metamodernity

🎵 Next to Hudson Yards, it's crowded on the weekdays From April to May Parse apart a troubled heart from an e-train And sing about it in LA

With clouds in the rearview You start humming along to the first verse Of your favorite song that you quote each day With the words all wrong

So call me when the world looks bleak I love you, but it’s hard to believe With every day, we'll start to see The rest is metamodernity

With agrestic charm, it's humid in the Midwest From June to July All beneath a pinkish sky from the wildfires Which mantle the horizon line

From the outset It’s been hard to tell why we feel this down When it all bodes well You might also like

So call me when the world looks bleak I love you, but it's hard to believe With every day, we'll start to see The rest is metamodernity

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Metamodernism is what lies after Post-Modernism.

Although, that’s weird to hear, and also weird to write. It’s hard to think about Post-Modernism being over, especially considering it’s taught as the canon of current design.

Isn’t that exactly the problem though? Post-Modernism was an answer to Modernism, ironic, satirical, cynical, and real. We saw the rise of modernity get picked apart, we challenged white narratives and canons established by centuries of colonization, we saw styles such as abstraction and grunge take complete hold over an entire generation of artists and designers. People were no longer conforming to the little white checkboxes society had placed them within.

“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead…”

— Joyce Messier, Disco Elysium (2019)

Post-Modernism has essentially become just as subservient to the majority narrative that any previous narrative before it has. The style is no longer breakout, the ideas no longer resistance by nature. Abstraction and deconstruction are taught in the classroom just as minimalism and grid-systems are. Major companies like Nike appropriate the postmodern style, consumer television shows such as The Simpsons and South Park in America for example use postmodern humour. The music of many modern artists in the 90s by example critiqued our way of living with various messages and phrases. Basically, the ideas and concepts of postmodern thought are ingrained in everyday life whether we acknowledge them or not.

The shift to Metamodernism happened when we moved from the ironic and cynical, to still acknowledging those ironies while simultaneously looking for a moment of genuineness or honesty. All movements be it Postmodernism or Metamodernism, it is a structure of feeling. Both tie into a general cultural relationship with all things in society, and they could even be considered their own philosophies.

Postmodern, defined by Frederik Jameson in “POSTMODERNISM: The Cultural Logic of Late Stage Capitalism” is the sensibility of the end times, the end of history, the end of ideology, the end of society, the end of everything. On the contrary, Metamodernism is the sensibility of post-irony, new forms of sincerity, and informed Naiveté.

“To give an analogy, if modernism was the absolute belief in the building of Babel, and postmodernism was the realisation that it cannot be built, metamodernism can be thought of as the engagement in building it with the knowledge that it is a flawed or unachievable task.”

— The Role of the (Graphic) Designer, Metamodernism.com

Metamodernist realize the futility of a battle against a metaphorical god, the Sisyphusian task of attempting to fight against a system so powerful and large (which also ties into the Metamodernists direct relation to leftist thought and theory), and still chooses the attempt to create a better solution knowing that there may never be a fruit that bears out of the labor done.

The term “Meta” coincides the it’s Greek origin, meaning “Between”, “After”, or “Beyond.” Thus, Metamodernism oscillates between between modernist and postmodernist, and beyond to something entirely different. It doesn’t take allegiance with either side, and properly points out the pros in each as well as the cons. It is a return to the elegant big narratives established by modernism, but with the added irony and sentiment of the postmodern. Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker stated in their 2010 article:

“Ontologically, metamodernism oscillates between the modern and postmodern. It oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between the hope and melancholy, between naivete and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity.

Each time the metamodern enthusiasm swings towards fanaticism, gravity pulls it back towards irony; the moment its iron sways towards apathy, gravity pulls it back to enthusiasm.”

— Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, 2010

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But why is Postmodernism over? Well it’s simple, can we describe the rising and bubbling over of internet culture, memes, Tik-Tok, and many more examples as postmodernist? If the answer to that is no, then what can we describe them as?

The application of metamodern thought does not only apply to internet culture, however, as we see a shift in work that exists in culture yet struggles to identify with a single movement. Notable examples could include Wes Andersons and Spike Lees films, Bo Burnhams music and documentary “Inside”, and music such as my often linked band Vansire. I would strongly argue that our Alumnx Heather Snyder Quinn applies heavily towards this as well. These artists were using postmodern mediums and means, but not exactly reaching postmodern ends. Not everything was a cynical effort to expose and disillude, but often aimed towards creating a sincerity or connection with the topic.

We define this in layers, starting at layer 1 and moving through layers as we continue to get closer to the self. If Layer 1 is a published piece of art, then Layer 2 reflects that, looking upon it in a modernist framework of surface level meanings and intention. Layer 3 then confronts the other Layers with cynicism and nihilistically attacks the reason or existence of the art, such as how postmoderism would approach it. When we arrive at Layer 4, we deconstruct the postmodern thought, where we become more vulnerable and earnest about the work and why we attacked it. Layer 4 and beyond would become the Metamodern, what we see as deconstruction of deconstruction as a means to a reconstructive end.

I think it’s important to note that the point in the modern age we live in is unpredictable and always changing. To that point maybe metamodernity is about the adaptation and working around the new challenges brought on upon by post-capitalist society. The metamodern framework is simply a way of interpreting this new sensibility we see in art and design, and is not considered a movement in the sense of what we would call postmodernism. As the modern age continues, we will keep trying to interpret and understand it and find value in our new discoveries.

the modern western world

🎵 From turnpikes to highways And gravel into dust From soybeans to silhouettes advancing in the dusk Sky above I fell in love while I was sitting still The rate at which the Rust Belt fades to Appalachian hills, oh

Drive south as history unfolds The awe-inspiring, death-defying, meta-modern world Take my word, I think we'll be alright Lost myself along the way, but had the greatest time I'll pass you somewhere in the night*

A stranger out in Utah gestures towards the muddy car He said, "Hey are you nomads?" "Did you come from somewhere far?" I said, "I don't know man, but it feels that way today" This highway is the last breath of an empire in decay

Drive south as history unfolds The all-providing, soon expiring, modern western world Take my word, I think we'll be alright Lost myself along the way, but had the greatest time I'll pass you somewhere in the night

In their 2022 album “The Modern Western World” by Vansire, as well as it’s title song by the same name, Vansire sings fondly of travelling through the Rust Belt (A region in mid-northwestern America known for it’s industrial collapse and old industrial buildings, now decaying and rusted.) Throughout the video, they use the imagery of places they’ve been like such as the Skyline of Minneapolis and the Highways of Pittsburgh in a “Found Footage” aesthetic that matches the folky and melancholic style of the song.

The album itself is experimental in the sense of it’s progression in it’s own sound. From the beginning, the album presents a folk-like indie sound that progressively adapts and changes as the album goes on into a more modern listening experience. Eventually, the album becomes filled with rappers, electronic music, and more to sell the idea of moving more towards Metamodernity.

But what is Metamodernity?

In it’s roots, Metamodernity is that of the new contemporary feeling. It’s our position in a new era of design now that we have seen post-modernism take it’s course. Metamodernity applies to more ways of thinking than design. It can be about society, or the greater category of “art” as a whole. Rather than approach the concept of design from the idea of working solely for clients and commission based work, designers are finding themselves working more in their own interests and towards goals or personal issues they want to challenge. In Jack Clarkes article “The Role of the (Graphic) Designer…”, he says:

This new venture has materialized, at least in part, through an increased movement towards de-specialization and authorship (i.e. non-commissioned work) within the field, a development that has ultimately lead to an extension and acceptance of the idea of the ‘professional amateur’ as a legitimate occupation.

Jack Clarke, “The Role of the (Graphic) Designer…”, 2015

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And how does that apply to Design Fiction and myself?

Essentially, we’re seeing modern design take the deconstruction of post-modernist design, and then reconstruct it in metamodernism from a new lens to convey a new message or to provide a warning or insight on a cultural issue. In many ways, this could be considered antithetical to the post-modern doctrine, because metamodernism is actively adding narrative and constructing a worldview on a topic or idea, rather than attempting to deconstruct the idea of design.

Design Fiction, in that sense, feels intrinsically related to Metamodernity in my mind. But what separates a critical perspective of design fiction from a classic dystopian game, or book, or any sort of world created from an artistic medium? If we break down the idea of design fiction into it’s definition, Design fiction is ”a design practice aiming at exploring and criticizing possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts.”

Is the writing I did in my previous writing “Virtual Insanity” design fiction? Are the brands, technologies, and worlds that I imagined for this idea something that should be pursued as tangible products realized through a digital lens like blender?

What are the limits of Design Fiction?

Can Music be design fiction?

Can Archeology be design fiction?

Can a Video Game be design fiction?

So let’s think about some of the content I interact with often, from the lens of games and music. I think it’s quite easy to find design fiction in a game due to the nature of the props and objects within the game.

Sugar Bombs Advertisements, Fallout 4

Sugar Bombs Box Art Layout, Fallout 4

RAD-X Label, Fallout 3

Rad-X Pill Bottles, Fallout 3

Nuka Cola soda brand advertisement and metal sign, Fallout 4

We’ve talked about the post-apocalyptic world of fallout before, but I find that the props inside of the game are fascinating due to their branding and concepts being entirely based around nuclear power and radiation, this is of course due to the pre-war reliance of society on nuclear power that sustains everything around them.

In this concept for a post-nuclear power America, the designers view the people within the world as so reliant on “the gift of the nukes” that we design our food, cars, robots, and brands around them. The same can be said for this chilling “Desiccated Sustenance Bar” from Half-Life: Alyx, a VR game from 2020.

Real life prop version of the in game “Desiccated Sustenance Bar” from Half Life: Alyx

The bar reads “Desiccated Sustenance Bar - Water Flavor”, the “brand” of the bar is a abstract CMB, a shorthand for Combine, which is the alien race that invaded earth in the Half-Life series and enslaved humans. The alt-text reads “100g - Once seal is broken, consume within 9000 days”

But beyond this, beyond logos and packages with futuristic dystopian ideas on them, can the game itself they came from be design fiction? Can the world of the video game Disco Elysium itself be a form of design fiction? A game is created by a designer, a concept by a designer, the sound of the world by a designer, are they excluded from what we know as design fiction?

How about a song?

Let’s think of the song “Jet Set Classic”, by artist 2 Mello. The song is part of the album “Memories of Tokyo-To” (2018) and distinctly identifies itself as connected with the world of “Jet Set Radio” (2000), in this conceptual album for the game, it expands on the world-building and relationships in the game while sounding stylistically similar to the games original soundtrack created by Japanese producer Hideki Naganuma.

In Game Screenshot from Jet Set Radio on the GameCube

The world of Jet Set Radio revolves around the gangs and street culture of a futuristic Tokyo called Tokyo-To. The characters fight the authoritarian systems of power, skate around on inline skates, and tag graffiti over the walls of the city. The distinct art style (the first cel-shaded game ever made, in fact) as well as the iconic music with a unique and not seen before style led to a cult following behind the game itself and Hideki Naganuma’s music. The most interesting thing, however, is that the artist 2 Mello and the album itself has absolutely no connection to Jet Set Radio or the music producers of the game.

I argue that 2 Mello, in a sense, has created a “design fiction” where he has lovingly designed more world-building and story around the game within a completely authentic and accurate soundscape that could fit directly in with the original, and at the same time distinctly sounds like his work. He weaves stories and ideas into concepts explored in the game, such as gentrification, running from police, the culture behind the street gangs, and even using the iconic DJ figure “Professor K” from the game to deliver the lines in Jet Set Classic, feeding into the idea that everything the player and listeners hear is being broadcast right from the studio in Tokyo-To, Jet Set Radio.

Connecting all of this in, I think I want to set out on a idea of creating a “world” of which I can operate and create my own design fictions in through the various mediums of writing, graphic design, time-based media and more to attempt to create an authentic, dystopian, warning to people of the dangers of continuing along the path we tread.

An awe-inspiring, death-defying, meta-modern world where the people and places within it reflect the current worlds problems and troubles. Something about all of this design fiction stuff just tickles my brain in a way I seem to really enjoy, the contemplative and questioning nature of it fun to explore and dive into.

the signs

Today I was thinking a lot about a game I’ve slowly been playing over time called Disco Elysium. It’s a Story-based RPG set in a failed capitalist society that is facing abject poverty and crime rates at an all time high. You take the place of a detective who is at a low point in his own life, drinking himself into oblivion and losing his memory the morning you wake up in his shoes.

The game doesn’t shy away from political messaging, the main story of the game is focused on a murder that takes place the night before behind the hotel you’re staying at. The person who was murdered in question was lynched by a group of Dockworkers who were part of the local dockworker union, which was in ongoing strike against it’s corporate ownership Wild Pines Group. Throughout the game, you’re presented with dialogue and choices in a unique system that allows you to be empathetical or nasty, moral-bound or corrupt, and more in engaging and groundbreaking ways.

Disco Elysium, Revachol; Martinaise District Town Square

The interesting part of this and why I think it ties in to my writings here is the world-building and lore set in and around this world, thousands of years of history built up all for just this fantastic game. One I haven’t even been able to finish yet even with 30 hours invested over the last year or so. The ability that the developers showed in crafting meaningful and realistic conversations, people, and locations sticks with me to this day. I find myself just thinking about it now and then.

Disco Elysium OST - Instrument of Surrender

Why do we find post-industrial collapse, or just any collapse for that matter, beautiful? The games uniquely painter-like world and characters of course are fantastically done, but something of the collapse of it, the ruin of old structures that stood a thousand years before, the rotting of a factory site abandoned just 20 years ago, humans (especially me) seem to have an innate fascination with the post-apocalyptic and destroyed. The sound of Revachol, the horns that play a sad, distant melody of a town long past it’s prime, embellished trumpets of a once thought utopia. An almost nostalgic listening experience even on your first listen, a fading memory of a location in your head you’ve never even been to.

In my mind, I think of the places I’ve been. My hometown, which of course is not as bad as these fictional places. I can hear the sad melody of the town lying at the end of it’s time, The people there marching through the rhythm of life, trapped in a vicious cycle of a system that never allowed them an opportunity to escape like I could. The factories shut down, the money left with them, but the people remained. “Grind culture” tells them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, that being in this impoverished conditions is their fault as long as they keep buying their Starbucks coffee and eating McDonald’s. Just save your money!

Nobody wants to speak about the reasons behind these conditions, nobody wants to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the fault lies instead with the system in which they live, not the lives they lead trying to survive in that system.

Throughout my time playing games, these stories always stood out to me with visual imagery I found captivating, and concepts I fell in love with. The Fallout series, for example, is a alternate timeline from ours where a nuclear crisis was realized, and the world fell into apocalypse from the mass atomic bombing of WW3. A world stuck in it’s time of the 1940s-1950s, where people are barely getting by in the wastelands of post-nuclear America. The look of the 1950s era vehicles and buildings, the “futuristic” technology that looks like a amalgamation of the Jetsons tech and old science fiction, and the popular music of that era really immerses you in this idea a living, breathing, and dangerous world.

Fallout 4, Massachusetts, River Bridge

Fallout 76, West Virginia, Fairground Area

The people in these places are working hard trying to live in a world that literally blew itself up around them, is it their fault that happened?

Although I would never want to live within these worlds myself, I’m very happy just enjoying my time within them digitally, I find it interesting how interconnected we are with this idea of “Reclamation.” In time, the world will take back all that we build and our footprints will fade. Steel turns to rust, rust turns to dust. “Overgrowth” and the cycle of regrowth in that sense becomes something that is an inevitability for us as humans, as civilizations, and even as a species.

“Wild Mammals Roamed When Covid Kept Humans Home” By Emily Anthes, 2023

During COVID-19, humanity had a new obsession with animals reclaiming the spaces we typically used for the hustle and bustle of daily human life. It got a lot of people thinking about how the rivers became clearer, the stars more visible, and the air cleaner. It painted very vividly a picture of the beauty in the midst of a global crisis.

The Last Of Us, Part 1 - Giraffe Scene

During this time the catchphrase of the year was “Nature is healing,” but whether it was meant sarcastically or not, it was clear that nature was healing because we weren’t there.

In the series Nier, director Yoko Taro explores this concept by showing the cycle of humanity very clearly. It would be easy to believe that these pictures are backwards, that the right art is actually taken at the same time or before the left. However, in Nier, humanity (or well, the concept of “humanity” as humans are at this point far extinct) has been going through the cycle of technological growth for nearly 20,000 years. The concept of “ancient ruins” is flipped on it’s head, as the people in the game are unable to understand and interpret “modern” technology and thus consider it undecipherable. The ruins in this case are not stone temples or tombs, but instead old factories made of steel and other materials that could possibly take thousands of years to fully decompose. It brings about this interesting contrast of a medieval style society exploring the ruins of a forgotten factory, a concept typically thought of the other way around.

Nier: Replicant BG Concept Art

The late Japanese artist “Nujabes”, who is often credited as one of the inventors of lo-fi hip-hop as we know it today, had a song from the 2005 album “Modal Soul” Called “The Sign (feat. Pase Rock)”. It speaks about the state of the world and the warnings that we have failed to read as we move further towards our own dystopia.

The song itself is a hip-hop spoken poetry style piece with a distinct Foley sound which, to me, sounds like ice sloshing around in a drink. In my interpretation, I view the scene as a jazz band playing at a club trying to give a warning to the audience, but the audience just sips their drinks and watches on, not truly listening. The opening lyrics say:

🎵 You wanna watch it all fall apart? Every time I walk I watch I look, I notice, I observe I read the signs And the signs are pointing in the wrong direction The signs are not naming the streets Or leading you to the highways The signs are naming names Tombstones to mark the death of children not even born And I don't mean abortion I mean what is to come

The signs are telling me to turn back around The signs are telling me to research my past The signs are telling me to learn from my mistakes The signs are asking me questions Do you wanna watch it all fall apart? Do you have any control? Is there anything that you can do?

What will society look like 10, 200, 3000 years from now? Will humanity heed “The Signs” and move to the correct path, or will we end up like the town Revachol in Disco Elysium, will we end up like the wastelands of Fallout, or the forgotten empires of Nier? I think it’s important to view these pieces of media as warnings. Sign of what happens when we as humans lose control and continue down the paths we lead without second thought. Capitalism, Nationalism, Racism, and more issues just like those have led to a boiling point that feels like it could tip over at any point in our lifetime. I don’t have the answers or solutions to this either, I am just one person who sees the signs, and fears for our future.

Viewing humans as a main problem centered around these issues isn’t exactly groundbreaking, and the argument won’t really get you anywhere except for being called a “Doomer” who just sees our world as a lost cause, so let’s be clear here:

It’s not that we should see the world as a lost cause, but instead we should learn from these fictional worlds and media as “the signs” for our own problems. They serve as a warning that if we do not act upon these issues, our worlds could very much turn out that way too.

virtual insanity

A theoretical excerpt from “POSTAMERICA”, a concept piece that explores design fiction and technology in an alternate timeline late-stage-capitalist collapse.

March 11th, 2064

Weather Morrigan sits at the old desk in the musky room and admires the rust and age of a forgotten relic. He pulls out his small electronic tablet, aged and fading, with a distinct small crack across the left of the screen. Although now considered old technology at the end of its life, he finds himself unable to part with the old thing.

Opening his mail app, he notices a new message with the subject line “WANT TO ESCAPE REALITY?” from the sender “vrxxxperiences.”

“World's nearly collapsed and yet the spam still comes” Weather whispers to himself with a snarky undertone.

Frustrated, he sets the tablet down and pulls out some food he bought at FreshWay, the major corporate grocery chain operating in this area. He moves the can of “Tuna Macaroni Salad; BioOrganically Balanced protein supplement” around in his hand. He's not looking forward to eating it.

Since things went downhill, most of the food you can access in America is canned or preserved. FreshWay, which ran a monopoly on most rural and regional areas in the country, saw a shift in major offerings around 2052 where we saw the removal of the fresh produce sections in their stores. There wasn't really enough people willingly working in the agricultural industry to support national fresh produce for a population of around 580 million, so society shifted to bio-produced lab grown foods that were both cheaper for corporations to manufacture as well as easier to keep stocked and sell.

The problem with this, as Weather continues to think, is that this “Biometrically Balanced” (A new term thought up by the corpo big-wigs to make this preservative filled faux food sound healthy and normal) is that it just doesn't taste good, or nearly anything like the original. Even only being 22, Weather still remembers what it was like to have home cooked meals using real meats and fresh produce.

He thinks about how his generation was referred to as Generation Beta with the archaic/now defunct naming systems his parents used. “Yeah, never gonna be a generation alpha while being fed this slop” he remarks to himself while pressing open the rapid-open tab on the can.

While eating, a window pops up, hovering inside 3d space about a meter away from Weathers face. ‘CALL FROM ARIA” it reads on the first line, and then “ANSWER” and “DECLINE” directly under it. Weather does not reach out to press or interact with any buttons, instead, after a short pause, a BMI (brain-machine interface) attached to a neurological sensor reading his thoughts scans for his desire to answer and talk with her, and from there chooses to answer the call.

“Hey” Weather says curiously.

“Hey, got a second? This is really big, I might have discovered a lead on the…”

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TBD Catalog, an example of Design Fiction in the form of a product catalog from the future, available as an actual tangible product catalog at shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com. (Julian Bleecker, 2012)

Design Fiction

This topic has been in my head a lot since Heathers talk at the recent residency. I find the topic super interesting because I find myself also within this “futurist” tech driven space of people who love to look to the future. My only problem, however, is that I can be more of a realist sometimes and I struggle to fit in with a lot of the “futurist” tech bros who see nothing but utopia and positives in incoming technology.

I don't think of myself as overly pessimistic, or overly optimistic. I want the world to become a better place and to thrive, I want new technology to come out and drive us forward with innovation and prosperity. Unfortunately though, the reality of those technologies is that they exist to create the user into a monster. The monster is the consumer, and the consumer continues to over indulge themselves while the corporations line their pockets.

Under capitalism, this is the driving force behind technological advancement. There is not one corporation that doesn't exist in the end to make a profit, and so I always side with the air of caution and wonder why the product is coming to market. Virtual reality and the metaverse, for example, were originally topics that we as futurists loved to discuss. We talked about tons of topics like full dive and immersion tech, haptics and wireless tracking, online Metaverse communities and even cities, and much more.

And then, Facebook purchased Oculus, Oculus became Meta, and Meta tried to steal and coin the term Metaverse for themselves and their products as if we would just accept that and be happy? Fuck that, man. This is because, of course, the Metaverse was not ever intended to be ran by a corporation with the intention of using it as a money making tool, or a way to advertise. It was supposed to be a user driven experience of creating and making and doing our own damn thing away from the capitalist systems held in real life. This isn't to say that a Metaverse wouldn't be allowed to make money, everyone needs to eat, however to hyper consumerize the metaverse is antithetical to it's very existence.

A picture taken inside the “Virtual Market 3 (2019)” world inside of VRChat. Players can join the world and actively shop around for models, avatars, effects, props and more created by artists inside the VRChat community.

The closest we've ever got to a Metaverse in virtual reality was not some corporate attempt at it, but was actually in the form of the game VRChat (2017), where users could be any avatar they wanted, upload any world they wanted, and generally just do whatever they wanted except a small blanket of rules that protected people from serious problems such as racism or discrimination.

Connecting this back into design futures and the story I wrote thinking about it, I think this topic connects a lot in with what I've talked about previously. We've talked about industrial collapse and the affect on people, and we've talked about the futurist content of disrupt and it's unique content creation style. How does it all tie in with my thoughts on where my work is going?

The act of creating design futures is, to steal it directly our own Tim Murray:

Designers are professional imaginers (because “imaginary professionals” sounds less credible). Or vocational future-casters, if you prefer. We look at the current reality, and squinting through it, we imagine possible futures that might be coaxed out of the soil of the present situation.

(Tim Murray, Incredible Tales Volume 1, 2023)

In on my previous writings I talked about various medias that covered a wide range of topics from dystopia, to apocalypse, to alternate futures. I mentioned how they are all warning signs, telling civilization about the damages of treading too close to the sun, and how those who have done so have not come back from it since.

Today, it clicked, design fiction is that medium for us, as designers, to express the warning signs of the path civilization is on. I never knew what the word was or how to express this idea within the creative space and confines of our field, and now I feel I have clarity on it. I feel a very strong pull in this direction telling me to focus on this, to read the signs, to make the signs.

Rather than seeing myself working in the interest of capital and creating assets, branding, or work for investor happiness, I see myself more enjoying my own space in design creating these design future landscapes and making the signs. Through this I could make my money as a professor and keep my design pure, and untainted by the claws of capital.

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A excerpt of a conversation between the characters of “POSTAMERICA.”

…“Is this it?” Aria asks. “Yeah, I had to drive an hour to the big inner city FreshWay to get it” Weather answers, “it was expensive too, came to $5.78 for this alone.”

“Jesus, I can't believe how much even a yogurt costs nowadays” JT exclaims in a sad, melancholic way.

“So what's the deal with it?” Grant says, seemingly not as interested in a stupid new yogurt brand.

“read the label, what does it say?” says Weather, Grant looks down at the label and starts reading aloud:

“YoVegan: Non-Fat Probiotic Vanilla Greek Yogurt” Grant then turns the label around, “Vegan Safe, no authentic cow product included. Also there's a sticker, **it reads Made BioOrganically Balanced for you!”

Aria grabs the container out if Grant's hand and exclaims “That's not what I read! Let me see it.” She then starts reading her version of the label aloud.

“YoFit: Non-Fat 0 Calorie Vanilla Greek Yogurt, the other side reads 0 Cal, 0 Carbs, all flavor. Now you can have your cake, and eat it too.”

“That doesn't make sense, I literally just read it” Grant replies, confused.

“Can I see?” JT asks calmly.

“Here, check it out” Aria says, then hands them the container.

“huh, it says YoFresh: Non-Fat Supplemental Vanilla Greek Yogurt” they say, *“*mine says Filled with supplements guaranteed to boost testosterone and increase fibers”

“Now turn off your ARVisions. it's crazy.”

The group simultaneously turns off their embedded augmented reality lens, then study the container again.

“Wha- There's nothing here, it's just barcodes!” Grant exclaims shocked.

The yogurt sits on the counter beside them, a white container with a white label. The only information on the label are a series of barcodes that relays information to the ARVs image relays and projects the design onto the label in real life.

“This is what I was talking about, these labels are using our ARVs to do personal targeted marketing at us, the label is different for everyone.”

“So it's marketing labels based on our advertising information it collects from our online data?” Aria asks, clearly not too happy about the thought.

“No, that couldn't make sense, I still don't openly identify as trans to anyone other than you guys, I still mark myself as a girl online” They pauses, “but it was advertising testosterone to me…”

“That's the problem,” Weather replies “I think that they’re using the NeuraV system to market to us based on our thoughts.”

“What? No way. That would be an extreme breach of privacy, even for a corporation. How could they even do that legally?” Grant quickly says, lost in his own thought.

“I think they are, and honestly, I don't think they care about whether it's legal or not.”

The room sits silent, everyone clearly uncomfortable with the new information. After a long pause, Weather…

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As I mentioned, I find myself not feeling quite safe in these futures thought up by the futurists. A great example is the Vancouver Airports YVR 2037 initiative. The project lays out a detailed plan associated with creating a future for the Vancouver Airport involving Augmented Reality, robots, AI companions and more.

A Link to the article in question.

The following is the video played at the end of the article, but to me, I easily can see that this idealist structure is riddled with holes and questions on where this all could go wrong. It reads more to me as corporate propaganda than it does an exciting look into the future.

YVR 2037 Future Concept Design Fiction, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUjzjHRMVQ0&ab_channel=VancouverAirport, 2017

The general lack of awareness in an average consumer of technology and modern amenities causes this entire thing to look fantastical and magical. However, what interests me is how it works under the surface.

What are the implications of these technologies existing?

Does the AR interface show you advertisements and POP-UPS similar to the HYPER-REALITY videos from previous writings?

Is the coffee and snack being advertised to you based on personal data collection, if so, how much do companies know about your life?

How secure is the technology, what if the young boys AI companion is hijacked and leads him towards the wrong person?

Many questions can be asked in line with this, and it could generally be seen as a very closed-off pessimistic view of this concept. I feel it’s important to question the nature of these advertisements and run thought experiments on them. Although these ideas are not from a for-profit institution, they still seek your money and investment, their innovation is driven not by improving human experience, but by gaining and increasing their own capital. Improving human experience is often just a means to gain that investment, and can easily be thrown away or placed on the sidelines when a organization decides they already have what they need.

Something they say themselves they “Wear proudly on their sleeves.” This line of thinking doesn’t just extend to the for-profit private airports, but also to both the government owned public spaces. The main problem comes with what you let leak into the environment of the airport, hostile and invasive advertising becomes an issue at the systemic level.

James Smart remarks in his article on Dystopian Design:

Up until a few years ago, a world in which everyone carries a device that tracks them everywhere and sends the results to be pored over by intelligent machines would have seemed like a classic dystopia. Today, it’s just life. Is it any surprise that pessimistic visions in which we are all just cogs in a machine are increasingly common?

(James Smart, Dystopian design: how brutalism, cyborgs and the metaverse are shaping todays’ designs, 2022)

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To end off with, I think it’s said really well in Jamiroquai’s 1996 song “Virtual Insanity” from the album “. In the unique and well crafted music video that was revolutionary for it’s time, singer Jay Kay dances and moves around inside a rotating room that slides him and the furniture around him together in sync.

Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity (1996)

Virtual Insanity is, to me, a piece of design fiction in the sense that Jamiroquai singing to us the warning signs of what the world will look like as we move closer to modernity. He use jarring Visual Effects like cockroaches, crows, and blood that starkly contrast against the clean, perfectly organized white rooms he’s dancing in. In the song, he sings:

🎵 And it's a wonder men can eat at all When things are big that should be small Who can tell what magic spells we'll be doin' for us? And I'm givin' all my love to this world Only to be told I can't see, I can't breathe No more will we be

And nothin's gonna change the way we live' Cause we can always take, but never give| And now that things are changing for the worse, see Whoa, it's a crazy world we're livin' in And I just can't see that half of us immersed in sin Is all we have to give these

Futures made of virtual insanity, now Always seem to be governed by this love we have For useless twisting of our new technology Oh, now there is no sound For we all live underground

And I'm thinkin' what a mess we're in Hard to know where to begin If I could slip the sickly ties of earth that man has made And now every mother can choose the colour Of her child, that's not nature's way

Well, that's what they said yesterday There's nothin' left to do but pray I think it's time I found a new religion Whoa, it's so insane to synthesize another strain There's something in these futures that we have to be told

Jamiroquai is crafting a dystopian world in which technology continues to advance further into a technological age, and we become more and more dependent on it, treading into realms we don’t belong. He comments on gene modification, the over-consumption of food, and how we’ve dived so far in that it’s hard to even know where to begin to fix the problems. He warns that as we become more immersed in these worlds, we lose touch with our own realities and life itself becomes “Virtual.” What is real and what is not?

What steps do I take to craft my form of a future that shows warning signs, while simultaneously engaging that concept with design fiction and incorporating it in with my work? That’s what I’ll think about more moving into my next writing.