Monday

(Uploading the journal right now instead of once a week in order to not forget:)

Tutorials this Monday was brilliant because we were given new insight on the length and depth of our project. David helped us understand the definition of the meaning of the words “analysis” and “evaluation” and linking that to iteration and change in the working process.

Analysis: to break things down into smaller parts.

Evaluation: (centering on "value" in the word) to figure out what's valuable when it's out of context.

It’s like breaking down a clock and figuring out the individual uses of the cogs and components.

The importance of focusing and documenting on iteration/evolution instead of focusing on change is to take note of the entire process instead of focusing on the outcome.

Louason linked the above to the cone of possibilities, and his words reminded me that we need to open our mindset and be speculatively imaginative about the future or what we think is the future.

To me the highlight of this tutorial is when we are advised to create a persona in order to tell our stories to. Khyathi presented a great example of this: if we put someone who has worked in a technical company in the present and then fast-forward time to 5000 years later, what would that someone look like physically? This example uses speculation as a muscle and projecting the objective truth from a specific corner of the workplace.

This reminds me of a quote Lee stated during Monday morning: Speculation based on current knowledge is only fantasy, and only speculation based on concrete and up-to-date research has the possibility to create change.

Personally I’m learning a lot from my peers in many aspects, and while I am straight outside my comfort zone, I’m slowly getting more comfortable being uncomfortable. I still struggle being logical with my words and I have trouble linking the readings and abstract definitions to phenomenons in the real world that we have been talking about, but I aim to be better at that.

Tuesday

We had quite a heated discussion during classes today consisting of a distinct change of our project direction. We decided to focus on how technology is slowly but surely replacing human labour in workplaces, and therefore changing the dynamic of interpersonal relationships in workplaces. We are focusing mainly on the hospitality section in tech companies, such as the office canteens as well as gyms and swimming pools.

We started creating a fictional workspace with the five of us each representing a persona. Disagreement arose during the discussion when we debated over whether the workers knew that the technology they’re developing is going to be the exact thing that replace their actual roles in the industry. The majority of us agreed that while most of the workers knew this speculation as a rumor or a myth, they seldomly acknowledge it as the truth. So the main function of our project is to show this macroscopic phenomenon in its entire glory, and arise the speculation inside the heads of workers.

We have currently decided on a location which is the canteen section in Google. We hope to gather first-hand information and record data that could provide new insight to our assumptions, and eventually turn them into understanding on the entire phenomenon.

Currently I have a lot inside my head that I have yet to put into words and I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed, so there are still a lot of information that I haven’t written down. I will update this journal entry shortly.

TBC.

Tutorials & Group Meetings

We had an intriguing and heated conversation during tutorials and group meetings this week that made me go straight out of my comfort zone both in format and content. In format, the discussion was increasingly intense which made previous tutorials, while equally intriguing, seem pretty quiet by comparison, everybody was blurting out new ideas in a relatively short amount of time, and I had to literally fight to cut into the conversation, which was surprisingly very enjoyable because I got to listen to different people’s perspectives on the same topic and try to add my individual ideas into the mix.

In content, I was really excited when we touched on the work-life balance(or imbalance when it comes to the Asian countries) because it directly linked to result-based culture (from education to work) which is something I had personal triggers on. As our group members all came from Asian countries, the education we received was more or less result-oriented, which led to us, as well as the majority of Asian workers, to compete in whatever field we are in because we have less resources compared to our Western counterparts. Asian workers have much longer labouring hours than European workers in the same company, and Asians have to adapt to the European schedules due to the time difference. We concluded this phenomenon as colonization in the modern era, comparing this macroscopic view to the caste system in India.

REadings

We focused on the theory of speculative thinking this week and were advised to bring the theory of science fiction into our projects. The real world is swaying on a pendulum between utopia and dystopia(depending on what angle you are looking at) and speculating on the past as well as the future really helps us to define the scenario at hand.

To me the episode Nosedive in Black Mirror really linked to our topic, because it was an exaggerated version of the labels of real society nowadays and its impact on people are quite accurately described. Personally I’m still contemplating how to use speculative thinking as a muscle to make our audience aware of the macroscopic truth that we are about to understand, reveal and possibly change. Because Asian and European labourers that are inside this scenario won’t necessarily see the bigger picture unless they see a model of a similar story where they are outside the 4th wall.

The Next Step

Our next step is to find global corporate companies(so that they consist of both Western and Eastern workers and they are working in an office so that we delete the possible comparisons caused by harsher environments) and contact them for additional information. We aim to compare the routine of workers from both areas and seek out a speculative parallel world, either showing a more perfect utopia or highlighting the injustice in a dystopia.