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'Speculative design is a design practice that is concerned with future design proposals of a critical nature. The term "speculative design" was popularised by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby as a subsidiary of critical design. The aim is not to present commercially-driven design proposals but to design proposals that identify and debate crucial issues that might happen in the future.'

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THE BASICS YOU NEED TO KNOW & UNDERSTAND ABOUT SPECULATIVE DESIGN

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THE BASICS YOU NEED TO KNOW & UNDERSTAND ABOUT SPECULATIVE DESIGN

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Speculative design is an approach to design that focuses on imagining future scenarios and possibilities. It can be used to explore social, political, technological, and ethical issues, and to generate new ideas and solutions.
Speculative design is not about predicting the future, but about exploring different ways that the future could be. By doing so, it can help us to better understand the present and make better decisions about the future.

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"We can not work towards an improvement that we can not imagine" - Elise Boulding
Speculative design is an approach to design that focuses on imagining future scenarios and possibilities. It can be used to explore social, political, technological, and ethical issues, and to generate new ideas and solutions.
Speculative design is not about predicting the future, but about exploring different ways that the future could be. By doing so, it can help us to better understand the present and make better decisions about the future.

The term "speculative design" was popularized by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby as a subsidiary of critical design. The aim is not to present commercially-driven design proposals but to design proposals that identify and debate crucial issues that might happen in the future.

The two popularized the concept in their book, Speculative Everything: Design, Dreaming, and Social Dreaming

"[Speculative design] thrives on imagination and aims to open up new perspectives on what are sometimes called wicked problems, to create spaces for discussion and debate about alternative ways of being, and to inspire and encourage people's imaginations to flow freely. Design speculations can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality."

According to Dunne and Raby, designers shouldn't just address issues of today, but also take a look into the future and ask, "How can we address future challenges with design?"

Speculative Everything was initially a list they have published a few years ago called A/B, a sort of manifesto, where Dunne & Raby added dimension B of design aspects to the dimension A.
"Speculative Design is a Critical Design practice that comprises or is in relation to a series of similar practices known under the following names: Critical design, design fiction, future design, anti-design, radical design, interrogative design, discursive design, adversarial design, futurescape, design art, etc." - Mitrović, I. (2015). An Introduction to Speculative Design Practice. (I. Mitrović & M. Golub, Eds.). Department for Visual Communications Design, Arts Academy, University of Split.
The goal of speculative design is not to provide definite answers, but to generate questions and provoke thought. It is a tool for critical thinking that can be used by individuals, organizations, and society as a whole.

At a very basic level, speculative design is about crafting and visualizing possible future experiences and products. It's about looking into the future and back at the present to understand how things might be connected and how they might affect one another. It's about being able to see the potential for things to develop, change, or grow over time. At its core, speculative design is about questioning the present and imagining possible futures. It's about looking at problems from a different perspective and considering new and different solutions to those problems.

This diagram by futurologist Stuart Candy, redrawn by Dunne and Raby, illustrates an approach to the practice and vision of speculative design. Projecting from the present onwards, the diagram breaks the future down into 3 main cones according to the likelihood of their actualization.

1. The Probable is where traditional design exists. It describes what we can predict that probably will happen judging from how the world currently is.

2. The Plausible begins to delve further into the areas of building scenarios and foresight. It describes alternative futures and the possibilities of could be's and what if's.

3. The Possible goes beyond, to extreme scenarios of what is scientifically possible. This includes utopias and dystopias, while never crossing into the realm of fantasy or science fiction.

There is a preferred version of the future that lies somewhere in the middle of probable and plausible scenarios. The core of the work that speculative designers do is determining whether or not the future we are moving toward will turn out to be better.

Designers do not have the authority to dictate what is preferred. Because of this, speculative design focuses more on asking questions than it does on defining how things ought to be.

In his book The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster tells the story of a bored boy named Milo who one day receives a tollbooth in the mail. The tollbooth transports him to a strange land where he has all sorts of adventures. Along the way, he meets a lot of interesting characters, including a creature called the Terrible Trivium.

The Terrible Trivium is a monster that loves nothing more than to ask pointless questions and give tedious explanations. He loves to talk but never says anything useful. In other words, he represents everything that is wrong with academia.

Juster's book is a satirical take on the education system, and the Terrible Trivium is emblematic of this. He is a map of unreality, leading Milo (and by extension, the reader) down a path of confusion and frustration. He embodies everything that is wrong with pedantry and intellectualism gone too far.

Some of the most important aspects of speculative design are its aesthetics. The term "aesthetics" is used in a variety of ways, but for our purposes we can think of it as a set of principles governing the appearance and/or presentation of an object or environment. In speculative design, these aesthetics are often used to create an atmosphere of unease or uneasiness, to make the viewer question what they are seeing and why it looks the way it does.

One common aesthetic used in speculative design is that of "unreality". This can be achieved through a number of different techniques, such as making an object look out of proportion, using jarring or unexpected colors, or playing with perspective in a way that makes the viewer feel disoriented. By creating something that looks "off" in some way, we are forcing the viewer to question what they are seeing and sparking their imagination as to what could be causing this effect.

Another important aspect of speculative design aesthetics is that of "futurity". This can be achieved through a number of different techniques as well, such as using clean lines and futuristic materials to create a sense of forward momentum. This aesthetic is often used in conjunction with others to create a overall feeling of unease or tension, as it gives the impression that something is not quite right or that things are not as they should be.

A typical design process goes like this: idea generation, research, ideation, iteration, and testing. But with speculative design, we add two extra steps: exploration and visualization. During the exploration phase, we go a step further and look for inspiration in emerging technologies, cultural shifts, and current events that could affect our project in the future. We then take these explorations and use them as jumping-off points to come up with new design solutions. In the visualization phase, we take our findings and bring them to life through sketches, storyboards, interactive prototypes, and other creative visualizations. We create temporary mock-ups and simulations that bring our ideas to life and help us better understand what they feel like in the real world.

Even though speculative design is used to create possible futures, we have to remember to make our visualizations realistic. This means basing them in the present and existing technologies. If a particular feature or design solution is too far removed from reality, it will be incredibly hard to create and implement. For example, if you're designing a hotel room in the year 2030, you can't design it to be some futuristic space that uses no technology that exists in the present day. It has to be based in reality. You have to imagine what the room would look like if we were able to create an entirely new hotel experience without any limitations.

To understand the approach and realm of speculative design, let's look into a speculative design case study - A masters research project dealing with the design of a learning experience about the speculative future of jobs for the next generation.
A report from the World Economic Forum tells us that by one estimate, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don't yet exist. The jobs market of 2026 will likely look quite different from today's career landscape, so the next generation must be focused and prepared for this future career situation.
In the past, jobs didn't change much. Jobs such as police officers or teachers have existed our whole life. But in the near future, jobs will change faster.

Imagine future of jobs is a masters research project developed by Wongsathon Choonhavan in collaboration with Daphne Gerodimou. This project focuses on how to educate the next generation to face the unpredictable future jobs situation using imagination and Speculative Design practice.

There are many different ways to approach speculative design, but one common thread is that it is future-oriented. This means that speculative designers look at current trends and try to imagine where those trends might lead in the future. They ask questions like "What if this technology became widely available?" or "How would society change if this trend became more prevalent?"

This type of thinking can be applied to any area of design, from product design to urban planning. By looking at the world around us and imagining what could be, we can start to shape the future we want to see. So what does the future hold for speculative design?

As we become more reliant on technology, it's likely that speculative design will increasingly focus on how we interact with devices and artificial intelligence. We'll need to think about how to design user interfaces that are both user-friendly and ethical, as well as how to create experiences that seamlessly integrate virtual and physical worlds.

We'll also need to consider the societal implications of new technologies. For example, as autonomous vehicles become more common, we'll need to think about how they will impact our economy and workforce. Will there be a need for traditional taxi drivers? How will self-driving cars affect traffic patterns and congestion?

These are just a few of the many questions that speculative designers will continue to explore in the years ahead. By asking tough questions and envisioning different futures, we can help create a better world for all of us.

Speculative design is a great way to get creative with your designs and to think outside the box. It can be used to create products or services that don't yet exist, or to redesign existing ones. I hope this article has given you a better understanding of speculative design and how it can be used in business.
Speculative everything design, fiction, and social dreaming - Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby The Young Designer's Guide to Speculative and Critical Design - Leon Karlsen Johannessen Department of Design Norwegian University of Science and Technology Speculative - Post-Design Practice or New Utopia? What is speculative design - VINNOVA https://speculativeedu.eu/
If you're looking for more information on this topic, check out our other articles on the subject. Thanks for reading!

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THE BASICS YOU NEED TO KNOW AND UNDERSTAND ABOUT SPECULATIVE DESIGN

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Speculative design is an approach to design that focuses on imagining future scenarios and possibilities. It can be used to explore social, political, technological, and ethical issues, and to...

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Design is (Speculative) Futures Design Thinking

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Design is (Speculative) Futures Design Thinking

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Design Is [Speculative] Futures Design Thinking - a new toolkit for preemptive design

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Speculative everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne and Fionna Raby 2003

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Speculative everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne and Fionna Raby 2003

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Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want).

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Dr. Agi Haines is an internationally exhibiting practitioner, researcher and lecturer whose research looks at the propensity for design to reevaluate the nature of the material of the body in the face of nascent biomedical and healthcare technologies.

She specialises in creating physical works using a mixture of traditional sculptural techniques and novel technologies. Questioning how people might respond to the possibilities of our body as another everyday material and how far can we push our malleable bodies while still being accepted by society?

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Agi Haines, speculative designer's website showing works and upcoming news

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Designing the human body | Agi Haines | TEDxMaastricht

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'Transfigurations' depicts designs for potential body enhancements that have been surgically implemented. Each modification is put in place to imagine how these techniques could ‘solve’ a potential future problem for the baby, ranging from medical to environmental to social mobility issues, but at what physical, mental, social and economic cost?

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The human body consists of practicable elements that can be easily manipulated and engineered. Through surgical procedures our bodies can be stretched, shifted and sewn, yet still be functional. What then would stop us searching for a higher level of function than we have now? Especially if it may have the potential to benefit the younger, more vulnerable and more malleable generation?

'Transfigurations' depicts designs for potential body enhancements that have been surgically implemented. Each modification is put in place to imagine how these techniques could 'solve' a potential future problem for the baby, ranging from medical to environmental to social mobility issues, but at what physical, mental, social and economic cost?

The fictitious range of speculative transhuman procedures span believability, necessity, desirability and fear in dealing with environmental challenges to come. In the wake of technologies leading to the "designer baby" this project reveals that modification, particularly of children, is not new, and techniques today may achieve what we believe to only be alterations of the future. The feedback since the production of these sculptures has shown that decision making in healthcare, particularly when it involves vulnerable parties is incredibly complex and sadly rarely accessible to everyone.

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The human body consists of practicable elements that can be easily manipulated and engineered. Through surgical procedures our bodies can be stretched, shifted and sewn, yet still be functional. What then would stop us searching for a higher level of function than we have now?

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In a future where plastic production has to be reduced for economic and environmental purposes. A new alternative had to be made to make up for a material that we had become highly dependant upon. Bioplastics are being researched but are still extremely un-cost effective with hight fuel consumption. If we could use synthertic biology to get carnivorous plants to produce resin, like trees do. The resin could be produced and catalysed when the plant is triggered to produce its digestive enzymes. This way whole products could be made and produced in the plants jaws.

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In a future where plastic production has to be reduced for economic and environmental purposes. A new alternative had to be made to make up for a material that we had become highly dependant upon. Bioplastics are being researched but are still extremely un-cost effective with hight fuel consumption. If we could use synthertic biology to get carnivorous plants to produce resin, like trees do. The resin could be produced and catalysed when the plant is triggered to produce its digestive enzymes. This way whole products could be made and produced in the plants jaws.

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Agi Haines' work "New Plastics" questions industrial techniques by designing new systems to create plastics using meats and plant processes from the farming industry.

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This is no ordinary museum, with ancient relics behind velvet ropes. It is a gateway to a future world, crafted by visionary designers, artists and filmmakers. The Museum combines elements of exhibition, immersive theatre and themed attraction. Each floor is like a film set from a future that you can inhabit, explore and interact with.

The settings and scenes that we’re crafting are immersive, but also expansive: they are designed to expand what the audience thinks possible - for the world, for the future and for themselves. This content has been crafted by a team of the world’s leading product, media, exhibition and experience designers.

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Technology has the power to transform and change the way we live. It can respond to many of the environmental, cultural, social and political issues that define our time and overcome challenges to lead the planet towards an optimistic and positive future. 'Tomorrow Today' is an ever-evolving showcase of innovations that could change our world.

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Inside the Museum of the future in Dubai

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Inside the Museum of the future in Dubai

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WATCH: A look inside Dubai's Museum of the Future

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Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is a multidisciplinary artist examining our fraught relationships with nature and technology. Through artworks, writing, and curatorial projects, Daisy’s work explores subjects as diverse as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, conservation, biodiversity, and evolution, as she investigates the human impulse to “better” the world. She experiments with simulation, representation, and the nonhuman perspective to question our ongoing societal fixation on innovation over preservation despite the environmental crisis.

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Living Colour from Bacteria - Alexandra Ginsberg

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Living Colour from Bacteria - Alexandra Ginsberg

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2009

In collaboration with James King & the University of Cambridge iGEM 2009 team.

Embossed aluminium briefcase, foam, acrylic, printed vinyl, plastic models.

Edition of 5 + 1 AP.

Editions available.

E. chromi is an early collaboration between artists/designers and scientists in the emerging field of synthetic biology. In 2009, seven Cambridge University undergraduates spent the summer genetically engineering bacteria to secrete a variety of coloured pigments, visible to the naked eye. They designed standardised sequences of DNA, called BioBricks™, and inserted them into E. coli bacteria. Each BioBrick™ part contains genes from existing organisms, enabling the bacteria to produce a colour. By combining these with other BioBricks™, bacteria could be programmed to do tasks for humans. Their invention, which they called E. chromi, won the Grand Prize at the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM).

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Appearances: Permanent collection of the Museo Delle Scienze, Trento Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo Science Gallery, Dublin Fondation EDF, Paris Index Awards, Asia tour MoMA, New York The National Museum of China, Beijing Design Museum, London The Wellcome Trust, London St Etienne Biennale Internationale Design, France Nomination, Brit Insurance Designs of the Year, 2011 Finalist, Index Awards, 2011 Animation credits: Design: Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & James King Animation: Cath Elliot (Little Giant Pictures) Music: Matthew Irvine Brown Illustration: Alice Hoult Scatalog photography: Åsa Johannesson

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Living Colour from Bacteria - Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

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Living Colour from Bacteria - Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

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Living Colour from Bacteria - Alexandra Ginsberg

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Living Colour from Bacteria - Alexandra Ginsberg

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From time to time people ask about the Futures Cone, and how it came about. Here is a brief history of how I came across it before adapting it to suit my use of the concept, and began using an early version of the Futures Cone diagram (i.e., with fewer categories) in 2000 when working as a foresight analyst for Swinburne University (before becoming an academic in the Master of Strategic Foresight). The text in this post is excerpted from a chapter submitted to the Handbook of Anticipation, ed. Roberto Poli (Springer International). The "formal" citation for the chapter/book is:

Voros, J 2017, 'Big History and anticipation: Using Big History as a framework for global foresight', in R Poli (ed.) Handbook of anticipation: Theoretical and applied aspects of the use of future in decision making, Springer International, Cham. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-31737-3_95-1,
while the text in this post is from the section of that chapter entitled 'Types of Alternative Futures', pp. 10-13, and the "cone" diagram itself is: Fig. 4, p. 11.

Futurists have often spoken and continue to speak of three main classes of futures: possible, probable, and preferable (e.g., Amara 1974, 1981; Bell 1997, and many others). These have at times lent themselves to define various forms of more specialised futures activity, with some futurists focusing on, as it were, exploring the possible; some on analysing the probable; and some on shaping the preferable, with many related variations on this nomenclature and phraseology (e.g., again, Amara 1991, and many others). It is possible to expand upon this three-part taxonomy to include at least 7 (or even 8) major types of alternative futures.

It is convenient to depict this expanded taxonomy of alternative futures as a 'cone' diagram. The 'futures cone' model was used to portray alternative futures by Hancock and Bezold (1994), and was itself based on a taxonomy of futures by Henchey (1978), wherein four main classes of future were discussed (possible, plausible, probable, preferable). Some years later I found out that this idea of a cone graphic was used even earlier than Hancock and Bezold (1994) by Charles Taylor (1990), in which he wrote of a "cone of plausibility" that defined a range of plausible futures extended over an explicit timeframe, including a kind of 'back-cone' into the past. He also included "wildcards" in his approach, but other futures categories mentioned here were not explicitly depicted in the diagram given by Taylor as they were by Hancock and Bezold.

Over the years that I have been using the Futures Cone in foresight teaching and practice, I have found it useful to adapt it and add more classes to the initial few. The most recent version of the Futures Cone as I now use it is as depicted in the figure shown.

The 7 types of alternative futures defined below (or 8 if one also includes a specific singular 'predicted' future, which I generally don't do any more) are all considered to be subjective judgements about ideas about the future that are based in the present moment, so the categories for the same idea can obviously change over time as time goes on (the canonical example of which is the Apollo XI Moon landing, which has gone through most of the categories from 'preposterous' to 'projected' and thence into history as 'the past'). In brief, these categories are:

Potential - everything beyond the present moment is a potential future. This comes from the assumption that the future is undetermined and 'open' not inevitable or 'fixed', which is perhaps the foundational axiom of Futures Studies.

Preposterous - these are the futures we judge to be 'ridiculous', 'impossible', or that will 'never' happen. I introduced this category because the next category (which used to be the edge of the original form of the cone) did not seem big enough, or able to capture the sometimes-vehement refusal to even entertain them that some people would exhibit to some ideas about the future. This category arises from homage to James Dator and his Second Law of the Future-"any useful idea about the future should appear ridiculous" (Dator 2005)-as well as to Arthur C. Clarke and his Second Law-"the only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible" (Clarke 2000, p. 2). Accordingly, the boundary between the Preposterous and the Possible could be reasonably called the 'Clarke-Dator Boundary' or perhaps the 'Clarke-Dator Discontinuity', since crossing it in the outward direction represents a very important but, for some people, very difficult, movement in prospection thinking. (This is what is represented by the red arrows in the diagram.)

Possible - these are those futures that we think 'might' happen, based on some future knowledge we do not yet possess, but which we might possess someday (e.g., warp drive).

Plausible - those we think 'could' happen based on our current understanding of how the world works (physical laws, social processes, etc).

Probable - those we think are 'likely to' happen, usually based on (in many cases, quantitative) current trends.

Preferable - those we think 'should' or 'ought to' happen: normative value judgements as opposed to the mostly cognitive, above. There is also of course the associated converse class-the -preferred futures-a 'shadow' form of anti-normative futures that we think should not happen nor ever be allowed to happen (e.g., global climate change scenarios comes to mind).

Projected - the (singular) default, business as usual, 'baseline', extrapolated 'continuation of the past through the present' future. This single future could also be considered as being 'the most probable' of the Probable futures. And,

(Predicted) - the future that someone claims 'will' happen. I briefly toyed with using this category for a few years quite some time ago now, but I ended up not using it anymore because it tends to cloud the openness to possibilities (or, more usefully, the 'preposter-abilities'!) that using the full Futures Cone is intended to engender.

The above descriptions are best considered not as rigidly-separate categories, but rather as nested sets or nested classes of futures, with the progression down through the list moving from the broadest towards more narrow classes, ultimately to a class of one-the 'projected'. Thus, every future is a potential future, including those we cannot even imagine -these latter are outside the cone, in the 'dark' area, as it were. The cone metaphor can be likened to a spotlight or car headlight: bright in the centre and diffusing to darkness at the edge-a nice visual metaphor of the extent of our futures 'vision', so to speak. There is a key lesson to the listener when using this metaphor-just because we cannot imagine a future does not mean it cannot happen...

Then there are all of the imaginable ones (i.e., inside the cone), beginning with the sub-class of those that we judge to be unreasonable, (i.e., ridiculous), or impossible-'preposterous' in my alliteration- and the further sub-class of those that we judge to be 'reasonable but which would require knowledge we do not yet possess but which we might possess in the future ' and so 'might' happen-'possible'.

Then there is the sub-class of those that we think are reasonable based on what we currently know, and so 'could' happen; thus, 'plausible'. And so on through the rest: the sub-class of futures based on the playing out of current trends-'probable'; and finally the default extrapolation of current dynamics -the (single) 'projected' future, the only class in the whole schema containing only a single future, although different people will 'project' different futures, so it is really a single-member class containing many 'single' futures, as it were. The similarly single-member class of 'predicted' future, which had a similar underlying rationale-namely, what 'will' happen depends a lot on whom you ask-is very rarely used, except to make a specific point.

The class of preferred futures-what 'should' or 'ought to' happen-can take in any or all of the classes from preposterous to projected, because these futures must be at least imaginable (so inside the cone), and because people's idea of what they prefer-and how they judge others' preferences-can range from the default projected future thought to be coming all the way outward to (what is considered) outlandish preposterous-ness.

To this set, one may also add Wildcards-by definition low probability events (sometimes referred to as 'mini-scenarios') that would have very large impact if they occurred (Petersen 1997, 1999). Since they are considered 'low probability' (i.e., outside the Probable zone), any member of any class of future outside the range of probable futures could be considered by definition a wildcard (although this usage is not common, as the focus tends to be on 'high impact' events). Thus, in this view, some wildcards are considered plausible, some possible, some preposterous, and-the scariest of all-some we have not even imagined or dreamed of yet (i.e., potential)... These last are not even classifiable as 'black swans' (Taleb 2007), but rather as, perhaps, 'scarlet splofflings' (Q: 'what the hell are they?!' A: 'exactly!').

This taxonomy finds its greatest utility when undertaking the Prospection phase of the Generic Foresight Process (Voros 2003) especially when the taxonomy is presented in reverse order from Projected to Preposterous. Here, one frames the extent to which the thinking is 'opened out' (implied by a reverse-order presentation of the taxonomy) by choosing a question form that is appropriate to the degree of openness required for the futures exploration. Thus, "what preposterously 'impossible' things might happen?" sets a different tone for prospection than the somewhat tamer question "what is projected to occur in the next 12 months?"

References

Amara, R 1974, 'The futures field: Functions, forms, and critical issues', Futures, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 289-301. doi: 10.1016/0016-3287(74)90072-X

--- 1981, 'The futures field: Searching for definitions and boundaries', The Futurist, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 25-29.

--- 1991, 'Views on futures research methodology', Futures, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 645-49. doi: 10.1016/0016-3287(91)90085-G

Bell, W 1997, Foundations of futures studies, 2 vols, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

Clarke, AC 2000, Profiles of the future: An inquiry into the limits of the possible, Millennium edn, Orion Books, London.

Dator, JA 2005, 'Foreword', in RA Slaughter, S Inayatullah & JM Ramos (eds), The knowledge base of futures studies, Professional CD-ROM edn, Foresight International, Brisbane, Australia.

Hancock, T & Bezold, C 1994, 'Possible futures, preferable futures', Healthcare Forum Journal, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 23-29.

Henchey, N 1978, 'Making sense of futures studies', Alternatives, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 24-28.

Petersen, JL 1997, 'The wild cards in our future: Preparing for the improbable', The Futurist, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 43-47.

--- 1999, Out of the blue: How to anticipate big future surprises, 2nd edn, Madison Books, Lanham, MA, USA.

Taleb, NN 2007, The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable, Random House, New York.

Taylor, CW 1990, Creating strategic visions, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA.

Voros J 2003, 'A generic foresight process framework', Foresight, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 10-21. doi: 10.1108/14636680310698379

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From time to time people ask about the Futures Cone, and how it came about. Here is a brief history of how I came across it before adapting it to suit my use of the concept, and began using an earl...

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Half of the population will suffer from myopia by 2050

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Half of the population will suffer from myopia by 2050

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Published: 7 October 2021 at 11:00

High levels of exposure can increase risk of short-sightedness by up to 80% - study

A new study published in one of the world's leading medical journals has revealed a link between screen time and higher risk and severity of myopia, or short-sightedness, in children and young adults.

The open-access research, published this week in The Lancet Digital Health, was undertaken by researchers and eye health experts from Singapore, Australia, China and the UK, including Professor Rupert Bourne from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU).

The authors examined more than 3,000 studies investigating smart device exposure and myopia in children and young adults aged between 3 months old and 33 years old.

After analysing and statistically combining the available studies, the authors revealed that high levels of smart device screen time, such as looking at a mobile phone, is associated with around a 30% higher risk of myopia and, when combined with excessive computer use, that risk rose to around 80%.

The research comes as millions of children around the world have spent substantial time using remote learning methods following the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Bourne, Professor of Ophthalmology in the Vision and Eye Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), said:

"Around half the global population is expected to have myopia by 2050, so it is a health concern that is escalating quickly. Our study is the most comprehensive yet on this issue and shows a potential link between screen time and myopia in young people.

"This research comes at a time when our children have been spending more time than ever looking at screens for long periods, due to school closures, and it is clear that urgent research is needed to further understand how exposure to digital devices can affect our eyes and vision. We also know that people underestimate their own screen time, so future studies should use objective measures to capture this information."

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Screen time linked to risk of myopia in young people

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High levels of exposure can increase risk of short-sightedness by up to 80% - study

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What is "better"? - Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

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What is "better"? - Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

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Dr. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Designing Nature  | The Conference 2018

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In This Article:

Too much screen time can lead to obesity, sleep problems, chronic neck and back problems, depression, anxiety and lower test scores in children.

Children should limit screen time to 1 to 2 hours per day. Adults should also try to limit screen time outside of work hours.

To help limit your family's screen time, you can promote healthy electronic use, encourage other activities and keep bedrooms screen-free.

Electronics are a part of everyone's life - but what are the negative effects of screen time for adults and children?

Screens are a part of everyone's life these days. While there is growing evidence showing the negative effects of screen time on adults and children, your family can improve their health by cutting back on the amount of time spent in front of the screen. Learn the negative effects of prolonged screen time and tips to help limit electronics use.

The effects of screen time on your health

Whether the whole family sits around staring at their smartphones or you keep the TV on in the background, too much screen time can be harmful. Here are a few ways your health may be negatively affected by spending too much time in front of a screen.

Obesity. Too much time engaging in a sedentary activity, such as playing video games or watching TV, can be a risk factor for obesity. Heart health is also impacted and can lead to a higher risk of diabetes, increased blood pressure or cholesterol.

Sleep problems. The light emitted from electronic devices interferes with the brain's sleep cycle and can prevent getting a good night's sleep. To sleep more soundly, keep screens out of the bedroom and avoid them for at least an hour before you climb into bed.

Chronic neck and back pain. Too much screen time can lead to poor posture, causing chronic neck, shoulder and back pain. Instead, take breaks from sitting to walk around, stand or stretch. Make sure your chair provides ample back support and try to keep the device at eye level.

Depression and anxiety. All the time spent in front of screens can negatively affect your mental and emotional wellbeing. Experts suggest that higher screen time and depression could be connected along with an increase in suicidal behaviors and lower one's ability to read emotions in general.

Additionally, a National Institutes of Health study found that children who spent more than two hours a day on electronic devices scored lower on thinking and language tests. Those with more than seven hours of screen time experienced thinning of the brain's cortex, which is related to critical thinking and reasoning.

Tips to reduce screen time

Limiting screen time to just a few hours a day may not be realistic, but these tips can help slim you and your family's screen time.

Model healthy electronic use. Parents are role models for their kids. The next time you binge-watch your favorite Netflix series, remember that you are setting an example for your children. Keeping the TV on in the background or scrolling through your phone when you have a spare minute may not be modeling the behavior you hope to see in your kids.

Set aside time to unplug. Choose a time for your whole family to unplug from the phone, TV and computer. When you all agree to put down your devices, it gives your family the chance to spend quality time together.

Use parental controls. There are tools you can use to filter or block unwanted content. You can even set daily screen time limits that can lock your children out of apps after they have reached a set amount of time.

Encourage other activities. These days it's easy for kids to become reliant on electronics for entertainment. Instead, encourage them to get involved in activities that don't require a screen like playing outside, reading a book or playing a board game.

Keep bedrooms screen-free. You may want to consider making it a rule that electronic devices are not allowed in the bedroom. This also includes tablets and other handheld devices that your kids may be tempted to use at night, which could interfere with their sleep.

So, what is the ideal amount of screen time? While it sounds like a simple question, the "just right" amount often depends on what type of screen a person is looking at and why they are looking at it. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends avoiding screens for children younger than 18 to 24 months. Children over age 2 should be limited to 1 to 2 hours of screen time per day. Adults should also try to limit their screen time outside of work hours.

If you have questions about the negative effects of screen time for adults and children, find a nearby Valleywise Community Health Center or call 1 (833) VLLYWSE to schedule an appointment.

Sources:

1. https://www.verywellfamily.com/the-negative-effects-of-too-much-screen-time-1094877

2. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000355.htm

3. https://healthmatters.nyp.org/what-does-too-much-screen-time-do-to-childrens-brains/

4. https://academic.oup.com/pch/article/22/8/461/4392451

5. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/13/why-you-should-be-reducing-screen-time-and-3-simple-tips-to-do-it.html

6. https://abcdstudy.org/

Check out our amazing community resources throughout the Valley! We offer a variety of family-friendly fitness, art and nutrition classes that parents and children both will enjoy.

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Negative Effects of Too Much Screen Time | Valleywise Health

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What are the negative effects of too much screen time for adults and children? Learn how screen time can affect your health and tips to limit device use.

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Today, technology is developing faster than ever, making tomorrow's future very different from today's. How can we develop new, groundbreaking systems and prototypes for the future? Speculative design offers a solution here. Large companies and governments are beginning to recognise its value, and Google and Shell have already integrated speculative design into their business strategy for years. There are numerous design methodologies and strategies that companies have implemented for a better customer experience. Design thinking, customer journeys, user mapping and the personas for example.

But what if we, besides these methodologies, make room for speculative design? In this article I share four examples of the impact that speculative design can have!

Possible futures and questions that come with it

Right now, design is primarily seen as a problem-solving practice. Someone needs a new website, chair or space, so designers start working on designing a new, better website, chair or space. In that sense, design is closely linked to the needs of an industry, and is primarily focused on meeting the needs of customers.

Speculative design is not so much aimed at solving contemporary problems of users or customers, but rather at reconsidering the possible futures and the influence of new technological innovations.
Where typical design looks at "smaller problems", speculative design increases the scope and tries to tackle "larger problems".

This design process can be influenced by fictional political, social, economic or technological factors. Speculative design tries to imagine what it would be like to design without the current limitations of technology, culture and politics. The term was first used in the 1990s by British designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. In their book Speculative Everything they describe Speculative design as follows:

"Speculative design thrives on imagination and aims to open up new perspectives on what are sometimes called wicked problems, to create spaces for discussion and debate about alternative ways of being, and to inspire and encourage people's imaginations to flow freely. Design speculations can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality."

Dunne and Raby present a future map in their, with different types of future scenarios. To keep speculative design somewhat realistic, these scenarios must be categorised as possible, plausible or probable. The more scenarios there are on the future map, the easier it will be to determine the preferable future (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Taxonomy of futures, redrawn from Dunne and Raby
1. Speculative design makes you think about ethics

Maybe you know the Netflix series Black Mirror. In every episode this series explores what the world could look like under the influence of a technological innovation. For example, lenses that can record your entire day; a like-system that is fully integrated into society or a device through which memories can be played back on a screen. Black mirror is textbook example of speculative design. Every episode raises questions with viewers. Is this the future we want? Could the world look like this? Each episode creates a dot on the future card. Although Black Mirror is mainly about techno-paranoia, that does not mean that speculative design is always pessimistic.
figure 2: Black Mirror, The Entire History Of You
2. Speculative design makes you think about technology in the future

Another example is Star Trek. About 40 years ago, millions of viewers were first introduced to a mobile tablet, and the potential impact of such a device. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, crew members of the USS Enterprise often used a PADD (Personal Access Display Devices). Set designer Michael Okuda had a limited budget for props in Star Trek. The flat surface of PADD meant that no buttons or dials needed to be built. The fictional, adaptive software ensured that the crew members could use the PADD for almost all tasks.

PADD influenced the entire working method of crew members and showed viewers a world in which powerful technology is always available, regardless of where the user is located.

Many of us nowadays have an iPad, but in the 1980s such a device was never seen before.
Figure 3: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Picard with PADD
3. Speculative design makes you think about how you could stay ahead

Tablets and mobile phones have changed our entire society. In 2007, Apple introduced the first iPhone and although there were already huge players on the market such as BlackBerry and Nokia, Apple managed to distinguish itself with a product like no other.

By breaking away from the conventional functions of a smartphone at the time, Apple was able to introduce a completely new product. With iPhone OS (now iOS), head designer Scott Forstall and his team were able to design an entire user flow in which the users used a touchscreen instead of the standard hardware buttons at the time. By basing the digital interactions on physical actions such as opening a letter, a drawer, or waving something away, Apple offered a brilliant way that ensured users quickly understood what each button or app was for. It also gave many of Apple's apps a distinctive visual style compared to competitors.

The world soon saw the iPhone as the benchmark for the best mobile user experience, and the BlackBerry interface was considered clumsy and archaic. And with Apple at the forefront of the UX / UI strategy, Android dropped its previous UI that mimicked BlackBerrys at the time, in order to design a better user experience. (see figure 4).

Because Apple introduced a completely new interaction mechanism with the iPhone, the touchscreen which was controlled with a finger instead of a stylus, it opened up countless innovation possibilities that we still benefit from today.
Figure 4: Android before and after iPhone
4. Speculative design makes you think about social issues

Designers know how to design products and services for today's customers. The scope of these services can best be shifted a few years or decades. But there are issues that must be designed over a full millennia.
What will the welfare state look like in 100 years? What is the future of the car? How do we adapt our society and cities to climate change?

Architectural firm BIG (Bjark Ingels Group) investigated this last question together with organization Oceanix with the Oceanix Cities project. 90% of the world's largest cities are expected to face rising sea levels in 2050. The majority of coastal cities will be affected by coastal erosion and flooding, forcing millions of people to move. Oceanix city is researching the concept of a sustainable, floating community for 10,000 inhabitants.

Now we don't have to start building the first Oceanix city right away, but the visualisation of a floating city raises a lot of questions. For example, is it necessary to relocate our cities to the open sea? What influence does this have on infrastructure, agriculture and culture?

Speculative design helps shape difficult, future social issues, to better prepare ourselves for possible futures, and to investigate what the desirable future is.

Nu hoeven we niet gelijk te beginnen met het bouwen van de eerste Oceanix city, maar de visualisatie van een drijvende stad roept wel enorm veel vragen op. Is het bijvoorbeeld nodig om onze steden te verplaatsen naar open zee? Wat voor invloed heeft dit op infrastructuur, agricultuur en cultuur?

Speculatief design helpt hier om lastige, toekomstige maatschappelijke vraagstukken vorm te geven, om ons zo beter voor te bereiden op mogelijke toekomsten, en om te onderzoeken wat de wenselijke-toekomst is.
Figure 5: BIG and Oceanix: Oceanix City
What could your organisation look like in 100 years?

Speculative design allows you to stretch your imagination and develop new, groundbreaking systems and prototypes for possible futures. And although that is not always easy to sell, companies and governments are starting to recognise its value.

"By speculating more, at all levels of society, and exploring alternative scenarios, reality will become more malleable. And although the future cannot be predicted, we can help set in place today factors that will increase the probability of more desirable futures happening "according to Raby and Dunne.

Want to know more?

I hope this blog has encouraged you and your organisation to explore potential futures! What would your organisation look like in 100 years? Would you still exist, or would you have to make drastic changes? I'd love to speculate with you!

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4 examples of the impact of speculative design

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How can speculative design help your organization prepare for possible futures? Read about four impactful examples of speculative design.

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What will happen to the world over the course of the next fifty years? Will we see nations replaced by corporations as the leading powers in geopolitics? Will the planet be engulfed in catastrophic conflicts and wars? Or will we see the dawn of a new age of enlightenment where humanity puts aside its differences and works together to build a better and fairer world? According to one leading author, futurist, and social theorist, it could be all three!

Key Future Predictions To 2050: 5 Phases Everyone Should Understand
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Jacques Attali has written over 80 books, covering fiction, non-fiction, and even children's literature. He has also headed the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, co-founded the EUREKA program for the development of new technologies, and served as an advisor to French President Francois Mitterand. However, what he enjoys most is looking at the past and attempting to use what he finds to predict what will happen in the future.

One of his best-known works is A Brief History of the Future, published in 2006. In it, he postulates that since capitalism overtook militarism as the driving force behind humanity's progress, in around 1200 AD, there have been nine distinct "core" periods. In each of these periods, progress centered around one geographical core - a city - and one technology that arose in that city.

This started with Bruges, Belgium - associated with the invention of the rudder stock, and progressed through Venice (the caravel - small sailing ships), Antwerp (printing press), Genoa (accounting), Amsterdam (the fluyt cargo vessels), London (the steam engine), Boston (piston engine), New York (electric motors) and Los Angeles (the computer chip).

When Attali joined me recently to take part in a webinar, we discussed the theories put forward in his book regarding what comes next. They do not all make for cheerful predictions! Firstly, he predicts the decline of the United States as the world's dominant superpower. However, he tells me, the situation is more likely to be similar to that which followed the fall of the Roman Empire than the fall of the British Empire centuries later. This is because, as with the decline of Rome, there is no industrialized and modern successor ready to step in and take the place of the US.

He tells me, "That's the core of my book ... maybe we will not have a new center. If we have a new center, it means we agree to move from the American empire to a new empire, and my guess is that we are not going to ... at the end of the Roman empire, there was no successor."

Of course, what followed the end of the Roman empire is a period that has generally come to be known to historians as the "dark ages" - with traditional thinking being that we saw a deceleration of human progress, declining living standards, and a bleak period in the development of art, literature, and culture.

"I don't think China or anyone else can replace the US, like no one replaced the roman empire," says Attali.

So what comes next? Well, Attali broadly divides the coming decades into five periods - the decline of the existing dominant empire (the US), a period during which other powers (China, Russia, and the European Union, in particular) will attempt to fill the void, a period he calls "hyper empire", where capitalist corporations will be the leading lights of society and human progress, then "hyper conflict" - warfare, on a local or global scale, and "positive society", which he also calls the "rule of law" - something similar to a modern re-run of the enlightenment, when humanity started to find its way out of the medieval dark ages that followed the fall of Rome.

Importantly, Attali does not see this as a linear progression - indeed, all of these periods - or "waves," as he calls them, may happen simultaneously. In fact, they probably already are. Which of them wins out, and becomes the driving force behind humanity's development over the next half-century, is currently up in the air.

For example, Attali says Hyper democracy - or "positive society" - might appear after hyper conflict or instead of hyper conflict.

He says, "The 'third phase' - hyper empire - is going on now. It's possible that governments seek to avoid it by closing borders ... but I don't see governments being able to stop it ... the US government could have done it but is so embedded with companies that [it can't] stop them."

As far as the threat of war goes, local conflicts such as the one currently underway in Ukraine, or others that may arise in disputed territories such as Taiwan, could act as a catalyst for larger global wars.

"Everything is possible, and we should do everything we can to stop this war which is coming, and do everything we can to put in place a global rule of law. We need rule of law for the environment, for health, for hygiene, for food ... [otherwise] the biggest losers with be mankind, and life as a whole."

Attali is also deeply interested in the question of what makes us human - and how that might change as technology - from artificial intelligence to cloning to bio-engineering - unlock new possibilities when it comes to creating and sustaining life. It's no longer inconceivable that we might one day transcend our mortality by overcoming the effects of aging or replacing parts of our bodies with artificial or mechanical components. But if we are heading towards an eternal life (or at least, greatly increased longevity) where we will live as mindless consumers or slaves to a corporate hierarchy, is there any point?

Attali tells me, "There is no simple answer to that, but if you want to avoid a life which is absurd, I would suggest it is to say simply and with humility that we don't know the reason why mankind is here on Earth, we don't know the reason that a million years ago an entity arose which can ask the question 'why am I here?' ... the only thing we can do here in the middle of the universe is to have a better mankind and to hope one day to find the answers to these questions."

Click here to watch my conversation with Jacques Attali in full, where we talk more about his career, his work, and his predictions for the future of the world and humanity.

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Key Future Predictions To 2050: 5 Phases Everyone Should Understand

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Jacques Attali, author of over 80 books including A Brief History of the Future, predicts the next 50 years will see the fall of established empires, global warfare, and a new enlightenment. I talked to him about his ideas on where we are heading as a species.

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Top 25 AI Artists of 2023 - Photos, Bios, Exhibitions - History of AI Art)- AIArtists.org

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AIArtists.org showcases leading artists using Artificial Intelligence, tools to make AI Art, and a timeline of AI Art History.

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By analyzing thousands of hours of his videos, the tool learned McGregor's style - from subtle nuances to intricate progressions. And his dancers are now collaborating with it in real-time to generate new movement.

McGregor explained: "I wanted to make use of this massive archive of work in an interesting way, so I asked Damien if he could use it to generate something new, It all goes down to the same question that is crucial in choreography: how do you keep creating fresh content?"

"One of the things that's run through all my practices been a relationship with technology," McGregor continued. "I'm fascinated in how AI might actually develop the conversation around what is choreography? Who has to make choreography? What are the potentials of choreography?"

That's how he started to work with the Google Arts and Culture Lab, which brings together artists, curators, engineers and creative technologists to experiment the intersection of art and technology.

For McGregor, one of the most fascinating aspects of the technology is that it can learn and recreate the particular style of a dancer. Much like motion capture, it can go some way toward capturing their creative identity. "I choose certain dancers because of their physical signatures, because of the particular way they move," he says. "The genius of this tool is that it captures something of that essence of performance."

McGregor plans to use the tool in real-time for a future work, with each dancer having their own screen and reproducing on stage the sequences that the algorithm is delivering.

Full bio:

Born in 1970, Wayne McGregor CBE is a multi award winning British choreographer and director, internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era.

In 1992 McGregor founded Random Dance, which has grown into Studio Wayne McGregor to encompass his extensive creative output in fields both beyond, and in dialogue with dance. Company Wayne McGregor, his ensemble of highly skilled dancers, was the original instrument through which McGregor evolved his distinctive visual style, revealing the movement possibilities of the body in ever more precise degrees of articulation. McGregor has made over thirty works for the company and today it continues to be his laboratory for ambitious and experimental new choreography, touring his work across the UK and around the world. Company Wayne McGregor is Resident Company at Sadler's Wells, London.

Studio Wayne McGregor is the creative engine of McGregor's life-long choreographic enquiry into thinking through and with the body. It encompasses his own touring company of dancers, Company Wayne McGregor; creative collaborations across dance, film, music, visual art, technology and science; and highly specialized learning, engagement and research programmes. In March 2017 Studio Wayne McGregor moved into its own newly created studio space at Here East in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a shared space for making where the creative brains of the day can exchange knowledge and invent together.

Since 2006 McGregor has been Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, the first choreographer from a contemporary dance background to be invited into the role. Here his productions are acclaimed for their daring reconfiguring of classical language. He has made 16 works for The Royal Ballet, from Chroma (2006) set to music by The White Stripes and Joby Talbot and winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production, to Woolf Works (2015), an "exhilarating and ravishingly expressive" (Guardian) full length ballet based on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf.

McGregor is regularly commissioned to make new work by and has works in the repertories of the most important ballet companies in the world including Paris Opera Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Bayerisches Staatsballett Munich, New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, NDT1, Australian Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre (Old Vic, National Theatre, Royal Court), opera (La Scala/ROH Dido and Aeneas, Acis and Galatea), film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Tarzan, Fantastic Beasts 1 & 2, Sing, Mary Queen of Scots), music videos (Radiohead, Atoms for Peace, The Chemical Brothers), fashion shows (Gareth Pugh at London Fashion Week 2017), and TV (Brit Awards opening performance 2016, Paloma Faith's Brit Awards performance 2015). Some of the long list of artists who have partnered with McGregor through more than twenty years of collaborative multi-disciplinary work include John Tavener, Audrey Niffenegger, Jamie xx, Max Richter, Olafur Eliasson, Kaija Saariaho, Lucy Carter, Ben Frost, Jlin, Thom Yorke, Mark Wallinger, Random International, Jon Hopkins, John Pawson and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Wayne McGregor is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and has an Honorary Doctor of Science from Plymouth University and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from University of Leeds. He is part of the Circle of Cultural Fellows at King's College London. He is Vice President of the Roundhouse, a Trustee of Aerowaves, and Patron of The Place and the Lisa Ullman Travel Scholarship. In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the British Science Association. McGregor topped the list for dance in The Progress 1000 celebration of London's most influential people in 2018.

McGregor's work has earned him a multitude of awards including four Critics' Circle Awards, two Time Out Awards, two South Bank Show Awards, two Olivier Awards, a prix Benois de la Danse and two Golden Mask awards. In 2011 McGregor was awarded a CBE for Services to Dance.

McGregor on using artificial intelligence:

What questions are you exploring using AI as a choreographer?

"My deliberately untitled work, which premiered July 2019 at the Music Center's Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in L.A., is a philosophical meditation on how a dance is made. It explores questions like: what does it mean to choreograph? And can interesting choreography be made with help from artificial intelligence?"

How has technology impacted your creative practice?

How do you work with AI to generate new movement?

"What this tool allows us to do is say: I'm starting with this phrase, and I'd like the AI to invent the next phrase - but in the style of Jordan, or in the style of Jess. And then you can get combinations of those. It's learning all the time and feeding back, so this iterative version gives you all of these new possibilities you couldn't have imagined."

Learn more about Wayne McGregor:

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Wayne McGregor - Artist Profile (Photos, Videos, Exhibitions) - AIArtists.org

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By analyzing thousands of hours of his videos, the tool learned McGregor's style - from subtle nuances to intricate progressions. And his dancers are now collaborating with it in real-time to generate new movement.

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An overview of contemporary speculative practice by SPECULATIVEEDU 

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An overview of contemporary speculative practice by SPECULATIVEEDU 

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An overview of contemporary speculative practice - SpeculativeEdu

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SpeculativeEdu is an educational, project funded by ERASMUS+, the European Union programme for education, training, youth, and sport, with the aim of strengthening speculative design education by collecting and exchanging existing knowledge and experience whilst developing new methods in the field of speculative design.

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Mounting evidence shows that many of today's whole foods aren't as packed with vitamins and nutrients as they were 70 years ago, potentially putting people's health at risk.

Vegetables like this freshly picked carrot lying on a garden bed of frisée endive are critical sources of nutrients. Mounting evidence shows that many fruits, vegetables, and grains grown today carry fewer nutrients than those grown decades ago. This trend means that "what our grandparents ate was healthier than what we're eating today," says Kristie Ebi, an expert in climate change and health at the University of Washington in Seattle. But studies have shown that changing farming methods can reverse these nutrient declines. Produce cultivated on farms that embrace regenerative farming practices is more nutritious.

Photograph by Lucas Foglia

As you gaze across the rows of brightly coloured fruits and vegetables in the produce section of the grocery store, you may not be aware that the quantity of nutrients in these crops has been declining over the past 70 years.

Mounting evidence from multiple scientific studies shows that many fruits, vegetables, and grains grown today carry less protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and vitamin C than those that were grown decades ago. This is an especially salient issue if more people switch to primarily plant-based diets, as experts are increasingly recommending for public health and for protecting the planet.

Nutrient decline "is going to leave our bodies with fewer of the components they need to mount defences against chronic diseases-it's going to undercut the value of food as preventive medicine," says David R. Montgomery, a professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington in Seattle and co-author with Anne Biklé of What Your Food Ate.

Even for people who avoid processed foods and prioritise fresh produce, this trend means that "what our grandparents ate was healthier than what we're eating today," says Kristie Ebi, an expert in climate change and health at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Scientists say that the root of the problem lies in modern agricultural processes that increase crop yields but disturb soil health. These include irrigation, fertilisation, and harvesting methods that also disrupt essential interactions between plants and soil fungi, which reduces absorption of nutrients from the soil. These issues are occurring against the backdrop of climate change and rising levels of carbon dioxide, which are also lowering the nutrient contents of fruits, vegetables, and grains.

Experts say it's important to keep these declines in perspective and not let this news deter you from eating a variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to maintain your health. But they hope the results will spur more people to care about how their food is being grown.

"Most people know that what we eat matters-if how our food is raised also matters, it opens a new, compelling reason for the average person to care about agricultural practices," says Montgomery. "We can't afford to lose arable land as population grows. We need to prevent further damage and work to restore fertility to already degraded lands."

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Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

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Mounting evidence shows that many of today's whole foods aren't as packed with vitamins and nutrients as they were 70 years ago, potentially putting people's...

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Bezalel Academy of Art and Design graduate Meydan Levy has developed five edible artificial fruits, which comprise printed cellulose skins filled with a cocktail of vitamins and minerals.

Called Neo Fruit, Levy's fake fruit have soft cases that are 3D-printed from translucent cellulose - an organic compound that gives plants their structure.

These skins are then injected with nutrient-rich liquids with various colours and flavours.

Levy describes the process as 4D printing because, unlike traditional 3D printing, the final form of the fruit changes after it comes out of the printer.

The cellulose skins are printed in a flat, compressed form, and only take on their final fruit-like appearance once the liquid is added.

The final form of the fruit is determined by built-in arteries, or micro-tubes, in the 3D-printed structures, which fill up to give the fruit volume.

"Until the fourth dimension is activated, the dry fruit is flat and lightweight allowing for a long shelf life, efficient storage and ease of transport," Levy told Dezeen.

"Adding the liquids and activating the fourth dimension gives the fruit life because from that moment it can be eaten. The liquid becomes the biological clock of the fruit and gives it a certain life, meaning it will remain at its best for a limited but pre-planned time."

Despite looking like they come from an alien planet, all of the fruits are edible.

However, rather than mimicking the taste of real fruit, each of Levy's Neo Fruit has a unique flavour that is combined from a number of base ingredients.

"I developed a device that allows me to extract oils, flavours and smells from almost any existing substance and it allows me to experiment with diverse and interesting taste and smell combinations," Levy explained.

"I developed the textures with the help of expert chefs in molecular cooking and researched the edible raw materials available to produce the appropriate colour and texture for each fruit."

One of Levy's fruits consists of a series of small pods strung together like molecules. It requires the eater to crack it open and scrape the contents out with their teeth like an artichoke leaf.

"One day we will be able to 3D-print a hamburger"

Another is reminiscent of the interior of a passion fruit, but divided into three segments and held together by an outer and inner skeleton.

"This fruit contains additional nutrients which can be chewed and squeezed out of the 'bone'," Levy told Dezeen. "This is meant to extend the eating experience and preoccupation with the fruit."

Levy's aim was to find new ways to feed the ever-growing human population and offer a more appealing alternative to using food supplements to improve nutrition.

He worked with nutritionists in order to develop a different blend of vitamins and minerals for each fruit, which are intended to meet the human body's wide range of nutritional needs.

Levy looked at the way that real fruit is able to offer a sensory eating experience while communicating essential information.

The colour of a piece of fruit is not just an added extra, he suggested.

The pigments that make carrots orange, for example, are also a source of vitamin A, which is crucial for strengthening the immune system.

"Fruit is a whole product in perfect packaging, it holds both envelope and content in perfect reference to each other," Levy said.

"Fruits interact with the environment - changing colour and texture to indicate ripeness. The compounds that give them colour also have nutritional value and even taste components."

Other examples of 4D printing include a concept for flat-pack furniture that unfolds when exposed to heat and a shape-changing dress.

Elsewhere, designers have used additive manufacturing to create snacks from food waste and vegan steaks.

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Meydan Levy creates 4D-printed artificial fruit filled with nutrients

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Bezalel Academy of Art and Design graduate Meydan Levy has developed five edible artificial fruits, which comprise printed cellulose skins filled with a cocktail of vitamins and minerals. Called Neo Fruit, Levy's fake fruit have soft cases that are 3D-printed from translucent cellulose - an organic compound that gives plants their structure.