How can design methods help visualize potential futures and broaden our perspectives? Can we reveal the unusual and invisible possibilities by prototyping objects and services that do not exist yet?

This is the topic chosen by Anab Jain in her talk at Lift France 10. Following up on her previous appearance, she showed inspiring examples of speculative designs and prototypes made by Superflux, the London and Ahmedabad based studio she founded to explore the implications of technological change on people, society and the environment.

Such projects shed some light on how to create new dialogues between science, emerging technologies and the wider public. Another important aspect lies in the interdisciplinary approach: collaborating with futurists, technologists or hardcore scientists generates a greater chance to find fresh ideas and perspectives on the future.

Related links:
• Anab put her slides and a summary on the Superflux's blog
• [in French] Hubert Guillaud wrote a very complete write-up published in Le Monde.fr.

Fab Labs are workshops where almost anyone can design and make almost anything. Under the name Fab Labs or other names such as Tech Shops and Hackerspaces, hundreds of shared spaces are providing the means to design, prototype and produce new objects, to create installations, to customize existing products.

Fab Labs are made of computer controlled tools creating rapid prototypes of physical objects - and revolutionizing the fabrication processes. The initial program launched at the Media Lab at MIT in 2007, spread to all over the world. At Lift France 10 the Fab Lab pioneers Adrian Bowyer (University of Bath, UK), Ton Zijlstra (FabLab foundation Netherlands) and Haakon Karlsen Jr. (MIT FabLab Norway) presented their insights.

Adrian Bowyer (University of Bath, UK) introduced the session by presentation RepRap, a tool that is both used and produced in Fab Labs. It is a self-replicating machine made of a cheap desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic objects. Bowyer showed both the underlying principles of the RepRap and the community tools (such as the sharing of digital designs) and gave an outlook on the legal and economical implications of RepRap.

CEO of Fab Lab Norway and the Fab Foundation.

Fab labs provide widespread access to modern means for invention. They began as an outreach project from MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). CBA assembled millions of dollars in machines for research in digital fabrication, ultimately aiming at developing programmable molecular assemblers that will be able to make almost anything.

Fab labs fall between these extremes, comprising roughly fifty thousand dollars in equipment and materials that can be used today to do what will be possible with tomorrow's personal fabricators.

Fab labs have spread from inner-city Boston to rural India, from South Africa to the North of Norway. Activities in fab labs range from technological empowerment to peer-to-peer project-based technical training to local problem-solving to small-scale high-tech business incubation to grass-roots research. Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.

Quelles implications pour l'émergence des connaissances à partir d'immenses gisements de données?

Personal fabrication: what does it mean? What are the opportunities?
Currently Amit Zoran is a PhD student in the Smart Cities Group, MIT Media Lab, working an several aspects of designing artifacts in mixed technological - cultural space. Amit graduated from Ben-Gurion University at Bear-Sheva, Israel, in 2003 with B.Sc. in Communication System Engineering. He worked as an image and audio processing engineer for five years, developing on a variety of signal processing projects. In 2003 Amit started a Master’s degree at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Israel, which he graduated from in 2007. In 2008, Amit joined the MIT Media Lab, where he finished his Master's degree in 2009. For his thesis, Amit focused on hybrid object design, merging traditional crafted element with digital technologies.

How can open public data become reality? The "Free our data" initiative.
Michael Cross has worked as a journalist on seven continents. Nowadays he spends most of his time in the UK, exploring the intimate labyrinths of government IT and information policy.
He runs Free Our Data, a campaign for free public access to data about the UK and its citizen.

For our Lifters currently in Paris: the project FabWall of the Lift France 10 speakers Jean-Louis Frechin and Uros Petrevski is on exhibition until 15 August at the Musée des Arts décoratif. More info here.

Also check out the video of their Lift speech (in french) about "Hacking industrial machinery to design desirable objects" / "Hacker les machines industrielles pour concevoir des objets désirables"

Le projet FabWall de Jean-Louis Frechin et Uros Petrevski est exposé jusqu'au 15 août dans le WallPaperLab du Musée des Arts Décoratifs à Paris. Pour en savoir plus visitez leur nouveau site web NoDesignLab.

We are now publishing the Lift France 10 videos: Check out Ivo Gormley inspiring speech about the relationship between social innovation and digital technologies.

Ivo Gormley "Us Now" (Lift France10 EN)
Hochgeladen von liftconference.

The BBC just featured a short clip on one of Ivo's project, the good gym.

Ivo Gormley is a filmmaker and anthropologist working as head of media at Think Public, an award-winning agency focused on using design to improve service experiences in the public sector. In 2009 Ivo released Us Now, a much acclaimed film that demonstrates how mass collaboration online is changing the way we organise our lives and relate to other people.

Ivo's latest movie Playmakers explores the emerging area of pervasive games, the implications of reclaiming play into the public domain and the possibilities offered by new technologies.

Disruptor, blogger, cofounder of The Mine! project.

Professor Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Professeur EPFL