April 9, 2021
Flexing Foresights Thinking around "the Future of Space" at PSU
One of our Collaboratory members this year is Sarah Kenney. Sarah is an administrative services manager for Planning, Construction and Real Estate here at PSU. As you can all imagine there is a lot happening all the time on this topic for an urban university - but as we start to understand more about a post-covid 19 PSU might look like, she's invited us to do some future thinking/planning together at our April 9 session.
This is exactly why it is so great to have a group like ours to help think through emergent challenges with a futures lens. Let's come together to explore a very real and emergent issue - how should PSU think about the future of our built and shared public space environment? Thanks Sarah for inviting us into this important conversation. We've assembled a list of signals related to what others are saying about this topic related to the future of work and the future of space on university campuses. You can find that list here.
In this session, we gathered some wonderful and useful information and creative insights around the future of on-campus physical space use. It felt good to focus on a specific "ask" for our campus wide community in this way, and the Collaboratory received many comments about how much people would like to continue using our futures muscles in some practical ways. It is clear we have "matured" as a community and the information that came forth was a really useful contribution - though there is still much to learn to "get it right" for all. We learned we especially have much to learn regarding the intersection of an equity lens and our shared built environment.
There is more to come on how this information will be used. As a next step, we're going to dive into the future of "planning" at PSU. Keep in mind that planning itself is also changing. Traditional planning relies upon (often the illusion) of some stability that simply isn't present in our ecosystem right now. There is turbulence and there are unknowns. Read this to get a sense of how complexity is influencing the way to navigate complexity in this era, and this to get a sense of the limits of traditional planning.
More ...
Our own PSU (and partners) EXITO team put together a page of resources to support each other and keep learning/working for justice during the Chauvin trial. Here’s the link. Some good things here during a very hard time.
Now is the last best chance to confront the climate crisis. (New from Rolling Stone - good article)
Special podcast: ‘A 2030 to long for’ - and a theory to share. (Great overview of time travel and observations from the year 2030)
The slow violence of emerging technologies
Six ways to think long-term: A cognitive toolkit for good ancestors
When google drive goes down (relevant to PSU - are we ready if this happened to us?)
Black grief, white grievance: Artists search for racial justice (A hallmark of future work - if you want to study the future - listen to the artists)
The grief crisis is coming (for each person that dies of covid-19, experts say there at least nine others immediately impacted - are we ready?)
The remote college experience: More than just Zoom fatigue
What does it mean to decolonize the future?
AI is coming for your most mind numbing office tasks
Female professors have less time to do research in the pandemic
Edelman Trust Barometer 2021 (fascinating international survey done for over 20 years tracking public trust. Business replaces government as the most trusted social institution…
Surveillance Capitalism 101 - this is an hour long webinar I heard. It is really a powerful and among the most powerful, clear and indicting overview of shifts in power away from democracy and towards platform economies I’vc heard. It is worth your time.