Services 2020

"...the message from Star Simpson, who stopped by the Institute yesterday to talk about TacoCopter, her in-joke turned viral juggernaut. The idea behind TacoCopter is relatively simple, but irresistibly futuristic: order tacos from your smartphone, and your friendly neighborhood unmanned drone will deliver them to your exact GPS coordinates within minutes. Star created tacocopter.com in 2011 as a joke to a friend, then promptly moved on to other projects. It wasn't until March of 2012 that the popular blog Hacker News discovered her site, at which point every 21st century media outlet jumped onto the story of the business that would change restaurants forever. It didn't seem to matter whether TacoCopter was real or not - it was an idea whose time had come."

"The IPS Prism Project uses the scenario planning method to help participants look beneath events to identify the deep driving forces that will shape the future and how these driving forces will interact with each other to create of alternative, plausible stories about the future, or "scenarios". "

"The 2012-2013 School of Design lecture series features a renowned group of transdisciplinary thinkers and practitioners who are working on complex social and environmental problems. This is a rare chance to hear thought leaders who are creating narratives that are shifting attitudes in our society."

"Prof Castells suggests we may be about to see the emergence of a new kind of capitalism, with businesses growing out of the counter-cultures of the last 20 years. Here are some extracts from their conversation. "