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Pinterest for fiction writers

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I have been experimenting with using a Pinterest pinboard for gathering pictures that I can use to add to my visual sense and ability to describe things, for a fiction project. My novel-in-progress is set in 1916-17 at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s at the earliest years of the rise of Jazz, and that music, including Ragtime and Stride piano play a role in the story.

In my hunger to understand the period, I want to know what things looked like: clothing, hats, shoes, the college campus, phonographs, luggage, dormitories, classrooms, hairstyles, ads in the newspaper, and so on. To my delight, there are lots of images available from online archives and websites. Pinterest lets me “pin” them to a board dedicated to this project.

I don’t know much about how others are using Pinterest, but this use has been much better for me that collecting images in files on my computer, or bookmarks. My collection is all in one place, and I can poke about in it to help me write what I hope is more image-invoking prose, and give my story more reality and concreteness for the reader.

Have a look at my pin board: College circa 1917

Let me know what you think.

Small questions, big answers

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My old archaeology professor, John Witthoft, shared a bit of wisdom I have not forgotten in the nearly 30 years since I took his classes. He said, “ask a small, simple question, and you will find a great complex of things to explore.” He knew that too many of us undergraduates would reach for huge topics like the decline and fall of empires, when we were likely to have greater success, and get more out of, a paper on how metal smelting enabled greater technological advances, or the role of the horse for plains Indians, for example.

So it is with studying the future. In exploring the future, we are too often faced with the impossible: imagine and understand “the future” –the whole thing! That’s just too much to undertake. It’s certainly not helpful to people trying to get a stronger sense of change and the possibilities for their product, their sector, their profession, their community, and so on. The enormity of the task is too great, and too often people will give up trying to understand the future. There are simpler ways to get the conversation about the future going.

I suggest starting with a small question or a small “what if”. It will open up a big world of thoughts and perhaps answers. It will drive your thinking to the bigger questions, but they’ll have a purpose and a focus. Try using “artifacts from the future”. Wired has a regular feature on those “artifacts”. They publish a back-page Photoshopped image that showcases a future possibility. A recent one showed produce for sale, but the produce comes from “Ventria Bioscience” and Monsanto, and includes the Pizzamato, a pizza flavored tomato, and the Cinna-Del, an apple with cinnamon flavor. The “artifact” images are usually subtle but powerful, and the few details brought forward each are worthy of a conversation. These small details open up a big range of thinking, and I would argue, lead more naturally to a sense of future possibilities than a great thick report on the global future can.

So in exploring the future, don’t aim too high too fast. It’s important to put the focus on something we can think about and understand. Maybe it’s a simple artifact or prosaic detail of daily life. Those are things that mean much to people. And pictures are ideal.

The power of the paleo future

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Popular Mechanics 1950 view of 2000 "Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose"  Paleo Future is a blog that explores past ideas about the future. Its authors mine old books and magazines, movies, and literature for what we used to think the future would be like. It’s a visually-rich and fun site to visit, and it can be insightful and instructive for people trying to improve how they and their organizations think about the future. You might find an image there that could be the basis of a discussion with colleagues about your organization’s future. I have long used the cartoon above, from Popular Mechanics 1950, in presentations to illustrate a simple, but essential thing about foresight—our tendency to extrapolate one trend at a time. The image (posted above) looked out 50 years to a future of homelife in the year 2000. The home and life shown is utterly unchanged from 1950, except that the materials and surfaces in the home are plastic, and can be cleaned daily with a hose. This is a classic example of assuming a single change for the future and holding other things the same. We do this instinctively—it’s hard to envision the future, so we tend to do it with just one big change played out against a backdrop that’s actually the present. Past ideas about the future that envisioned a time we’ve now lived through give us the chance to see how the forecast turned out, and consider why the forecaster might have been right or wrong. Equally interesting is when the forecast timing was all wrong and the ideas about the future, while they haven’t happened yet, are still interesting and provocative. For example, we still don’t have robotic household servants (Roomba aside), so even a 50 year-old forecast about them might include interesting issues and ideas to consider. You can take images and stories like those in Paleo Future and start a conversation with colleagues. Explore how and why the visionaries were right or wrong, or partly right and partly wrong. Then consider whether your ideas about the future share some of those flaws—maybe, like the Popular Mechanics forecaster, you’ve fallen for a one-trend future view.

Environmental Scanning, Flickr, YouTube, and photo blogs

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youtube-flickr.jpgEnvironmental scanning is a technique in which almost anything goes. Scanning simply means exploring the universe of information available to discover deeper insights about what is going on and what is changing in the world. It’s the core technique of foresight, and there is no substitute. But too often, people’s environmental scanning is too narrow. One way it is narrow is in depending mostly on the written word: traditionally print news sources, and more recently, electronic sources that are word based. What’s missing is the rich and evocative potential of images. Since people working in foresight cannot go everywhere and be everwhere, it’s powerful and important to open up an additional channel in environmental scanning that gives at least a flavor of change around the world, in different cultures, in different sectors, and in different social circles. Fortunately, there is a world of "eyes" out there, capturing pictures and videos that we can look at, think about, and use to help others think new thoughts. You can consider working to add the visual to your foresight efforts. For example:

  • Add image sources to your environmental scanning. There are dozens of "daily photo blogs" on different themes and, particularly, from different places. The authors monitor, among others, daily photo blogs from Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City, Russia, Accra, and Sao Paulo. Adding the images to your regular scanning adds deeper insight on what is happening around the world.
  • Use more pictures in your presentations–you might even try a presentation that is all images. Most people will benefit, and some who are visual learners will much more reliably understand what you are trying to convey. Flickr is a great images source–you can’t go see everything yourself, but there are pictures from all over the world on Flickr. You can also sometimes get a sense of how others look at the world through what the people sharing images on Flickr show and say about their pictures. 
  • Carry a small digital camera whereever you go, or use your cell phone camera, and try to see signs of change. Some of the images will evoke a lot of ideas for you, and you can use them in your work and in conveying things to others.
  • Explore YouTube. You might take a regular look at the top videos there. Whether artful, amateurish, meaningful or ridiculous, the top videos meant a lot to a lot of people, and are worth at least a glance.

It may be that for those of us exploring the future, a picture is worth even more than a thousand words. Anything that helps us think more deeply is especially valuable to our efforts, and "going visual" will yield better foresight.

Update: Please see also this special page on environmental scanning.

Looking at the world through a different lens

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Nokia’s Jan Chipchase travels the world, exploring often subtle cues in societies, and taking pictures of them. His blog Future Perfect, is a marvel to look at. It often is not clearly meaningful at first glance, but there’s always something to ponder. He doesn’t explain everything, you have to do your own thinking, but he can add a dimension to your understanding of different settings and societies. Chipchase is part of Nokia’s comprehensive effort to explore societies and lifestyles on the ground, country by country. Few companies have invested as much as Nokia has in doing this. A few months ago, I noticed that a couple of Chipchase’s pictures looked familiar. He had been in my neighborhood, near the subway entrance, and had photographed a sign warning of neighborhood police surveillance. His visitor’s view gave me a new view. My city is now heavily surveilled by the police and probably multiple Federal agencies, since I live in Washington, DC. We are building communities that are closely monitored by technology. What will that become in 5, 10, 20 years? Will there be people-focused, positive capabilities? Is it all just an emerging police state? Does it change social behavior, expectations, the sense of a right to privacy? It surely does.

Even in your own neighborhood, you can try to open a different pair of eyes and perhaps discover something new—a clue to change, and a clue to the shape of the future.

Chipchase sees the world through a distinct lens—his way of looking at things, and through his camera lens. It’s a different way of exploring the landscape—especially distinct from analyzing aggregate evidence of trends and change.

It’s easy to bring a camera most everywhere you go. You may see something that merits a picture, a picture you can look at later, try to interpret, share, and communicate with. There are no pictures of our future, but a picture from today can powerfully capture an insight on change that’s unfolding now.

Update: Please see also this special page on environmental scanning.

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