Thursday 14 May 2015

Day 3

Fantastic day of the conference focusing on the future of this space and difficult questions that arise at the edges of the development of a new field. What stood out to me the most is idea of algorithm based decision making technologies that are ubiquitous and invisible, and the possible implications of this as we move forward. I would like to take pause and really think about what this really could mean, and how we all must make the decision of if it is the way we want our society to move forward or do we even have a choice?


The concept of the "exobrain" was touched upon, which I thought was a really interesting method to describe our reliance on technology for certain memory and computation skills, and the provocation that digitization could become another sense.

I was so sad to see Valerie Lamontagne (of Montreal and 3lectromode)go, as her surprise appearance was absolutely fantastic, and brought some more deep reflection on what a year can bring (as she was the last coffee I had in Montreal before I got on the train last May).

As the conference ended just before lunch we hopped over to IDEO (a lovely 10 minute walk away along the water), and we had a lovely conversation with an IDEOer from Vancouver, Matthew Chow.  We toured their space, and had the opportunity to have a great conversation about the current state of the Design Practice in their client space and the ways they are seeing growth of design in a broader sense (ask Iryna who moved her out of the way in the hallway while we were touring the space).


After a quick rest and reflection (with ice cream of course), we happened upon the AutoDesk museum - which was amazing! Fantastic models, and tools for prototyping were on display, and we rushed through before our next stop.





We then went to the Future Now Pop-up shop Opening party with our colleagues from the conference, it was part of SanFrancisco Cyber Fashion week. It was like a fashion party for only really smart people, it was fantastic, everyone I spoke to was so interesting and had such a wonderfully unique view on the role of technology in the world of fashion.


All I can say, this post couldn't capture the day it was - it was everything all at once.

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