The Patterns

we have discovered for designing the future

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How the Patterns Work

These are drafts of The Patterns for Designing the Future.   They all originated from successful seasoned practitioners.   But they are open to evolution.   Next step  for The Guide Network:   Get closer and closer to experience-based reality by adding, subtracting, dividing, honing, polishing and being inspired by these pioneering efforts.

We've annotated in yellow this Pattern, “501. A Small Group of Like-Minded People ***”, to demonstrate how, for convenience and clarity, each pattern has the same format.

Patterns Assembled

501. A Small Group of Like-Minded People ***

301. The First Law of Designing the Future: ‘You Break It, You Buy It.’ *

612. Carefully Pick Your Fights **

The Patterns Discovered To Date (The Work in Progress)

900s

901: Be a Learning Organization. ***
902: Give Your Design for the Future a Group Identity – Such as a Transformational Force for Good.*
903: Recognize That Innovations Don’t Proceed by Technology Alone; “The Culture Prods Them Into Existence.”
904: Encourage Millions to Love What You Love.
905. Give People Delight in Thinking About the Future. Especially if they have an increasingly pessimistic and dark view of the future that makes them not want to think about it.
906. Create Mythic Things That Stick.

800s

801: Intentionally Blow the Minds of the Mainstream Culture. **
802: Channel the Spiritual Longings of Your Generation.
803: Crave a Sense of Wholeness.
804: Crave a Sense of Belonging.
805: Crave a Sense of Authenticity.

700s

701: Give Your Design for the Future a Moral Ethos.*
702: Portray Your Future-Crafters as a Magic Circle on the Cutting Edge.
703. Give People Confidence in Their Ability to Build a Better Future. “You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” — C. S. Lewis
704. Visionaries.
705. ‘We Are as Gods and Might as Well Get Good at It.'

600s

601: Find a Better Way to Live. ***
602: Find a Way to Celebrate the Better Way to Live.***
603: Give Your Better Way a Narrative Coherence It Otherwise Lacks.***
604. Encourage Millions to Join In.***
605. Create an Iconic Central Character to Serve as Symbol and Role Model. **
606. Take Influences From The Resonant Trove Of a Culture and Synthesize Them Into One Ethos
607: Be Talented Community Architects. For example, meshing Menlo Park computer geeks with Merry Pranksters.
608: Intentionally Launch a Consciousness Revolution / Transformation. ***
609: Create a New Language / Vision / Story / About the Future. For example, "Minority Report."
610. Create New Power Policy About the Future. A la California intentionally presenting itself as a new and different place.
611. Don’t Be Daunted by Scale. There is existence proof that it can be done at the scale of Singapore. But also at the scale of the Little Free Library.
612. Carefully Pick Your Fights **

500s

501. A Small Group of Like-Minded People ***
502: On Society’s Margins.***
503: Crowdsource. Ask readers to recommend other cool things to feature that fits the new pattern.
504: Create Virtual Platforms Where the Unacquainted Like-Minded Can Meet And Share.
505: Organize Physical Convenings Of the Like-Minded Where the Unacquainted Can Meet And Share.
506: Synthesize A Culture Ethos Through Festivals, Conferences And Organizations.
507: Attract Media Attention.
508: Gather Multidisciplinary Theorists and Journalists Who Define the New Culture.
509. The Gift Economy Works – Share Knowledge.
510. There Is a Vast Amount of Human Agency Even in Futures That Are Inevitable.

400s

401. Design Thinking Works.
402. Be Optimistic: You Can’t Have Better Futures Without Better Dreams. “To make the future demands courage” – Peter Drucker.
403. Establish Context.
404. Establish Your Constraints – e.g. Your Resources, or the Laws of Physics.
405. Establish How You Might Obliterate Your Constraints.
406. Establish Your Time Frame – Ten Years or Ten Thousand?
407. Think the Unthinkable. Deal With Taboos. ***
408. Prepare Yourself for Surprise.*** E.g. not just techno optimism.
409. Seek Out Diversity.*** Not just of demographics, but especially of thought. The biggest mistake is group think.
410. Aim at a Generation Younger Than Yours. The Culture Crafters are not usually of the generation they lead. They usually are ten or 15 years older than the leading edge of that cohort. They have to be, in order to have the world experience.
411. It’s About the Humans, Stupid. Not About the Gear. You need to understand their psychology, their language, how they think.
412. Be Conscious of the Cultures You’re Working in, How They Get Things Done. If you’re working with North Carolinians who reject climate change but who are now convinced by repeated hurricanes seriously to act on “recurrent flooding," work with that.
413. Pattern Languages Work.
414. Be Humble.
415. Be Bold.
416. When Engaging in World-Building, Make Sure It Is Built in Great Layers, With History and Backstory, Even if That Is Not Obvious in the Final Product.
417. Watch for Eruptions of New Language.
418. Watch the Fringes and the Outlaws for Unanticipated Futures.
419. Watch for Communities of Allegiance to Fringe Ideas Suddenly Getting Larger
420. Search for the Sweet Spot Between Outrageous Enough to Be Right, but Not So Outrageous as to Be Dismissed.
421. Remember that it Takes 1,000 Existing Technologies to Make One Novel Game-Changer Technology Inevitable.
422. The Second- and Third-Order Effects You Can Not Possibly Anticipate Are What Bite You in the Ass. But That's Not the Same as Impossible.

300s

301. The First Law of Designing the Future: ‘You Break It, You Buy It.’ *
302. Be Conscious of How Your Work Could Be Used for Evil.
303. Before You Let It Out in the Wild, Test and Retest How The Street Will Use It.*** “The street finds its own uses for things” – William Gibson.
305. Get Your Hands Dirty.
306. Dreaming Is Important, But Focus on What Is Already Known.
307. When Interviewing People About the Future You are Designing, Do Transcend the Area Specialists Who Know Too Much About Why It’s Impossible.
308. Don't Ignore 'Orphan Risks'

200s

201. Recruit Leaders with Great Tolerance for Ambiguity Plus Capacity for Closure.***
202. Be Iterative. Keep Trying It and Seeing What Comes Closest to Your Goal Until You Get It Right.

100s

101. Every Shred of Human Progress – Every Jot, Tittle and Iota – Has Been Created by People Who Did Not Know What They Were Getting Themselves Into. (Highly tentative.)
How the Patterns Work
How the Patterns Work