Detroit Imagines Harder
October 16-18, 2024
The Future Of Work
A Design Fiction Summit & Workshop
We're all wondering for one reason or another: what is the future of work?
It's a very good question — with no clear answers, only hopes, fears, dreams, dread about what we call ‘work’ might become.
• How might we organize ourselves in the future in order to collectively create value? What are we creating?
• How are we creating value? What kind of tooling, actions, mindsets, ways of knowing are being put to task?
• What are valued skills in this future? How are these skills obtained? How has the purpose of what today we call ‘education’ evolved?
• How does value circulate in a future we'd like to inhabit? Is there a future in which ‘a job’ means something different to the point that ‘job’ is in the dictionary as "archaic usage"?"
Our approach is to use Design Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Futures Design and Imagination to explore possible evolutions of the ways in which humans (and collaborating non-humans) might organize themselves to create meaning and value.
Our intent is not to predict or prognosticate. We do not want to create a fantasy utopian vision nor a comic book dystopia. Rather we want to imagine into worlds that feel plausible as well as those that push at the edges of what could be and what we would like to inhabit.
Our expansive understanding of ‘work’ cannot just assume that boxes-and-arrows type organizations of human potential are the only, or the future of what it is to create meaning and value. The history of the company reminds us that this is one amongst way of organizing ourselves, and it will not be the last. What are possible futures that make sense beyond the perceived efficiencies of the 'company' organization. Are there efficient arrangements that redefine 'efficient' in a way that makes work not feel like ‘work’, for example? What has the experiments and prototypes around decentralized organizations both on- and offline taught us about novel arrangements of human activity?
These and other questions will be central to our discussions. These are meant to be generative towards our hands-on workshop activites to begin to give shape and form to the discussions through the creation of an artifact that feels like it has come from the futures we describe and imagine.
Our objective with Detroit Imagines Harder is very much similar: through discussion, reflection and hands-on making/sketching activities we intend to create an artifact from a possible future that represents the future of work.
“TBD Imagines Harder” had as its creative goal the production of a product catalog from the future that represents that hopes, fears, dreams, and dreads through ‘products’.
Detroit Imagines Harder's goal is the creation of an employee handbook/manual that represents the evolution of what was once called ‘a job’.
The Future Of Work: Some Provocations
Q: What is a world in which ‘employee’ is a quaint, old-fashioned notion of what it is to participate in value creation?
Q: Whereas once it was a paycheck that was an exchange of value representing an employees contribution, in this Design Fictional world, what are ways that value is circulated?
Q: What is a world in which the objective isn't to not work, nor to avoid work. Rather, a deep and meaningful engagement with participation results in one being in collaboration with the structures and organizing principles of what was once called ‘work’.
Q: What is a world in which ‘employee’ is a quaint, old-fashioned notion of what it is to participate in value creation?
Activities
Facilitated Discussion & Ideation focussed on creating material and assets to construct a Design Fiction Artifact that feels like it has come from this possible future.
Using a Design Fictional approach, we will translate discussions and ideation exercises into active, hands-on construction, worldbuilding through the fabrication of of content and associated assets necessary to bring the ‘employee manual/handbook’ to life.
Success Condition
Create the framework, flatplan, structure, and bones of the content of a Design Fiction artifact that has come from a possible future: An 'Employee' Handbook describing the details and particulars of this new mode of organization and collective value creation.
Join us.
Detroit's Famous 'The Jam Handy' Event Venue
We will be situated in an iconic building that sits on East Grand Boulevard, tucked away in New Center which serves these days as a performing arts center and art gallery. This Gothic-Revival structure is an iconic building from Detroit's early film industry. It was utilized as a film production sound stage from the 1930s to 1960s by a company called the Jam Handy Organization. The company specialized in industrial films, filmstrips, and other av aids - and was established in the early 1920s by Olympic Swimmer Jamison Handy. He is remembered for developing the filmstrop medium and creating industrial films and training films for General Motor and the United States Armed Forces. Today, the building is one of the only remaining relics of the Jam Handy Organization and a reminder of Detroit's once ambitious film industry.
2900 East Grand BoulevardRecommendations for hotel accomodations.
* The Inn on Ferry Street (Preferred)* Aloft at the David Whitney
Logistics
The majority of our activities will be in Detroit proper from Wednesday mid-morning through Friday late-morning, with special off-site activities being arranged Friday, TBD.
Let's Ignite the Next Creative Renaissance
Let's Future More Habitable Worlds
It's Time To Imagine Harder
Details
✓ Scholarships Are All Gone!
✓ Got A Team? Let Us Know.
✓ Want To Participate As A Sponsor? Let Us Know.
✓ Space is super limited. Reserve your spot now 👇🏽