I’m talking with Andy King, from the soon-to-be-opened Museum of Bristol, this Saturday at the Arnolfini. We’re going to be “In Conversation” as part of their Futurology programme, and I think it should be really interesting. I hope so, anyway, as it’s a public event.

I mailed Andy with some thoughts about what we could talk about, and I’m going to put them here as well, in case we don’t get round to them: I think some of them are things I’d like to follow up.

So, I’ve been thinking about what history and futures studies have in common, and what makes them different, and it seems to me that in each case there’s a kind of common-sense assumption about the discipline (if that’s not too grand a word for futures studies) and the way it works that might not be how it seems to those who try and practise it.

For example, a common-sense view of history might be: things actually happened a certain way in the past, and the historian’s job is to find out what that was as accurately as possible. But actually, my sense is that historians are very finely attuned to the idea that there as many pasts as there are historians, and each age’s view of what happened before it says as much about the dominant ideas of the time as it says about previous events.

Similarly, a common-sense view of the practice of looking at the future might hold that things will turn out a certain way and no other, and that if we know enough about present circumstances we can say confidently what that might be. But actually, most respectable futures practitioners would say that dominant ideas about the what the future might be say more about the attitudes and assumptions of the age in which they emerged than about the way things might be in the future, and that it’s more useful to consider a range of possible alternative futures.

So there’s something both have in common, perhaps – trying to counter dominant popular ideas about what each discipline is for – and a difference – futures studies might focus more on examining alternatives.

Or perhaps another talking point could be around the way time is represented in each. I don’t know very much about how historians discuss the representation of time, but from the perspective of someone trying to talk usefully about the future it’s been fascinating to see the ways different models of how time works shape conversations about the future (sometimes ‘the future’ is waiting for us, presumably having started at the other end of time’s arrow and travelled backwards to meet us; at others, it never arrives, being perpetually deferred to be invoked as a call to action in the present).

Ethics might be another interesting area of discussion: how far ought we, as people who talk about people who for various reasons are not with us at the present moment, whether because they’re dead or not yet born, to extend the respect we show living people to people of the past or the future? If rights to privacy, respect, understanding and so on are universal, shouldn’t they be extended through time? But is there a difference in the degree to which they’re entitled to such rights between people who have lived and people have yet to live?

Another useful area to think about might be to consider what each discipline offers to society: what use is it to talk about the past or the future? Are there different arguments for each, or are there general arguments to do with enlarging our understanding of the way in which people and societies work that support both?

We could move from that into thinking about the ways each act as a force of authority within society: the weight carried by ‘tradition’, the effect of ‘government forecasts’, the self-fulfilling prophecies of science-fiction and the ways historical dramas rewrite and refine national identities.

There’s maybe something to be said about the balance between detail and timescale, the ways in which it’s harder perhaps to be detailed the further one moves from the present (until you get far enough away to say what you like). Or a discussion about the way each generation thinks it’s the first to have ever lived in the present (those beforehand must have known they lived in history, and the ones after us must surely know that they live in the future). Or maybe just a recognition that both of them are attempts to answer questions that lie at the heart of trying to understand our place in the world: asking “what happened? What will happen?” is a fundamentally human thing to do.

Let me know how appealing any of these conversations are, or what alternatives we could consider. We could do worse, I suppose, by just telling each other what we do all day. I’d love to know more about your
work.

So there we are – that’s what we’ll talking about, I hope, for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon. Come along!

I’m trying out Chrome for a bit, and liking it enough to get over my dislike of using products from the Man: it’s clean and fast, and seems to do everything I ask it well. It’s like a web butler. But one of the things I’ve noticed about it is that its default homepage is changing the way I browse.

Like Opera, the homepage has nine slots in it, for screenshots of pages you find useful so you can click on them and get going. I like it in Opera, and thought quite hard about which sites I wanted to include (mail and twitter, obviously, and this blog, and work webmail, and a couple of other things). But in Chrome I don’t think I have that choice: it looks at my history and decides which ones I like most.

And as a result I’ve noticed that I spend less time on trivial or just plain uncool sites, in case someone sees my homepage and thinks that what I like. I’m sure that over time my “most visited” will be a genuine reflection of the sites that are most useful to me. But in the meantime, I’m a bit disturbed to find how easily I regulate my behaviour if I think other people will see it.

I just read this while meant to be doing something else, so I’m making a quick note to myself before getting back to work. Turning objects into addressable things with URLs and RFIDs and persistant identities is more possible now than ever, and lots of designers have been excited about it for a while. But is this a healthy thing? Don’t we fetishise and worship and reify things enough? Islam teaches that we don’t properly own anything, that we borrow any object we use from God. Buddhism spends most of its time showing you how attachment leads to suffering: most ethical systems will point out that worrying too much about material things and ownership is a step backwards. But that particular post seemed to me to represent a desire to make a possession even more of a possession.

Wouldn’t it be nice if these properly-made things were only sold to collectives, instead of being made into fetish objects for individual brand junkies? Even the “contract” between the owner and the eventual inheritor is speaking the middle-class aspirational heirloom language of Patek Phillippe (whose slogan was something like “you don’t own a Patek Phillippe watch, you merely look after it for the next generation”), belying the carefully homespun outdoorsyness of the brand: it’s for you, then your kin, not for anyone else. It’s wonderful to think that something’s being made with thought and consideration of how to use materials best: it’s depressing to think their message seems to be mainly about one person hanging on to it for longer.

I am of course being monstrously unfair to the post’s author (fortunately very few people read this and most of them would take his side over mine), and the explicit point of the post was to talk about the product having a story, not the person. And if the story ends up being about how many people the bag’s helped, or where its different owners have taken it, I’m wrong and I’ll enjoy reading it. Though I guess that would mean leaving the username and password of the tumblelog in the bag (how could a thing log itself in to a web service?). I think I just get a bit bored by stories from corporates that seem radical and positive and end up helping people to reinforce the consumption and product fetishisation habits that got us in trouble in the first place. I suppose if I need to carry something maybe I could work on having enough friends to borrow a bag from, if I really want to be sustainable?

Stinking hippy. Not going that far. And I spent a lot of money on a bag that I hope lasts me a long time myself. But I didn’t pay extra for being told it would last: I just tried to buy something that was well-made.

Not even going to start thinking about how sad it is that making a product that doesn’t instantly fall apart is a design event that commands such astonishing prices.

Off chest, back to work.

Singapore doesn’t feel like a place whose inhabitants spend much time thinking about the impact of their activities on the environment: there’s an emphasis in the media and advertisements on straightforward, no-nonsense consumerism, with none of the morally ambiguous efforts to persuade people to spend lots of money on green products seen over here. In the UK, I’d expect an advert for a loan or mortgage to feature someone looking towards the horizon with a beatific air of fulfillment: in Singapore, the DBS ads feature a man in the back of a limo with champagne and two models, grinning manically at you, someone who doesn’t have either and is standing at a cashpoint. Straightforward.

And yet there seems to be a widespread awareness that Singapore is a place that can’t afford to be profligate. Space is short. Resources are limited. Ministers are photographed drinking recycled water to persuade people that it poses no risk (Singapore wants to become less dependent on Malaysia for its water supply). So is Singapore going to be somewhere I can behave with some kind of environmental responsibility, tapping into traditions of Confucian husbandry, or is it going to be some kind of karmic descent into branded selfishness?

So far, of course, I’ve got no idea. I’ve found two carbon offsetting sites, Climate Care and Carbon Neutral, who can help you support projects that will offset the emissions from your flight (and calculate the amount of CO2 your flight chucked out – my flight to Singapore and back from Christmas will emit 2.4 tonnes according to Carbon Neutral and 3.24 tonnes according to Climate Care, costing about £25 to offset), so at least my journey there is better than it was.

Once I’m there, I can recycle (helping the government acheive their Green Plan), read about living well in Singapore and look at a green map of Singapore , with recycling points and ecological tourism destinations marked. Probably the most useful site I’ve found so far, though, is the Singapore Environment Council site, with a whole lot of information on green groups and activities.

On a more corporate scale, there’s a Singapore Green Business Alliance, promoting “environmental protection, best practice and cooperation amongst companies based in Singapore”. The National Environment Agency site is pretty clear, as well, and if I want to actually hire someone to do something about making my business more environmentally aware, the Green Pages have a long list. Surprisingly, my new bank also seem pretty committed, offering advice on responsible business to SMEs.

So it looks like I can at least make an effort to reduce my impact on the environment. In fact, it looks like I can do so to the same degree I do in the UK, which isn’t really very much aside from recycling things and buying local food. Maybe in Singapore I’ll be less lazy and a bit more proactive. Or maybe Singapore’s consumer culture will encourage Fresh and Wild to move over here and I can carry on as I am.