summ( )n

Do you want to know the future shape of technology? Then, perhaps, you need to talk to the same name foundation, STT, or Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek, based in the Hague. The whole purpose of the STT is to ‘explore new trends and develop inspiring foresights on technology and society. For that purpose STT facilitates a free space in which enthusiastic stakeholders meet and construct creative views on the future’.

Sounds great, and it is a great regret that I didn’t know about them until very recently. But better later than never, and now we met and talked, and shared experiences and approaches. I am most interested in two projects our of three STT currently runs (I am actually also interested in the third, The Future of Technology in Africa, but can’t imaging seriously contributing in it.)

The other two are the Future of Serious Games and the Future of Decision Making (especially in view of the emerging Wisdom of the Crowd approach).

We had a very interesting conversation with Jacco van Uden, leader of the Serious Games foresight, I felt a lot of synergy between what we do at Summ()n, when we use our ‘playing the futures’ approach, with how they practice future studies in general, and serious games in particular. There is a lot of very interesting information on their site, earlier reports, white papers, links and sources; a web place really worth visiting.

Surprisingly to myself, I didn’t take the pictures of the institution (somewhat ironically, it is located in a very old building, not necessarily evoking associations with the ‘future’; but nice one). So, these are the pictures I took later, while walking to my next meeting. It’s actually amazing how densely our urban environments are covered with the traces of someone’s else ‘games’. It’s just a matter of perception to see them (and may be a matter of courage and curiosity to join.)