This is the first of five dispatches, in which we’ll be sharing the ideas that are intriguing us as we head into 2024.
For us, the liminal means places for transition — sometimes barely perceptible — from the unknown to the known. We work across so many different themes and sectors, from genome editing to the future of museums, and as a team we all enjoy sensing the impact of these ripples across seemingly unconnected disciplines.
This isn’t a trends report. Some of these topics will be very familiar. But we’re capturing shifts happening within the ideas. Some are fun, some are strange. All are interesting. We’d love to hear what you make of them.
First up, Father Christmas isn’t the only one who’s thinking about toys this month…
Things come to life
Animism: the belief that everything — including a rock or the ocean — has spirit and even personhood.
It’s central to specific spiritual practice, and certainly not to be packaged as a ‘trend’. But three years ago the leading forecaster Li Edelkoort said in an interview with The Guardian: “People will grow to cherish their selected possessions so deeply that we will eventually see the rise of animism, where objects are respected, treated “like pets”.
For most, this still feels a long way off, but is an animistic sensibility on the rise?
Climate change means even more urgency in getting our heads around how we admit other forms of intelligence and consciousness (have a look at the book Radical Animism for more). The growth of techno-animism, converging with anthropomorphism, in which robots stumble as they try to jump off tables, seemingly imbued with personality and quirky fallibilities, is of course forcing us to confront our boundaries on what is and isn’t alive.
We already have artificial cat companions, voice assistants and, imminently, AI personal concierges. Our role as Pygmalians — breathing life into statues — was happening at first without us quite realising.
Now, we’re fully aware. As a design studio we’re interested in supporting people in thinking through this. What does it feel like to project ourselves onto an object, feel we’re either giving it animation, or receptive to its intelligence? What is its relationship to us? What of us is in it? We can probably learn a lot from a five-year-old’s investment in their favourite cuddly toys.
We’ve recently been prototyping Job Design Lab, a new programme we have created with systems innovators Alt/Now that invites people to confront and shape what the future of work means for them and their organisations.
One of the most popular activities is COBOT making. Participants get a load of creative materials and craft their robot assistants, who can take on any aspect of their job they don’t want to do. The process of making a companion, with cute facial features, no matter how low-fi, is extremely powerful. It makes the speculative feel actually imminent. It gets everyone thinking about what quality of relationship is currently missing from our lives. We were surprised at just how invested we were in these wonky cardboard boxes with their spindly arms. They felt empathetic.
To explore this thinking further, we recommend the new book Irresistible Cuteness, which traces the rise of ‘cute’, largely from Japanese culture, and the psychology behind why we can’t help but invest in kittens. This January we can’t wait for the exhibition Cute at Somerset House on the emotive charge of cuteness.
