Near Future Laboratory

Near Future Laboratory defined, developed, and practices an approach to foresight, strategy, research, and design called Design Fiction. We use this approach to discover futures, chart the unexpected and transform opportunities into new and tangible forms. Our purpose is to make products from the future to help unlock the human potential to imagine tangibly and vividly the possibilities for creating more habitable near future worlds.

Free

This is your way to get an invitation to the Near Future Laboratory Discord, access to weekly AMA Office Hours, and Discounts on events like General Seminar, Super Seminar, and the Design Fiction Debrief. Simply support this tier and you should receive an invitation through Patreon. In case that breaks, contact me directly via <a href="https://www.julianbleecker.com/contact" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.julianbleecker.com/contact</a> or my email address at nearfuturelaboratory.comOffice Hours are announced in the Near Future Laboratory Discord server if you would like to stop by, which occur weekly on Fridays at 9am PST (UTC-7).

Discord + Office Hours + Event Discounts

This is your way to get an invitation to the Near Future Laboratory Discord, access to weekly AMA Office Hours, and Discounts on events like General Seminar, Super Seminar, and the Design Fiction Debrief.Simply support this tier and you should receive an invitation through Patreon. In case that breaks, contact me directly via <a href="https://www.julianbleecker.com/contact" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.julianbleecker.com/contact</a> or my email address at <a rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">nearfuturelaboratory.com</a>Office Hours are announced in the Near Future Laboratory Discord server if you would like to stop by, which occur weekly on Fridays at 9am PST (UTC-7).Design Fiction is the practice of creating tangible and evocative prototypes from possible near futures, to help discover and represent the consequences ofdecision making.Over the last fifteen years, Design Fiction has grown broadly in adoption and impact. My book, <a href="http://themanualofdesignfiction.com/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">The Manual of Design Fiction</a>, co-authored with three collaborators and our editorial team at <a href="https://folio.no-media.co/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">No Media Co</a>, was written with a sense of urgency. That urgency is undergirded by my premise that it is now, more than ever, absolutely vital that we spend more time actively sensing into possible futures with a reinvigorated set of sense-making skills and more expansive mindsets.From climate change and economic instability to rising inequality and the fragility of democratic institutions, we face a panoply of uncertainties. For too long major decision makers have largely treated the future as a matter of business modeling, an engineering problem, some sort of sexy vision exercise, or a savvy marketing campaign to build anticipation around future products. We urgently need alternative frameworks, approaches, and mindsets for decision making that can see into possible futures more broadly, and consider solutions along with their risksand implications.Design Fiction is now recognized as a powerful and evocative new approach for doing futures work. It is in wide use by creative teams, strategy organizations, decision makers, and others to see and sense more vividly, and to create compelling prototypes and representations of what could be.It's now time to Imagine Harder. Your support here on Patreon goes towards our independent construction of frameworks, tool kits, communities, and products to help us all Imagine Harder.

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