A Formula for (Now) – Agit8
By Alfie • Jan 5th, 2009 • Category: Features, newsI’m hoping that the Agit8 site becomes a place where smart people can share their thoughts on the future of their disciplines. So far those I’ve invited to contribute are keen but of course the inevitable “Not for the first two weeks of January!” apply, which is fine 
In the meantime, what I *have* been thinking about (and will apply to a piece Ill be writing on the mobile industry soon) is a formula that will help settle the mind into the right channels to think about what and how to write about your subject. Agit8 is all about talking about the future, ideally in ways that form actionable paths rather than just academic sentiment, so what kind of formula might exist for writing a piece about the future?
So far I’m at:
discipline+technology ÷ current state = reality (intro)
discipline+technology+speculation/reflection ÷ likely hurdles=future 1 (body)
discipline+technology+speculation/reflection ÷ ideal situation=future 2 (extro)
future1 ÷ future 2 + action pathways= activities (action plan)
Have you read the rather wonderful Formulas For Now ? I was turned onto it by @surrealthing who passed a copy on to me. It’s a collection of, you guessed it, idiosyncratic formulas as written/drawn by some of our centuries great thinkers and doers. I know that the above formula isn’t perfect, but I deeply believe that we’re heading into a profound societal paradigm shift, one which might just be informed by a new cultural and social Zeitgeist, one where we hold our power leaders to task on ensuring a sustainable future. I Also deeply believe that we’re heading into an age of Doing, where the tools to Do and Create are cheap and plentiful, so I am taking a first stab at defining a way of thinking that I hope will help anyone who writes at Agit8.
Can you help me refine it?
Jeff Koons: Trust in yourself+follow your interests+ Focus = Objective Reality.
Alfie is a web and mobile troublemaker.
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What you’ve got is an excellent start. Ideally applied, it should map the ground between the worst-case scenario (future 1) and the best case (future 2), which is where likelihood says the future will fall, given a reasonably informed writer. The real iffiness involves at least two (semi-related) factors: audience and attention-span.
When I write about tech (or politics or sociology or science or what have you) I typically downshift for dealing with a non-initiate audience — bright people with little knowledge of the jargon and who really need you to draw them a picture. The formula you have above is pretty good for talking to people who don’t need to get up to speed first, because if you DO need to talk to the ones who don’t have the proper background, you end up with a really long piece with plenty of embedded metaphors and parables that maybe is too long to hold someone’s interest. Are you planning on having a set of semi-permanent primers on the site to cover the background material for your readers that might need a run-up?
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I hadn’t thought of how useful a set of primer material would be for any given discipline, but now that you say it, it would be a good thing to have to hand. That said, I find that the best writers are those who are able to say what they need to say in ways which even if jargonised clearly tell the story to both audiences. A question your idea raises is what the heck that material should ideally be, and in what form.
I heart formulas
Though I think I’d quite like to see experimentation make an appearance to mix in the possible/unknown…
Perhaps:
discipline + technology x experimentation +speculation/reflection = future 3!
I CAN say that there’s nothing like SMS/Twitter for training a wordy bastard to slim it down. Especially if one is too proud to use chatspeak.
Perhaps the primers should just be links to TED talks. They cover plenty of the bases.
We’re going to see a hell of a lot of our lives impacted by technology in ways we’ll never expect. Ordinary money, for instance, has changed so much in the past fifty years that its newest forms are unrecognizable to my parents — all a result of technology. (And I guarantee that if any commonly used “first-world” currency fails in the current crisis, the fix for it will be entirely technological.) Racing ahead with primer material (say, to get people caught up enough on the concept of commerce so that e-commerce will make sense) just isn’t going to be feasible a lot of the time. I guess it’s probably best to tell authors to keep in mind where to refer people who need a leg up and have them stick (at least mostly) to the formula.
As for what disciplines get covered, it’ll at least depend on what experts you might get to respond, at least at first. You might try an open call for topics and then try to match them up with commentators, who will then respond in whatever format suits them best — embedded video, text, text with graphics, audio podcast — which is a great way to try them all side-by-side and let reader/viewer/listener demand place the deciding votes…
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“Perhaps the primers should just be links to TED talks. They cover plenty of the bases.”
Great Idea.
An initial open call is a good way to gather steam once some of the more clear disciplines have had an initial piece on them. For example, a piece on Politics using the formula from someone in the UK who works in Fiscal policy is going to be leagues distant from a Politics piece from a Texan official looking at housing. Once there are some initial pieces up I think an open call will have both an audience and a premise to work from.