving landscape; FringeHog Tags the World, an open source foresight project that’s building a visual database of trends; the Metaverse Road Map Project which explores multiple pathways to the 3D enhanced web and WorldChanging.com a network of communities that’s both virtual and physical.
Futurists’ Sandbox: Scenarios for Social Technologies in 2025

Panelist: Michele Bowman, Sandra Burchsted and Jamais Casio

Description:

What futures emerge when everything is “hyperlocal” and the boundaries between what is real and virtual disappear Take a futurists’ tour of emerging social technologies and tap into the collective genius of fellow SXSWer. In this *interactive* session, we’ll explore four scenarios about the future of social technologies in 2025.

If you find our panels interesting or if you just want to give us a five star shout out because we’re friends, we’d greatly appreciate your vote. Below you’ll find links to some of our friends who have submitted panel proposals to SXSW. Check out the 600+ proposals and take the time to give your online friends and your favorite bloggers a five star shout out. Remember, you can vote for as many as you’d like.

Thanks,

sandra

Panels proposed by our friends:

The Future is You

The Whole World is Watching