World Game - an anticipatory design planning experiment

I wanted to update you on what’s happening with the gaming exercise: Unfortunately, due to facebook’s design, this is going to take much longer than I initially had hoped, and it will run past the deadline for my Master’s design project.

Because the output of gaming is so slow to reach everyone, actually realising the whole gaming exercise is going to take a number of months, rather than weeks, and this pushes it into other projects I am due to start.

For this reason I may stop the exercise, though ideally I’d like others to help run and manage it going forward from here.

One of the other explorations that came out of my masters research project is a collaborative table-top board game based on global risk, anticipatory design planning and buckminster’s RBE. I am tempted to run a live stream of this game on the page and see if we can play it together - if you think that’s a good idea, please encourage me to do it!

What I would love to do is survey some participants, such as yourself, about your experiences of the game and motivations behind joining, if you would like to talk about global risks and their relationship with design (if design can be a motive force in solving some of those risks) I would love to speak with you, so just let me know (comment, like this post, message the page) and I’ll start firing questions at you!

Hello everybody, following the vote, we have decided to look into food production. As far as I know (correct me if I am wrong) none of the 20th century world gaming exercises looked at food and this is a very fruitful topic (pardon the pun) :-P

Our initial research shows that we produce 150% more food than we eat, but yet 1bn of us go hungry, so even if we distributed the food we already make correctly we could end hunger.

We also found that there are many designs for food production that could be implemented on a global scale and promise huge benefits, such as permaculture, urban agriculture, rewilding, and promising new technologies that can lab-grow high quality food using less energy (and with a lower environmental impact) than our current food production technology.

The question I have for all of you is if you would like to continue this experiment to the next stage, where we begin to research this topic and discuss ideas around making food production work more effectively for the whole world.

I’d also love to know how you are experiencing this so far (if you are experiencing it at all, due to the filtering algorithms on this social platform) and any thoughts on how I am running this and if you think it can be done better.

Thanks to all of you who have contributed so far!

This is one part of a design research project, and if you'd like to be interviewed about your thoughts on 'global risk' that would be marvellous. You don't have to be a politician, economist or activist, but by all means if you know any people of these sorts who might be interested please do share. Otherwise, send us a message or comment below!

to participants - don't forget to vote!!
https://www.facebook.com/events/1529012507142850/permalink/1529021960475238/

At the moment, food production is a popular choice for what we could look at as a world-around plan for change. We produce 150% of the food we need, but still vast numbers of humans must go hungry - food poverty is widespread even in the 'developed' world - so solving this issue might come down to the economics and infrastructure - if that is, our goal is to end hunger. But our goal might be to make food production more sustainable... what do you think?

These are some links to projects which focus on different aspects of food;
dealing with waste foods: https://plentyofblog.wordpress.com/
lab grown meats (and other animal products): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD3O8tOZ5sc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Q2oLxEOF8

don't forget you can vote and discuss what the focus of this design exercise should be here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1529012507142850/permalink/1529021960475238/

Lunch (and evening) TV: 'we have all the money in the world, but we don't have time'

Allan Savoury's series of lectures on rewilding went viral a few years ago. Can we do designing that utilises nature as a constructive force?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMz61WW9wqM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ3cAfW39yU

Avoiding desertification | Allan Savory Grassland ecosystem pioneer Allan Savory talks about his groundbreaking idea of how intense grazing and giving nutrients to grasslands could help avoid deser...

Hi everyone, I’ve been preparing to begin the first stage of our design challenge and will be running this as an ‘event’ so that we can run polls and share this out beyond this page.

For those of you who have got in on this page at an early stage, I’d like to share some information about Buckminster Fuller’s world game which forms the basis for this experiment.

This is a pretty hard to find document where buckminster elaborates on his development of these workshops over several years.

https://awakeningplace.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/world_game_series_document1.pdf

However, it's a pretty long document, so to summarise: The principal goal is to collectively design, as a group, a tool / service / product, or any kind of plan, which is a utilisation of the earth’s resources, from conventional resources such as energy and materials to more abstract possessions like skills and knowledge.

Rather than all submitting individual ideas (though these are more than welcome) we will move through the design process collaboratively, which will be divided into a series of events as follows:

Stage one: Setting the theme (or area) for design intervention
Stage two: Researching to find possible opportunities (and discussing ideas)
Stage three: Choosing a design to develop collaboritively
Stage four: Visualising and sharing a final design.

I havent decided on dates for these stages (this depends on what will be most convenient for you in the design group) but essentially I hope to conclude this exercise before the end of august.

the appeal of Buckminster’s ideas for a world around ‘game’ of developing and properly wiring together the earth’s resources for the benefit of everyone, lies in its simplicity and it’s inherent logic. Whilst (to quote victor papanek) the activities of professional designers are the most destructive of all professions, it might equally be applied to finding ways out of these global contradictions in which we find ourselves.

This experiment is a small part of my masters thesis, which is about ‘the design’ of how we are responding to long term global risks, and of key interest is if we can leverage technological platforms, such as Facebook, for the goal of responding to these risks in a democratic way. It is also largely driven by a historical curiosity in Buckminster’s world game, which is by now lost in history, and has never been done in an open, digital and collaborative setting like this.

I am not sure what we will produce - but I suppose that's the excitement really, and part of this is about us finding out how far we can push technological platforms such as facebook for collaborative designing - it it all blows up, this will still be useful! And I hope that you will be happy for this page to remain open as it is now, so that it might be a useful resources for others.

I wanted to add some videos that I think are very interesting primers for this exercise, and hopefully some things that are a bit entertaining too. Cybernetics - the design of systems, is a very fruitful area of study, and so below you will find a classic stafford beer lecture on the subject. There is also a recorded lecture by Eben Moglen on open source and the politics of software - he also elucidates on some interesting solutions when it comes to ICT. And finally I've attached a lecture with Michael Parenti about Julius Ceasar, why? Because it's interesting, and I think demonstrates the often overlooked role of the people (the public at large) in pushing for change. I think it's important we consider the slow rate of adoption in non-life-support-system-disruptive technologies, and that we must support and even channel demands made by the public for this kind of change from policy makers.

cybernetics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ybjOw6UJ8A&t=1s
software and open source
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOcpDsDSWY0
history
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IO_Ldn2H4o

This is a little open source treat I am working on that I almost certainly won't finish in time to use it in this project. It's a VR planning app. I've created a GitHub repository and started building from a template at https://github.com/callumnash/VRplanning if you know anyone who might be interested please feel free to share!

Hi everyone, here are some images that function as a briefing document for the exercise! Please share this around, the more participants the better!

https://www.facebook.com/pg/worldpeacegame/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1942100046035760

www.facebook.com

A few slides to explain what this is about and briefly what we will be doing. I'll update this as the project moves along.

Hello all, I am Callum Nash, and am running a research project where we will play one of Buckminster Fuller's 'world game' planning symposia online.

If you are interested, just like the page, and I will keep people updated. Ideally, we will start in the next week, though anyone can join as time goes on.

I will be hosting the challenge, but by no means will I have any agency over what is designed. This is an experiment in collaborative creativity, but I will be contributing my knowledge in industrial design and cybernetics and helping to visualise solutions. My work can be found at callumnash.com.

To anyone who stumbles across this page! This is something that I am currently only thinking about doing - I am at the first stages of planning now. Don't hesitate to get in touch or ask any questions!