(2022-03-21) Future65 Where The Game's Made Up And The Points Don't Matter

Future #65: Where the game's made up and the points don't matter

1: Am I winning? Does it matter?

From the philosophy of games to the memes of war, this week’s signals examine the limits of our imaginations when it comes to the future.

Performance measurement of some kind is pervasive in most jobs and companies. (Goodhart's Law)

In the world of games, as C. Thi Nguyen argues, the points systems are there to tell the player what’s important

When applied to our everyday lives, this concept of a point system and its constraints shows us the limitations of measurement and validation. What is lost by trying to optimize for the outcomes we can measure? What does it mean to “win” at these daily games, or are we always losing by just a little?

• (2022-01-11) Chin The Dangers Of Treating Life As A Game

Are We Measuring Our Lives in All the Wrong Ways? | The Ezra Klein Podcast

2: Using comedy to plan for an absurd future

Chiara Di Leone argues that what’s missing in our understanding of our future, and what’s necessary to imagine more disparate futures, is good storytelling, particularly of the absurdist bent. Scenario planning began as a theater-inspired practice, borrowing the term “scenario” from commedia dell’arte.

Imagine Other Futures | Noēma Mag

3: Solving the wrong problems (cf Error Types)

Let’s imagine a future where you can have food from any restaurant delivered to you in minutes by a drone, where Momofuku noodles arrive at your sofa in Boise without a moment of friction. Now let’s also imagine what your local downtown looks like in this future. Instead of restaurants where people gather and work, the streets fill with warehouses and ghost kitchens; public space becomes merely storage for the materials that you need in your “real” life (which happens largely inside your home).

what solutions would we develop if we considered other kinds of user needs, like vibrant community life, burgeoning small business ecosystems, or unique placemaking?

Is the ‘future of food’ the future we want? | Eater

4: Volts for vehicles and venti lattés

5: Platform wars (not that kind)

The latest issue of Real Life Mag takes a deeper look at some of the public reaction to war-related content on social media platforms like TikTok.

6: Flirting with AI