Ladies and gentlemen, let the first UNlecture begin! Well technically not the first, but it was the first with a full panel with the return of Brian, and I would say the best UNlecture so far.

Some of the questions that were covered this week:

What is the practicality of design fiction for people who are not designers? What separates it from science fiction?

It was found that there are multiple modes that seperates design ficiton from science fiction. Design ficiton is a completely future orientated practice with designers premised on making a change tomorrow, rather than thinking this is how it was done yesterday. Brian noted that design fiction lets you think very differently and creatively about what counts as evidence as a way to shift it out of ‘design’ and into what we do.

As content producers, is it more important to speculate far into the future or pay more attention to the present?

The panel noted that forecasting a trend into the future makes it less obvious on how it’s going to evolve. And that you can’t perpetrate too far into the future without seeing the problems of the present. It was interesting to note the idea of memory in the first world and how it is easier to remember how you found something than the actual information itself… and no that hasn’t happened to me…

How is a network influenced by its constituents, and how does it influence them?

For this question the types of contituents in a network needed to be identified. Such things as space, time, self, knowlege. Brian noted the idea that technology surrounds us, but also constructs us. I found this a very valid point as we seek structure in the technology we allow to influence our lives.

On the topic of structure have to say that the structure of this week’s UNlecture was far better than the previous ones, it helped to have the time built up around main questions and from that link to other topics.