Woodgate was brought up on physicist and philosopher David Bohm’s “Thought as a System,” in which he states: “What I mean by ‘thought’ is the whole thing—thought, felt, the body, the whole society sharing thoughts—it’s all one process. It is essential for me not to break that up, because it’s all one process; somebody else’s thoughts become my thoughts, and vice versa.”

This was followed by a strong dose of hierarchical and systems thinking as Woodgate developed as a successful corporate strategist. When in 1996, he founded The Futures Lab, Inc., he soon realized that he needed to develop new thinking techniques and a differentiated system to create the future, given that it meant working with discontinuous change and creating connects from a multitude of disparate disconnects.

At the time, he had been highly involved in post‐modernist philosophy, in particular the works of Gilles Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, and the post-structuralist approach of Slavoj Žižek, as well the digital cultural work of Arthur Kroker and the cyberpunk narrative of Gibson and Sterling.

Fur particular quotes drove him to devise a fresh thinking system, specifically relevant and purposeful for creating the future, namely:

Nietzsche: “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
Heinlein: “One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering.”
Oldenburg: “The art of conversation between the sidewalk and a blind man’s metal stick.”
Ono: “You need a glass key to open the sky.”

Consequently, he decided to create a thinking system that applied elements of Deleuze and Guatarri’s rhizomatic thinking in “A Thousand Plateaus” and remix it with elements of network and nomadic thinking techniques in order to generate the unexpected, even the unthinkable. Such an approach is designed to leverage projected future dystopias and disruptors, in order to create positive future worldviews, which Woodgate terms “plutopias”. Recent developments in the cognitive sciences, imaginal visioning, and emotionally intelligent, optical, and quantum computing are adding additional layers to the process.

The presentation describes the tenets of this new thinking approach and its successful application in creating revolutionary ideation in terms of business models, product innovation, market approaches, and design.

http://www.profuturists.com/events?eventId=613998&EventViewMode=EventDetails

We are also sponsors of the Austin Mini Maker Faire on May 5th at the Palmer Events Center in Austin, TX. You’ll catch us at booth 39 where we will be talking up our new divisions, educational arm Learning Innovations in Future Education (LIFE) and “sense event” production arm, Future Entertainment and Events Lab. FEEL and LIFE CEO Maggie Duval will be on hand to answer questions The booth will feature a video called “The Future is Ours to Create”  conceived and directed by Derek Woodgate, who is also a speaker at the event – his talk is The Future of Education: Collaborative Maker Spaces as Transformative, Experiential Classrooms.

• BY ALEXANDER GEORGE
• 02.27.13

icture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.

If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo.

Urbee’s approach to maximum miles per gallon starts with lightweight construction – something that 3-D printing is particularly well suited for. The designers were able to focus more on the optimal automobile physics, rather than working to install a hyper efficient motor in a heavy steel-body automobile. As the Urbee shows, making a car with this technology has a slew of beneficial side effects.

Jim Kor is the engineering brains behind the Urbee. He’s designed tractors, buses, even commercial swimming pools. Between teaching classes, he heads Kor Ecologic, the firm responsible for the 3-D printed creation.

“We thought long and hard about doing a second one,” he says of the Urbee. “It’s been the right move.”

Kor and his team built the three-wheel, two-passenger vehicle at RedEye, an on-demand 3-D printing facility. The printers he uses create ABS plastic via Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). The printer sprays molten polymer to build the chassis layer by microscopic layer until it arrives at the complete object. The machines are so automated that the building process they perform is known as “lights out” construction, meaning Kor uploads the design for a bumper, walk away, shut off the lights and leaves. A few hundred hours later, he’s got a bumper. The whole car – which is about 10 feet long – takes about 2,500 hours.

The Futures Lab, Inc is in it seventeenth year of operation and will continue its global consulting activities for a myriad of categories and world-renowned clients, extending its network both in terms of territories and personnel. With sister companies/partner offices now in eight countries and having conducted consulting work in over 20 countries worldwide, the new set up will enable FEEL to expand it services which include the creation, design, content acquisition, rendering, curation, production, implementation and marketing of future focused ‘sense events’ into new territories. Plutopia events in the US have always had an international character, involving artists from across the globe.

Maggie was CEO of Plutopia Productions for six years. In addition to the revolutionary five SXSWi and two SXSW Music related ‘sense events’ that she produced during that period, Maggie also created and produced Showdown at the Unobtainium: Tesla vs. Edison and numerous other events featuring famous futures-related speakers and performers, such as Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Douglas Ruhskoff, etc.

Whilst most of the existing Plutopia Productions team will be integrated into FEEL, Maggie has already confirmed the addition of Randall Aretoo Squires as the Technical Producer. Randall was the technical producer on the Plutopia FutureMusic Summit 2012 and Maggie’s Showdown at the Unobtainium.

These changes coincide with Derek’s recent appointment as Consultant in Residence at DAEL: the Digital Arts and Entertainment Lab at Georgia State University.

Derek Woodgate article in the Futurist and Beinkadescent.com

http://www.di.net/events/leadership-summit-on-design-innovation-technology/

Robot pack mule drones and more.

A really good article created from expert interviews earlier in the year, in which i participated.