Planned obsolescence as a future assumption

Planned obsolescence as a future assumption

Planned obsolescence is often discussed as a moral problem, and so it is. It does real damage, socially and ecologically. But it’s also something else: a future assumption baked into design. Products designed to fail, wear out, or become obsolete rely on a very...
Planned obsolescence as a future assumption

Participation is how futures become shared

Futures don’t become actionable because they’re clever. They become actionable because people recognise themselves in them. That recognition only happens through participation. That means participants speaking, listening, reacting, disagreeing, building on each...
Planned obsolescence as a future assumption

Futures don’t fail. Conversations do.

When futures work fails, it’s tempting to blame the method. Maybe the scenarios were too abstract. Maybe the time horizon was wrong. Maybe the data wasn’t robust enough. Sometimes that’s true. But more often, what I’ve seen is something else: the futures work didn’t...