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What Should Design Imagine? (A Prologue)

The worlds envisioned by science fiction have entertained generations of readers and movie-goers for over a century. These same words have inspired scientists, inventors, explorers and entrepreneurs to repeatedly push against the boundaries of possibility. Ideas once thought fanciful—deep ocean and space explorations, AI, even nanotechnology and synthetic biology—now form the backdrop of our everyday lives. 

Today, as exponentially growing technologies demonstrate almost daily how invention is only limited by our imaginations, we can realistically ask the question, “now that we can do anything, what will we do?”, or, more thoughtfully, “what should design imagine?”

In consideration thereof, Autodesk is gathering a diverse and notable group of thinkers and doers—including renowned science fiction authors, designers, inventors and entrepreneurs—to contemplate and better understand this rapidly shrinking gap between imagination and tangible reality.

A small, hand-picked group will gather to conceptualize and frame ideas around the core question, shaping appropriate themes and key points to be debated and discussed, together with a larger group of invited participants, during a second, larger IDEAS event in 2013.

Pablos Holman
Brian David Johnson
Robert (Bob) Richards
Nathan Shedroff
Maurice Conti, Autodesk, Inc.
Jonathan Knowles, Autodesk, Inc.
Jeff Kowalski, Autodesk, Inc.
Jon H. Pittman, Autodesk, Inc.
Tom Wujec, Autodesk, Inc.