I want to train to be a carpenter, because I think the world is going to really change a lot in the coming years, but I think making things with wood will remain useful.
I like wood. It feels nice. I’ve spent a lot of time touching it, picking it up, moving it, and most importantly, chopping it up into smaller pieces. I spent a lot of time in my adolescence in a small wood with my Dad and some of his friends processing fallen trees into firewood. Despite my enjoyment of this activity and the tactile quality of the material at its centre, it didn’t occur to me until later in life that it might be fun to make things with wood, rather than just chop it up.
Why I Don’t Want To Make Speculative Design
I think about the future a lot. For this reason, when I heard about speculative design, I was quite enamoured by it, as a medium, movement, or method that investigates the future. That is, designs from a possible future. You might call these objects a guess, but they’re less sincere than that implies. It most often takes the form of a provocation about contemporary behaviour, topic, or system, attempting to materialise some of its potential repercussions ahead of schedule.
But I don’t think I want to do that any more, for two reasons:
1. I am absolutely bricking it about what the future holds, and any speculations I might make about it would be filled with enough virulent pessimism and fear to make them useless as experiments (but I at least might learn a little about what it is that I am fearful of).
2. I want to make things with clear and present needs in mind, because I think that is going to be an important skill to practise.