Designing for the Next Billion Seconds¶
Abstract/Summary
When we look into the future what do you see? Who is working with the future? Who is bringing radical love, kindness and hope to physical and digital spaces? How these universes collide and reflect our ways is signaling what kind of world we are building. Andres Colmenares, the co-founder of The Billion Second Institute, introduced the class to new terminologies and concepts like Critical Hope. This week felt like we were alchemists trying to bend time and form, even though overall impossible (depending on your lenses) the exercise opened our imagination to other ways of knowing and being.
“A call to imagine-create the conditions for the genesis of alternative, relevant and interrelated schools of (inter)thought, (inter)action and (inter)feeling. A call to enable a long-term paradigm shift towards more centered collective perceptions, imaginations and decision-making practices in everyday life.” - Andrés, Branch Magazine
Keywords
Water, More-than-human, Futures, Critical Hope, Justice, Intercitizenship, Intersectionality
We entered the classroom for the first time in 3 weeks and soothing music floated around. Andres’s first invitation: “Be like water”. He showed us a video of Bruce Lee (video below), which I was already familiar with but never thought of applying to design thinking. The crisis of the rigidity of the mind is like fog, and to see clearly during this week we had to take on water qualities, particularly its shapeshifting characteristics. To be water is all we needed to successfully integrate new concepts, futures and realities and apply them to our way of knowing and being.
This gave us an insightful perspective on what this week would entail. The more-than-human aspect of this invitation got everyone excited. These ontologies are something Andres has incorporated in his work, accompanied by the acknowledgment of his ancestors and Indigenous people all over the world, that are the embodiment of such teachings and too often neglected. The carriers and guardians of knowledge like Low-tech, Interspecies collaboration, More-Than-Human, Post-human, Nature-Based-Solutions, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and the list go on, without none to little intellectual property rights, policies that could protect their knowledge are almost non-existent, and on top of that, Indigenous people are survivors of cultural genocide and so many war crimes that could have provoked the disappearance of this knowledge libraries. To say their names and recognize their contributions were important for the class and above all it was right.
“Remembering better in terms of solidarity, intergenerational and interspecies solidarity” - Andres, Branch Magazine
Between discussions and an introduction to IAM - The Billion Second Institute, we shared information sources and references and cited great books and articles of amazing thinkers of our time, from all over the world. Leading to discussions that the class was eager to have: Why is it so hard to have knowledge sources that are not from North America/Europe? How can we apply these holistic ways of being and knowing in war and famine zones of the globe, that are familiar to so many of the students here? What is the power of storytelling? I am privileged, how can I share my privilege?
“To experience liberation, one must develop their critical consciousness so that they can learn to read the world, understand systematic and structural reasons for inequality - and imagine and then work toward - liberation for all” - Dr. Kari in Critical Hope
What is Everything? During this week, a billion seconds (30 years) was everything. A single unit of time, a second, also took on the meaning of everything. Anything is everything. Everything is anything. What a silly dilemma, but it makes sense, especially for processes - Reminder: Be water -.
The process is fundamental: the river is not an object, but a continuing flow; the sun is not a thing, but an enduring fire. Everything is a matter of process, of activity, of change (panta rhei) – Nicholas Rescher
The IAM manifesto uses the Wikipedia definition of everything:
“Everything (or every thing) is all that exists; the opposite of nothing, or its complement. It is the totality of things relevant to some subject matter. Without expressed or implied limits, it may refer to anything. The Universe is everything that exists theoretically, though a multiverse may exist according to theoretical cosmology predictions. It may refer to an anthropocentric worldview, or the sum of human experience, history, and the human condition in general. Every object and entity is a part of everything, including all physical bodies and in some cases all abstract objects.”
During our many discussions, we tried to explore concepts like Critical Ecology and Intersectionality.
With “everything” in mind the sense of time gets bendy or bendable by our imaginations. So, what would the Carolina from 2054, say to the present (2023) Carolina?
The constructed linear time vs The ever-spinning spiral. This dichotomy is an “s” problem, the small difference between “future” and “futures”, that blooms and welcomes so much more diversity and possibilities.
For the past weeks I have been digging into Futures Literacy, and here it is again! It is seeking me as much as I am seeking it.
“For the purposes of developing Futures Literacy as a skill it is helpful to distinguish between ‘the future’ and ‘futures’: ‘The future’ is a time later than now that does not yet exist and ‘futures’ are the contents humans place into that ‘later than now’ temporal frame.” - Nicolas A. Balcom Raleigh
I will also place here the introduced notion of degrowth. Something we have heard before but in a different frame of mind, some of those contexts tell a fantasy of “green growth”. Fairytales of how we can keep this economical rhythm with a sustainable business. Greenwashed capitalism… Growth Domestic Product (GDP) has to be constantly growing, unnatural and contra-natural processes that have material repercussions on the exploitation of resources. Degrowth theory defies that by valuing healthier and sustainable lifestyles that do not have their center economic growth but rather celebrate ecology, equity and intercitizenship.
These were the different proposed exercises by Andres they were set at different stages during the week helping us imagine new worlds, knowledge and oneness.
- A Day in My Post-Technological Life (2050s) What does a day in 2050 look like for the future? It is interesting how powerful the way we see and understand our future impacts so much of our present. The day I am describing would look so different if I was a refugee, at war, or fighting for basic human rights.
Minimalist Beige Cream Brand Proposal Presentation
- Opening your (intercitizen) time capsules Within a group, we told the stories that embraced degrowth and would be played out in the 2050s. The prompt was that a Time capsule of 2023 would be opened in 2050 and the differences between now and then translated principles of critical hope, intergenerational solidarity, interspecies love, and Honourable harvest principles.
Food and snacks are mainly from insects and algae