Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future from the Stanford d.school (Stanford d.school Library)
Description
A powerful guide to why even the most well-intentioned innovations go haywire, and the surprising ways we can change course to create a more positive future, by two celebrated experts working at the intersection of design, technology, and learning at Stanford University’s acclaimed d.school.
“This brilliant book offers a new approach to all creative work that will expand your understanding of what it means to make and open up possibilities you didn’t know existed—it did for me.”—Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son
In Assembling Tomorrow, authors Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter explore the intangible forces that prevent us from anticipating just how fantastically technology can get out of control, and what might be in store for us if we don’t start using new tools and tactics. Despite our best intentions, our most transformative innovations tend to have consequences we can’t always predict. From the effects of social media to the uncertainty of AI and the consequences of climate change, the outcomes of our creations ripple across our lives. Time and again, our seemingly ceaseless capacity to create rubs up against our limited capacity to understand our impact.
Assembling Tomorrow explores how to use readily accessible tools to both mend the mistakes of our past and shape our future for the better. We live in an era of “runaway design,” where innovations tangle with our lives in unpredictable ways. This book explores the off-kilter feelings of today and follows up with actionables to alter your perspective and help you find opportunities in these turbulent times.
Mixed throughout are histories of the future, short pieces of speculative fiction that imagine the future as if it has already happened and consider the past with a critical yet hopeful eye so that all of us—as designers of our own futures—can create a better world for generations to come.
Praise for Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future from the Stanford d.school (Stanford d.school Library)
“This brilliant book offers a new approach to all creative work that will expand your understanding of what it means to make and open up possibilities you didn’t know existed—it did for me.”—Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son
“Assembling Tomorrow is a dazzling, disturbing, optimistic, and relentlessly useful gem to help you shape the future by understanding the past. I am especially smitten with how Carter and Doorley weave in ‘Histories of the Future’—thought-provoking flights of fancy that explore how everything from sibling rivalry to sexuality to the Amazon rainforest just might have evolved seventy years from now.”—Robert I. Sutton, organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author
“An elegantly conceived and executed book, Assembling Tomorrow addresses the problems and potential of runaway design with science, art, scrutiny, and speculation. The result is a guidebook, instruction manual, and secret recipe for creating a future we all can live with and in. It is the design manual that everyone needs, whether you consider yourself a designer or not.”—Thomas Hayden, science writer and author of On Call in Hell and Sex and War
“A beautifully crafted and timely call for design and technology to embrace the very thing they’ve often sought to transcend–constraints, nature, and our own humanity.”—Liz Carlisle, agroecologist and author of Healing Grounds and Lentil Underground
“Prepare for a wild ride! Through a brilliant intermingling of non-fiction and speculative fiction, Assembling Tomorrow will challenge your current mindset and empower you to create a brighter future.”—Dr. Jennifer Aaker, behavioral scientist and author of Humor Seriously
“A crucial part of your creative toolset that will expand your imagination. [1] Telling stories about tomorrow enables us to expand our imagination and establish a bond with the futures that await us.”—Liza Chong, founder of the Design Impact Fund and former CEO of The Index Project
“Assembling Tomorrow brilliantly navigates the complexities of our modern world, blending insightful analysis with imaginative storytelling. It is a must-read for those looking to find harmony in today’s dynamic landscape.”—Jason Mayden, chief design officer of the Nike Jordan brand
“Assembling Tomorrow is a brilliant and important book. Carissa Carter and Scott Doorley have created a powerful guide to design—its history, processes, and extraordinary potential. They weave together riveting illustrative stories and perceptive insights to create a book that has tremendous value and meaning for everyone.”—Bill Guttentag, Oscar-winning writer-director
“In this era of runaway design—where complexity rules and the stakes for humanity and life on earth are so high—Assembling Tomorrow is both a meditation and a guide, a poetic road map to flourishing.”—David Sun Kong, PhD, director of the Community Biotechnology Initiative, MIT Media Lab