Gary Gigax, RPG and the Web

In a recent blogpost, Charlie Stross - the american sci-fi writer - described the main thread of his next novel. Supposed to be set in 12 years ahead, the story will deal with how "existing technological trends (pervasive wireless networking, ubiquitous location services, and the uptake of virtual reality technologies derived from today's gaming scene) coalesce into a new medium". Even though the whole post and the comments are worthwile (the underlying process of finding the story thread, a quick and personal summary of the Internet as seen by the author...), what I found more curious was the part about how Role Playing Games (and one of its very well known proponent) shape today's virtual reality:

Sad to say, the political landscape of the early to mid 21st century has already been designed -- by Gary Gygax, inventor of Dungeons and Dragons.

Gary didn't realize it (D&D predates personal computing) but his somewhat addictive game transferred onto computers quite early (see also: Nethack). And then gamers demanded -- and got, as graphics horsepower arrived -- graphical versions of same. And then multi-user graphical versions of same. And then the likes of World of Warcraft, with over a million users, auction houses, the whole spectrum of social interaction, and so on.

Which leads me to the key insight that: our first commercially viable multi-user virtual reality environments have been designed (and implicitly legislated) to emulate pencil-and-paper high fantasy role playing games.

The gamers have given rise to a monster that is ultimately going to embrace and extend the web, to the same extent that TV subsumed and replaced motion pictures. (The web will still be there -- some things are intrinsically easier to do using a two dimensional user interface and a page-based metaphor -- but the VR/AR systems will be more visible.)

And given the fact that Stross envisions VR as being the new metaphor for Web evolution, he thinks that paper based RPG prefigured the future of the coming technosphere.

Eric Drexler on foresight

There has been a good buzz around the virtual edition of Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler. Even though I am not into nanotech stuff, the book is worth to read for other concerns. An excerpt from chapter 3:

AS WE LOOK FORWARD to see where the technology race leads, we should ask three questions. What is possible, what is achievable, and what is desirable? (...) These three questions - of the possible, the achievable, and the desirable - frame an approach to foresight. First, scientific and engineering knowledge form a map of the limits of the possible. Though still blurred and incomplete, this map outlines the permanent limits within which the future must move. Second, evolutionary principles determine what paths lie open, and set limits to achievement - including lower limits, because advances that promise to improve life or to further military power will be virtually unstoppable. This allows a limited prediction: If the eons-old evolutionary race does not somehow screech to a halt, then competitive pressures will mold our technological future to the contours of the limits of the possible. Finally, within the broad confines of the possible and the achievable, we can try to reach a future we find desirable.

How will our grand-nephews live in 2012?

In 1912, Alphonse Norgeu did a wonderful postcard serie for the "Chocolat Lombart" company (printed on chromolithography); it's called "Comment vivront nos arrière-neveux en l'an 2012" (How will our grand-nephew live in 2012?)

(Source : Trésors des Postes et Télégraphes, PTT Cartophilie, 1989.)

1) Bonjour mon enfant... Nous t'envoyons ton Chocolat Lombart par l'aéronef des vides ! / Hello my son... We send you the Lombart Chocolate by the Indian Aeronef

2) Back from the Moon: in 8 hours, we'll have our Lombart Chocolate in Paris!

Death of video games and the renaissance of "play"

Cyril has an interesting post about the "death of video-games". IMO video games creativity is not dead. What is dead is the video game development model which suck and is so publisher-driven that it kills innovation. Garage studios are no longer viable, in-house studios are following the headquarters order and cut innovation; and even when it comes to outsourcing, there is nothing good out of it. Of course there are still some good and innovative studios (blizzard) but they're less and less. I think Water Cooler also addresses that issue. To me, what is interesting is that the most important innovation with regards to video games are

• not games but rather platforms, environment to do something together: I am thinking about WoW (even though has of course a RPG component) or Habbo Hotel (or even Flickr which started as a game platform).
• not classical platforms such as consoles but rather on the Web, which is the most open innovation platform for developing things.
• not game content but DYI game platforms (DYI MMORPG or at least 3D environment tools), artifacts (like game controllers as for the Nintendo Wii or the Sony augmented reality card game), machinimas or tools like Xfire (a very relevant tool to when your friends are online, what game they're playing, and what server they're on, join in on their games with one click and see what the friends of your friends are playing).

And this is interesting because video/computer games are now starting not only a tiny platforms but they're is now an ecology of artifacts connected to them which eventually are targeted at engaging people in playful activities such as developing DYI games, creating or watching machinimas, playing games with tangible interactions...

Why do I blog this? I am interested in foresight issues related to this sort of activities and how games is evolving from a very precise activity to a culture with fuzzier boundaries.

From Artifical Intelligence to Cognitive Computing

There is now a language shift from the previsouly so-called "Artifical Intelligence" to "Cognitive Computing" as attested by the news in Red Herring (an interview of Dharmendra Modha, chair of the Almaden Institute at IBM’s San Jose and IBM’s leader for cognitive computing).

Q: Why use the term “cognitive computing” rather than the better-known “artificial intelligence”?

A: The rough idea is to use the brain as a metaphor for the computer. The mind is a collection of cognitive processes—perception, language, memory, and eventually intelligence and consciousness. The mind arises from the brain. The brain is a machine—it’s biological hardware.

Cognitive computing is less about engineering the mind than it is the reverse engineering of the brain. We’d like to get close to the algorithm that the human brain [itself has]. If a program is not biologically feasible, it’s not consistent with the brain.

The emphasis is then less in the "artifical" but in the information treatment processes (cognitive) that should be re-designed through reverse engineering. What is also very intriguing is this:

Q: Can even the simplest artificial “mind” have practical applications?

A: That’s my goal, to take the simplest form and put it into a system so a customer can use it. We hope to appeal to what business can do with it.

OK, it's IBM, it's a company research lab, and even though there are still very high-level, there is this mention to "the customer can use it", which is very curious in terms of what (of course I have ideas about it but it's not explicated in this interview) and with regards to the "consuming process" (let's consume this cognitive computing device).

Why do I blog this? it's interesting to see language shift in the domain of technology, it's always meaningful.

Future of the Internet

Last month, there was a futuristic piece about the Internet on Red Herring, which had interesting points with regards to the relationships between virtual world/objects and the physicality of those.

the barriers between our bodies and the Internet will blur as will those between the real world and virtual reality.

Automakers, for instance, might conceivably post their parts catalogs in the virtual world of Second Life, a pixilated 3D online blend of MySpace, eBay, and renaissance fair crossed with a Star Trek convention. Second Life participants—who own the rights to whatever intellectual property they create online—will make money both by using the catalog to design their own cars in cyberspace and by selling their online designs back to the manufacturers, says Danish economist and tech entrepreneur Nikolaj Nyholm. (...) “Devices will no longer be spokes on the Internet—they will be the nodes themselves,” says Ray Kurzweil.

I am wondering how this would work with networked seams, perplexed users facing the non-interoperability of networks; how would this prediction work: "People will be able to talk to the Internet when searching for information or interacting with various devices—and it will respond". As a user experience researcher, I am wondering whether everybody has in mind how people are currently using the Internet, how one look for information with search engine. I know this is long-term research but there is a huge gap between this and how people use current networks. Of course today's kids will be able to handle that but what about the aging population?

The machine-to-machine communication is also expected to increase:

As so-called sensor networks evolve, there will be vastly more machines than people online. As it is, there are almost 10 billion embedded micro-controllers shipped every year. “This is the next networking frontier—following inexorably down from desktops, laptops, and palmtops, including cell phones,” says Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com. This is what will make up much of the machine-to-machine traffic, he says.

The article also addresses other concerns like the telco competition, the internet infrastructure and mostly innovation in emerging technologies.

Videos about the future of network in the US

Today at the Networked Publics Conference and Media Festival, there was a very interesting panel about "infrastructure". It started with 3 great video presentations available here (by wally baer, francois bar, shahram ghandeharizadeh, fernando ordonez, aram sinnreich and todd richmond). Each of them describes three possible network futures.

Why do I blog this? each video offers a pertinent foresight of how network evolved over time and what can be new path that are expected.

Dark side of computing

As we were discussing with fabien, the dark side of computing may lead to new fossils in the future. See this atrocious dump in Lagos, Nigeria.

(Picture © Basel Action Network 2006)

It's from the Basel Action Network, a very important NGO "focused on confronting the excesses of unbridled free trade in the form of “Toxic Trade” (trade in toxic wastes, toxic products and toxic technologies) and its devastating impact on global environmental justice".

Why do I blog this? I tend to blog and reblog this kind of picture to be reminded of what is the other face of technology, the one we do not know, we do not perceive (apart from old tv set thrown in the sidewalk that we sometime see in cities). It seems that emerging tech (pervasive computing) take the same path.

Sterling on Independent Research

Bruce Sterling's "Visionary in Residence : Stories" include an intriguing novel called Ivory Tower, which has already been published in Nature in April 2005 for a special issue about "What does the next half-century have in store?".

It addresses a topic I am very interested in: independent research. Some quotes:

We were ten thousands physicists entirely self-educated by Internet (...) In the new world of open access, ultrawide broadband, and gigantic storage bank, physics is just sort of sitting there (...) we demanded state support to publish for our research efforts (just like real scientists do), but alas, the bureaucrats wouldn't give us the time of the day.

So to find time for our kind of science, we had to dump a few shibboleths. For instance, we never bother to "publish" - we just post our findings on weblogs, and if that gets a lot of links, hey, we're the Most Frequently Cited. Tenure? Who needs that? Never heard of it! Doctorates, degrees, defending a thesis? Don't know, don't need 'em, can't even be bothered. (...) You're one in a million, pal - but in a world of ten billion people, there's ten thousand of us. We immediately started swapping everything we knew on collaborative weblogs. (...) we established our Autodidacts' Academy... we also had unlimited processing power, bandwidth, search engines, social software and open-source everything.

Why do I blog this? This is not the current situation but the tools Sterling describes (which we already have) reshape the research practices. Researchers begin to use blogs, tagging (conotea), wiki; benefits from bandwidth + large processing power. The weblog ranking system is very close to the peer-review process (less formal, more emergent and messy). What we currently lack is the critical mass. I am not sure whether the blog or another platform might be a relevant format for publishing research but there is something interesting here.

BESIDES, some people are working in that direction. Olivier reports that this paper (which form is really far from the old-school scientific paper format because of its open-source-ness maybe) features for instance a reference to a blogpost. Is blogging good for the career? also asks Alex Pang

Underground Trend Watching

To go beyond trend-spotting, underground watchers should pay attention to Brainsushi:

Avant-garde technologies, social mutations and cultural turmoil... New York vampyres, Mexican freaks, Silicon Valley nerds, Guatemalan gangsters, London fetishists or Japanese otakus, the Brainsushi agency is specialized in documenting contemporary phenomena that foresee the world of tomorrow.

Through its exclusive reports and documentation, brought together by a team of press and TV professionals who tirelessly travel the world and the digital networks for novelty, Brainsushi brings you to these ill-known territories where our of our societies’ future is brewing.

Documentary films, photographic reports or in-depth articles, our work is both meant for the most demanding connoisseurs and a mainstream audience. Beyond our portfolio, the member zone of this website (accessible on request), will allow you to appreciate the quality of our written and audio-visual productions.

Our main fields of expertise: Pop culture and counter culture / New technologies / Digital and outsider art / New body practices / Urban tribes and lifestyles / Extreme sports / Information society / Alternative sexualitiesWhy do I blog this? I found interesting and curious this kind of underground trend watching consultancy.

Nabaztag + Everyware

In his book "Everyware : The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing", Adam Greenfield says that:

I've never actually met someone who owns one of the "ambient devices" supposed to represent the first wave of calm technology for the home. There seems to be little interest in the various "digital home" scenarios, even among the cohort of consumers who could afford such things and have been comparatively enthusiastic about high-end home theater. (p91)

The Nabaztag wifi rabbit created by french company Violet tries to go against this stance: Actually, and to be fair with Adam, what he is criticizing in his book is rather the very complicated technologies that were supposed to be "calm", "intelligent", "ambient" in the digital home of the future imagined few decades ago.

Why do I blog this? it's funny that I received my Nabaztag and Adam's book the same morning. I fully agree with lots of Everyware's claims, I'll post more about it when read.

What are "Futurists" responsibilities

(Via the dr fish mailing list), a "futurist" position is available at the NYT:

The New York Times Company is looking for a Futurist for its new Research & Development group.

The ideal candidate will be highly imaginative and well-informed about the social and technology trends affecting the creation, distribution and consumption of all forms of media now and in the future. We are looking for someone who has an innate curiosity and a passion for new ideas; someone with a facility for market research data and who can use that data to vividly paint a picture of how the world around us is evolving.

Responsibilities:

• Spot trends in consumer behavior, in government regulation, and in marketplace conditions by continually mining available data sources and keeping abreast of influential thinkers and publications.
• Project these trends into the future and suggest new directions for the Company's products and business development. Present these "crow's nest"/future trends briefings to senior management and other stakeholders.
• Monitor the competitive landscape for The New York Times Company's portfolio of brands; help identify disruptive forces, threats and opportunities.
• Participate in the brainstorming process with Creative Technologists on R&D team to help define new product prototypes for the company to test.
• Provide context for the technology prototypes developed by R&D as these technologies are exposed to the business units.
• Partner with the Business Catalyst on R&D team to identify early stage companies who are executing on new trends for potential partnerships and collaboration.
• Help develop and execute an ongoing communications plan for R&D unit to share ideas within and throughout the Company.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree preferred.
• Experience with statistical and market research a must.
• Media research experience recommended but not required.
• Strong communication skills; ability to present to senior management and all levels of company.
• Ability to write with clarity precision and imagination in order to vividly portray possible futures.

Why do I blog this? the description of the responsibilities/requirements are very pertinent and insightful; they show which kind of activities and skills might be valuable regarding forecasting and trend watching.

Red Associates

Red Associate seems to be an interesting company:

ReD Associates is one of Europe's leading innovation agencies working with sophisticated user insights, product development and innovation strategy. ReD Associates is focused on generating top line growth for our clients through relevant innovation. We do this by applying cutting edge social science methods to business development, design, innovation and R&D.

Our strength lies in our ability to convert advanced and complex user insights into tangible business results. For us user insight is not the answer in itself but the means to create new innovation opportunities, new offerings and organic growth. Successful innovation poses three main challenges for a company: 1. Gaining relevant insights 2. Transforming insights into the right concepts and products etc. 3. Implement the solutions as an integrated part of the company

Therefore we have divided ReD Associates into three professional domains specialized in meeting these three challenges (click the menu or headers to read more about each domain).

1. Explore: User research, contextual research, innovation analysis

2. Create: New Product Development, Ideation, Prototyping

3. Anchor: Implementing, Innovation strategy

Why do I blog this? I am interested in the connection between R&D and tangible impacts on practitioners, that's a problem I often encounter while doing research (for private client mostly, as a consultant). Besides, I am always wondering about how to conduct "independent research" (if there is such things as this concept, like 'freelance research).

Some thoughts about technology forecast

Q. Some technologies, like the Internet, seem to have changed almost everything.A. We were told in the 1960s that space travel changes everything. In the 1970s, we were told that nuclear power changes everything. Now, we are told that the Internet changes everything. If you look at the most important things that the Internet has given us—E-mail, E-commerce, easy research tools—they are amazing tools. But before E- mail, we had the phone. Before E-commerce, we had mail-order catalogs, which were very revolutionary. If you want a real innovation, the development of catalogs in the 1870s was a big deal. The most important inventions are not always new, and the new ones are not always that important.

Q. Any tips on dealing with new technologies?

• Anticipate the hype, and keep things in perspective by knowing why you are buying.
• Remember that most predictions are wrong and most new products fail.
• Relax, especially older people who hear they need to have new things to keep up. They don't.
• Take charge by getting involved in the debate. I'd like to see people speaking about new government technology policy. If your school decides to spend $1 million on new computers, what are they not spending $1 million on? Music or art classes?

Drawn from an interview of Bob Seidensticker about his new book "Future Hype", a history of technological advancements and how they change the way we live.

"Future Hype : The Myths of Technology Change" (Bob Seidensticker)

Interview of Peter Burgaard from Innovation Lab by Regine

Regine's interview is a very interesting way of stepping away from projects and having a meta-discussion of emerging tech/art trends. Today, the interview of Peder Burgaard is very pertinent for that matter.

The guy is studying Information Studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, working as a Gadgethunter and an event manager at Innovation Lab (a neat consultancy group in Denmark that is right on spot of my interests with regards to their "technology insights division"). Some excerpts of the interview I liked:

Technology will be moving even faster and among others will the convergence of established disciplines in the future contribute to this increased pace. Convergence in research fields will be more common because we are increasingly looking to apply the construction work of Mother Nature for creation of advanced technology. So the biologist will need more mathematics and vice versa. Also the merging of biotechnology and nanotechnology will create a demand for researchers which interdisciplinary skills. A forerunner of this trend is Stanford University’s Bio-X Lab of interdisciplinary research connected to engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, math and medicine (Bio-X Lab).

A future ability to reverse engineer the human organs and other advances in technology will keep the pace of new discoveries at an exponential level of unheard dimensions if compared to past rates of discoveries. Some predicts that the next 50-100 years will yield advances in technology equivalent to 14.000 years of previous discoveries. So modern society will experiencing even more rapid changes in the future. (...) The interaction art projects at NEXT are to be seen as an emerging trend where involvement of artists and designers in the finishing touch of consumer products will increase. So the gab between pure consumer development and artist esthetic expressions will be winding and eventually join forces. Research studies have shown that more esthetic products have a correlated improvement on user interaction. And the ever increasing demand on technology for ease of use will have artist leading the way of innovation in the future. Perfects example of this is the iPod which have a beautiful design and just feels nice and intuitive to operate.

Why do I blog this? I like this kind of agenda: the NEXT conference has an important point: introducing new technologies that to a broader audience than just researchers and forecaster. Moreover, I fully agree with the trends he describes. The Innovation Lab also seems to have an very good model (consultancy + insight division).

What's like being a 'visionary in residence'

In the last issue of Metropolis, there is an interesting article by Bruce Sterling about his 2005 experience as a 'visionary in residence' (at the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California). Some excerpts:

Let me tell you what I learned as a visionary in art school. First: if people call you a visionary, you become one immediately. It's like becoming a pope. (...) My duties were light: they consisted mostly of high-velocity preaching (...) I had the run of the place, and a hell of a lot goes on there: it's like watching oatmeal boil. I now know what computer fabricators do. I can build mobiles out of wire. I can draw, or at least I know how it's done. (...) Before joining Art Center I had no idea how normal people got transformed into designers (...) Demo or die. Practice is the crucial difference between people who can talk (like myself) and people who can design (like my best students). (...) At design school I escaped a mental box. In my earlier self-definition I was a writer with speculative tendencies; I never created big goofy art installations. It turns out I can do that. It's possible. I just never knuckled down and tried it.

And what's interesting is the balance between "vision" and "action":

Design, as Charles Eames said, is a method of action. It's not a method of "vision." (...) When I used to write about design instead of teaching it, I found design exotic, attractive, and glamorous good copy. After teaching it, I changed (...) When I used to write about design instead of teaching it, I found design exotic, attractive, and glamorous good copy. After teaching it, I changed. Today I find design to be thoughtful and sensible, while the daily texture of my previous life seems muddleheaded to me now, sluggish, vaguely trashy, vulgar even. Why was I like that back then? Why did I make such half-assed decisions about my tools, my possessions, and my material surroundings? Why was I so impassive, such a lazy, inveterate slob? I wasn't any happier for that. Why did I allow myself to do little or nothing about the gross inadequacies of my personal environment? Why didn't I take action? Why didn't I do something pragmatic, observe the results, and improve that? Why did I rhetorically hand wave, blither my sophistries, and excuse so much? Why didn't I just...take the elevator to the street?

TIME about "what's next"

The last issue of TIME is about the recurrent question "what's next". It's about the fact that innovation, which used to come from small groups of experts, now seem to be more bottom-up.

These people might have been engineers, or sitcom writers, or chefs. They were probably very nice and might have even been very, very smart. But however smart they were, they're almost certainly no match for a less élite but much, much larger group: All the People Outside the Room.

Historically, that latter group hasn't had much to do with innovation. These people buy and consume whatever gets invented inside the room, but that's it. The arrow points just the one way. Until now it's been kind of awkward getting them involved in the innovation process at all, because they're not getting paid; plus it's a pain to set up the conference call. But that's changing. The authorship of innovation is shifting from the Few to the Many. (...) Two things make this kind of innovation possible, one obvious and one not. The obvious one is--say it with me--the Internet. The other one, the surprising one, is a curious phenomenon you could call intellectual altruism. It turns out that given the opportunity, people will donate their time and brainpower to make the world better

Then the author gives canonical examples: open-source movement, podcasting which emerged from various tech (ipod, rss, mp3), ikea, youtube/google video

And then there is the conclusion:

You would think corporations would be falling all over themselves to make money off this new resource: a cheap R&D lab the approximate size of the earth's online population. (...) You could even imagine a future in which companies scrapped their R&D departments entirely and simply proposed questions for the global collective intelligence to mull. All that creative types like myself would have to do is sit back and harvest free, brilliant ideas from the brains of billions.

In the same issue, there is a very interesting podcast with some clever folks (Steven Johnson, Mark Cuban...). Someone points out says that R&D people would still exist (and be important) to harvest/gather ideas, sort them and transfer them.

Why do I blog this? Even though I like this pro/am revolution (bottom up has always proven to be the space where the best ideas come from), I tend to think that it's not so easy (end of corporate R&D leading to "let's observe people use of tech"). There is indeed an interesting soup generated by current people (call them consommacteurs, consumactors, amateurs or whatever) but there's a kind of false belief about the nature of R&D in this paper. I was just wondering whether the author of this column was not putting too much emphasis on the bottom up approach like there is no need to have people to "transfer" what's produce (by researchers or lead users/external networks). Like, hm yes an "ecology" of what could support the costs, size, manpower... that the particular idea emerged from the bottom-up approach needed.

Actually my critique lays more in the fact that there is not mention of the magical powers that may or may not turn end-users/future users/consumers ideas into a marvellous million $$ product. Of course I believe in bottom-up innovations, innovations are coming from the consumer, but there is a need of having some good folks working them out to come up with an end-product (R&D + transfer).

BBC on the Future of TV

According to the Guardian, there's going to be a report about how we will watch TV in the near future, published by the BBC. Some excerpts:

The year is 2016 and Chloe is 16. (...) In Chloe's world, there are no TV listings because there are no TV schedules, and there are no TV schedules because there are no TV channels. Instead, sitting at her PC, she logs on to a website geared specifically to teenage girls. She watches programmes sold there by independent production companies, or even fellow teenagers - not broadcasting, but narrowcasting. (...) Older generations are still likely to seek the identifiable channel brands they have grown up with. (...) Digital is not a matter of choice; for every TV viewer, it will be compulsory. At present digital and analogue signals are broadcast simultaneously but gradually analogue will be switched off around the country, (...) The giants roaming the television undergrowth are anxious not to become dinosaurs...

Why do I blog this? The article asks lots of interesting questions and is well, down-to-earth compared to some crap I've read about the future of content. Still have to find the complete white paper they are mentioning.

Update: the report is here (thanks Adrian McEwen!).

Bits and pieces from the CrystalPunk Manifesto

I am actually in Utrecht, in the former utility area of a vacant 13 floor office (for the "Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture"). Rooted in self-education, DIY and drawning "connections between disconnected fields of knowledge" is the motto. Reading their description, I ran across this part that I find fundamental:

Now that we have found data, what are we going to do with it?!

Technologists have for decades been playing with the idea of the supposedly smart home: the entire house adaptive and responsive and proactive, providing conveniences like that resurfacing dystopian killer-app: the refrigerator that makes sure the milk never runs out. No matter how device-centric and profit-inspired these efforts are, and as such divided by a royal mile from the super-serendipity of Crystalpunk roomology, this workshop is moving in the same problem-space of obvious possibilities and unresolved puzzles of making sense from the surplus of automated data production. Everybody can generate a source of water by opening the tap, few are given to come up with conceptually stimulating ways to process the output.

Virilio on designing accidents before the substance

Another great quote from Paul Virilio's book "L'accident originel":

"...imaginons une prospective de l'accident. En effet, puisque ce dernier est innové dans l'instant de la découverte scientifique ou technique, peut-être pourrions-nous, à l'inverse, inventer directement "l'accident" afin de déterminer par la suite, la nature de la fameuse "substance" du produit ou de l'appareil implicitement découverts, évitant ainsi le développement de certaines catastrophes prétenduments accidentelles" Paul Virilio, p114

my translation:

"...let's imagine accident forecasting. As a matter of fact, since the accident is created with the scientific or technical discovering, perhaps could we, conversely, invent directly the "accident" to thus determine the nature of the "substance" of the product or the artifact implicitly discovered, avoiding the development of certain so-called accidental catastrophe"

Why do I blog this? I like the idea of designing the troubles before thinking about the artefacts, a kind of reverse-engineering technique to foster idea creations...