The mass-amateurisation of futurology commences, with this BBC site that uses the DNA engine to create a collaborative speculation on things-to-come, with the somewhat-perverse goal of turning it all into a book.
It’s going to be interesting to see how it develops, and how the mix of ‘celebrity writers’, ages, newbies and H2G2 regulars works out: already there is a certain extropian/hitchhiker’s guide flavour to the contributions that might raise the barriers to others?
Also, it will be fascinating to see how the influence of a ‘deadline’ and editorial process for the physical publishing of the book create feedback for the community’s efforts.
Some selections of what’s there so far:
Another thought about collaborative authorship projects such as this: does a reliance on text that most of the existing tools/platforms/environments mean a bias toward those who are literate in the first language of the website in question; with a corresponding bias towards the age, education and nation-of-origin of those able to participate?
Perhaps Josh and the other Futurefarmers’ new project “Co|Mix” points a complementary path forward.
Petafloptimism 
Seems broken – “Connection refused.”
hia matt. in response:
i’m not sure i’d agree that futorology is being ‘amateurised’ with this project – we’re opening up the discourse and encouraging debate by flattening the epistemological terrain :-)!
as regards the perversity of the best contributions being edited into a book i think this could be quite interesting… see how the content translates for a different audience and how the immediacy of the web content and its networked-ness is translated into another form of interactivity in one’s relationship to a book – any ideas on how we could create an innovative relationship back from the book to the website?
we’re trying to ‘manage’ the extropian/h2g2 tone of the content as this does raise the barrier and exclude newbies. we’re getting more non h2g2 contributions now – but the quality is ‘variable’.
the way we designed the xslt temlpate hopefully makes the site ‘friendly’ to non-DNA users. you agree?
you’re also spot-on about the audience being designed into the site… while we want an international tone our audience is bound to be english speaking and predominantly from an ‘educated class’. ho hum…
but we’re trying v hard to make it work across web, book, radio, TV and sms across 4 BBC departments!!!… and as an experiment we will learn a lot. any ideas on how we could improve the project would be much appreciated. best, jb.
BBC Loving
A couple of stories about the BBC: the first is that the Digital Domesday laserdisc, which couldn’t be read by
BBC Loving
A couple of stories about the BBC: the first is that the Digital Domesday laserdisc, which couldn’t be read by
BBC’s Book of the Future
If I had time I’d spend more time looking at this project at the BBC and make some comments. It