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The Future

Whilst exiting from the Underground Station at Canary Wharf yesterday, I saw an advertisement for a well-known global bank which said “The Future is Here”.  How banal.  How meaningless.  How hollow, I thought, when the banks are in such a mess.

Last week I found a quotation which, for me describes the future in a far richer, more eloquent, more creative spirit – written in an age when true creativity mattered more than contrived cloud-based global bank adverts.

Here it is:

“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths

offered by the present,

but a place that is created –

created first in the mind and will,

created next in activity. 

The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating.

The paths are not to be found, but made,

and the activity of making them

changes both the maker

and the destinations.”

John Scharr, Futurist

The trouble is, the bank in question is my bank!  What to do?  Makes you think, anyway.

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Honey, Pumpkins and Two Ninths

What joy! In the past week we have been taking off the honey and harvesting the goldengages and runner beans that have magically grown through the summer. It is a truly magnificent time of the year!

But our biggest success is the most ENORMOUS pumpkin – grown from two (out of nine) pumpkin seeds that I planted in July sometime. (The birds ate the other seven). Here is a picture of the triffid-like plant when we got back from holiday:

Great Oaks from little acorns grow, as they say. Even businesses have to start somewhere – but the natural powers of nature still let two out of nine seeds (for the pumpkin) and two out of nine hives (for the honey harvest) do SO much better than the rest.

I wonder if there is some formula that someone has noticed about productivity and two-ninths of any system being SO much more productive than the rest?

Makes you think!

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Reasons for the Crisis: Designing for Obsolescence

In a week where the Murdoch media empire appeared to lose its power, I came across this video “The Story of Stuff”- perhaps the most important “News of the World” that Murdoch’s empire was at the heart of ignoring.

Even if you have seen it, watch it again: it will make you think again about how the world works.

It is interesting how, with the launch of Apple’s Lion operating system we are still seeing “Design for Obsolescence” as one of the main design principles from what many say is the best design company in the world. It’s time for Apple (and the rest of us) to re-think design for the 21st century so that we can close the circle, not keep pushing the 99% waste down the pipe. Designing for Pull has to be a major factor in this redesign philosophy – and something I will come back to in future posts.

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We All Live on (Almost) One Island!

Whilst researching the great Buckminster Fuller, I came across a different way of looking at the world – which is called the Fuller (or Dymaxion) Map.

For all of the separation and differences we tend to create in our world, it is sometimes encouraging for us to look at the world through a unifying lens to realise that not only do we live on one planet – but that also we all live on (almost) one island!  Makes you think….

More on this – as well as other pictures at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

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