so, yesterday marked the first unlecture that i thought really felt like an unlecture. we had prewritten questions that were all very relevant to what this course is about (rather than “Why do we have to come to this?”), many good points and contributions from the symposium team and also people asking and having their questions answered within the lecture itself. my main point, it was a very enjoyable and informative 50 minutes.

my favourite idea from the discussion was adrian’s explanation of the “wicked problem – a problem with no simple or single solution. where any response may cause other problems” and that design fiction is important in this area because it is not limited to straight, singular answers but can think broadly and more adaptbly (not a word but let’s roll with it). this idea linked in again with the ideas of the speculative thinking of design fiction and why we are studying this course in this method. the world is changing. as adrian said “print changed the world” and now the internet is doing it again and we are all getting pulled along for the ride. we need to think about what the future will be and look like. what we will be doing and how and where and when and what. what will our jobs look like in 5, 10 or 15 years? everything could and probably will be different.

another interesting point was that “content is not king”. people pay for the experience and a platform that can provide the content that people want will make the money, not the content itself. because the content can be replicated but the outlet to access that content is what is unique. we live in an ever changing society and if we want to succeed we need to find that edge up on the millions of people who can just create content with the technology readily available to them. we need to utilise the possibilities of design fiction and speculation in order to be prepared for the future of our industry. and then we’ll have to do it all again5 years later.

(trying to get my blog posts shorter. getting there but not quite just yet. as you’ve probably noticed, i tend to go on and on a lot. there is just so much you could write about. but i want to try and keep theses short, or they have the possibility of never ending. here i go ranting again. ok. imma stop now)