In week 4, we were preparing for our incubator session and had previously started with our website and video for conveying our narrative, but the challenge we faced here was that the setup for the incubator had to convey the message on its own and thus it was a little challenging to design a setup which did this since a lot of factors about feasibility and information consumption as well as user experience goes into it.
Firstly, we wanted the video generated to be viewed by the audience and hence we procured an LCD screen to accommodate this, but the website is a tool to collect feedback and hence, we also got a tablet to set up the website, but what if people do not engage with these? How are we going to convey our statistics and data? How are we portraying our future workspaces, how are we showing our narrative, so for this, we came up with the idea of having a long-running poster that conveyed our narrative to people who read and interact with tangible things rather than something intangible? We also analysed everyone’s skillset in doing tasks that are required in setting up the incubator, and doing the research for the poster proved to be my set of skills, and I was leaning towards more statistical data and graphs since that’s easier to represent and understand, rather than text. While reading through different journals from around the world, I noticed that a lot of countries focused on being prepared for automation which is speculated to happen (Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work, IMF, 2024), this talks about the rising income and wealth inequality in developing economies and also the preparedness of these economies and the global economy in general to accommodate this automation and replacement.
In another report by McKinsey, which microspocially looks at various industries and different skillsets, it contains based on various parameters and how likely they are to be automated, and what are the different factors that are going to affect this automation. In the graph in E6, it shows the theoretical prediction for automation, with the various factors affecting, and it also shows the prediction with the consideration of various, technological, socio-economic factors affecting it, and it is quite likely that 2060-2065, we will be completely automated as well as adapted to this automation. (A FUTURE THAT WORKS: AUTOMATION, EMPLOYMENT, AND PRODUCTIVITY, JANUARY 2017)
Now all this evidence shows that our approach to 2046, is quite realistic enough where a waitress is replaced, as well as a chef who is going to be replaced very soon, and also a standard tech employee is replaced, but there’s only a designer who is developing the technology, I think the narrative is quite ironic and makes me think about how we have developed as a civilisation and how this development is affecting us, this also led us to questions about it affecting interpersonal relationships and how they are going to be affected, so in our narrative, we talk about how happy organisation is all about humans, and no machines, which is also owned by the same CEO of the tech company, X in our narrative fiction and this leads to another point as was referred to by Rishabh in our interview, in wk.1, which talks about biological-social-technological evolution, which I think was one of the main things we could not get across during our incubator.
I did see people engaging with our narrative and speculation and they did not question the narrative, but rather they had questions related to the narrative, even though our website analytics show negative responses and comments about happy organisations, it is still proof of engagement and that there is scope to further the narrative and speculation and work on it.
In a workshop on Wednesday, about technology as a bodily extension, it showed me a perspective on how various technologies have subconsciously been used to potray ourselves, our thoughts and ideas, and that the incubator where we used technologies is an example of that and at this day and age, it is our tool to express ourselves, but what if, one day it is not? a place where it may be at par with us, or maybe worse, excel us? Another thing we realised is we might have to streamline our narrative a bit more than it is, and refine it to convey our speculation better and also back it up with research.
We plan to incorporate the feedback from our peers and tutors into our final presentation and improve on it, so that it can have the impact we are aiming for, and achieve it.