Welcome to this live demonstration of the Four Future Feelings tool. I'm Jane, your instructor, you know me already. This is Barry and Ayca, who I'm so glad to have with us today. Why don't you introduce yourself to our amazing students. Sure. I'm Barry. I'm mostly interested in the future of VR, virtual reality and it's effect it can have on human behavior and really moving the world forward. You're not just interested in setting it, you actually create VR experiences as well. That's great, yeah. Awesome, and Ayca. My name's Ayca and I'm interested in the future of climate action and how people will organize to accelerate that. Well, that's an interesting topic to connect with what we're doing today because we're actually using the Explorer Four Future Feelings tool to explore a climate change related scenario, which we're calling the extreme drought scenario. This is inspired by an actual event that recently occurred. We did some research on the extreme drought experienced in Cape Town, where residents were at one restricted to 50 liters of water per day, which is way less than most people are used to consuming. We've decided to explore a scenario where in our own local contexts here in California, citizens might be asked to reduce their water consumption to the same amount and we've actually created an artifact from this future which is really an artifact from the past because this is the actual Cape Town guidelines for how to survive on 50 liters of water per day. Everything from your using 10 liters if you take a one minute shower, nine liters if you flush the toilet, if you have a dog a liter for them to drink, you need to drink three liters of water a day for your own health. So we're going to use these guidelines and that concept of surviving on 50 liters of water a day, to explore how we might feel in this future. How does this strike you? Wonderful. Actually, I mean sad but I was in Cape Town when there was the water drought for a few days and I do have some firsthand emotional feelings that I had while I was there, so I think it's awesome topic. Great. So you bring some real experiences inform of the future. Have you ever been in this context? No, but I can definitely see myself in this context. I can see it happening in the near future. It doesn't strike you as an impossible future? No, not in California, especially not here now that we've had droughts so. Okay, great. Well, you had a chance to think about the scenario a little bit in advance, you've had it for a couple days and I asked to each pick four feelings that you would like to explore. So Barry what four feelings are you going to be trying to feel today? So I'll be trying to feel a guilty feeling, feeling sick, feeling scared, and feeling inspired in some ways. Very good. Full spectrum of feelings. Ayca, what feelings will you be feeling today? I'll be feeling angry, depressed, also scared, and hopeful. So your last two feelings are actually really similar. It will be interesting to see if you're imagining the same events or moments or maybe having different points of view because we love this tool. Oftentimes, people will have wildly different opinions and reactions. So I'm very curious to see. Well, why don't we start. Ayca, why don't you start us out. What will make you feel angry in this future? In this future, I will be feeling angry mostly at the enormous for-profit corporations who have contributed to destroying the environment for the sake of profit. Also angry at the government officials who have not done enough to legislate and enforce regulations on the set for-profit corporations. So this is interesting, it sounds like you're anticipating this level of anger persisting. So if you wake up, you're angry, you're angry at corporations, you're angry at government, this is a future where in general you just experience more anger than you do today? Yeah. Angry at not doing enough in the past when we could have. Okay, great. That's a great place to start out. Certainly, I mean I hope we don't get to a future where we're making up angry all the time but it's good to imagine that that's a possibility. Barry, you have guilty as your first? Yeah, guilty. I think for me personally, I can imagine feeling guilty about my past levels of consumption for water. I can imagine I'm using 200 liters more every day and as we're washing the dishes, we're washing our clothes, we're taking long showers, just not even thinking about it. So I can definitely imagine waking up feeling guilty at that bigger level. Then also just on a day-to-day level, maybe I forgot to turn the pipes off on the toilet and I accidentally flush the toilet and just old habits die hard. So there's little micro moments that might make me feel guilty in that mode while I'm there. I can really relate to that. I'm actually thinking at a personal level, I live with my husband and two kids, and I might be angry at my husband if he took a five-minute shower and used up most of our water for the day and I could imagine the fights of the future, where we're arguing about something that I would never have a fight about today. Similarly, for guilty, I could imagine if I had too many cups of coffee and I realized what I was consuming and now my kids are not able to, I can't cook for them or there's something that they have to pay the price for some dumb mistake that I made. So I think that now you're both are putting me in the mindset of, what is it? How does this change our responsibilities to each other too that we have a responsibility to our entire household? Well, this is off to a great start. Barry, how about emotion number two, feeling sick? So for feeling sick, I was thinking that just the idea of imagining calculating the limited amount of water will have. I'll probably wake up every day feeling a little more dehydrated than I am today or probably have chapped lips. Just in general, our diets are most likely going to have to change, so will have no meat, no dairy products, no eggs, no even coffee, is going to be a water intense products. So I think a lot of things are going to have to change in our diets and that'll just this feeling of feeling sick and little off. Yeah. So a future in which it's like almost like this. It's like the water-flu or it's like the drought-flu because we're like a little bit dehydrated, and we're eating not maybe the food we're used to getting the nutrition and the protein we need. That sounds terrible, I don't want to wake up in that future. Well, as long as we're feeling terrible. Ayca, what's a moment you might feel depressed in this future? I can see myself feeling depressed in the future because I won't exercise as much. I have a exercise regularly and I like to, it makes me feel uplifted, and energetic, and happy. In this future, I'm depressed because I don't have that outlet to run and cycle, and I won't be able to exercise because I won't be able to take a shower, and I want to waste that water. So without exercise my mental state will definitely not be uplifted. That's really interesting. So you're choosing between offending people because you smell terrible, because you've been sweating and then went to work. Also you're probably right that there's increased water consumption required when you've been sweating and you may not have the luxury of needing to drink an extra liter of water because you worked out for an hour. Yeah, drinking too. I was thinking of just showering but I'll need more water when I'm exercising. It really makes me wonder about the future of sport. In climate things, I'd never actually thought about that before. I love how these tools bring up interesting different directions to take our fourth site. I don't know that we've ever done any research reports for athletic organizations, or professional sports, or school sports about the future of sports being affected by climate change but now I'm wanting to. We've got one more dark feeling you both chose scared. Ayca, when are you feeling scared in this future and is it the same for Barry? We will find out. Yeah. In this future I'm going to be scared because being in California there's probably going to be wildfires raging and I can see a wildfire going on in the town right next to me. I'm going to be scared not knowing whether I need to flee take refuge somewhere, if I'm going to be safe, my family is going to be safe, and someone I know house my aunt, maybe her home just burned down and people may be dying and so I am terrified of wildfires. So hearing you say this, does this make you think that if this future were to come to pass and California really were in this extreme drought, would you consider relocating? Would you go live somewhere else? Yeah, I would consider it. Yeah. Avoid being burnt in a welfare, yeah. Yeah. I mean it's interesting to think about the choices we're going to be making. There's going to be a lot of movement around the planet as certain areas become harder to live in and who will get left behind, who will have the resources and the privilege or opportunity to leave? That feeling raises a lot of big questions. Barry what was making you feel scared in this future? Yeah. Sort of the idea that if we've reached this level, this sort of critical level where we're only allowed 50 liters a day, is tomorrow going to be 25 liters? What about when it's 15 liters a day? And sort of just seeing like is this the beginning of a pattern of constraint that is going to be a really tough place to live? All these feelings is sort of exacerbated as that number gets smaller per day. I think I'm mostly scared of just is it going to end, is it going to get worse and if it does get worse are we going to have to leave California or is it going to be chaos, are people are going to raid the grocery stores, is society going to break down in a wave as that number gets smaller and smaller and less manageable? That makes a lot of sense because I know in Cape Town what they were trying to prevent was what they were calling days euro, which was the day when they really ran out of water resources not just to allow people to have 50 liters a day but in which a majority of residents would not get any water at all. So you're thinking about when do people leave mass evacuations? I mean it sounds like science fiction but we literally just saw this almost play out in one of our major global cities. So it's feeling realer and realer to me, I should talk about. Exactly. Okay. Well, let's take a deep breath and we've got one positive emotion here for each of you which is hopeful and inspired. Aisha give us that hope. Why are you feeling hopeful? Please tell us. I'm going to be hopeful because everyone hopefully around me is also going to be feeling these things and it's going to push people to organize more and protests, take the streets do whatever they can to put political pressure on their elected officials and that pressure is going to get politics to move and change. So I'm going to be hopeful that people will be fed up and doing more to change things. So no crisis and no suffering is without a purpose in this future, that it can be used as a springboard. Yes, yes. I'm hopeful that the bad times will lead to good. Great, and imagine if we could get people to feel the anger depression and scared before we're actually experiencing it and start that pressure today. I mean that's kind of the point of doing this future thinking work. Yes. Amazing. Barry, you're going to leave us feeling inspired in this scenario. Yes. Please do. Oh yes. Well, I think that in this scenario I would feel inspired by the amount of innovation that's happening at large-scale government initiatives, maybe they're doing some water capture technology, water farms start popping up so that they can sort of extract water molecules out of the air. I also think even at the local level, small level like in a workplace, encouraging people to wear their dirty dress clothes day after day that sort of thing like to seeing the innovation come alive and sort of the creative process happen under this constrain situation. I love that. I think the flexibility of humanity will be shining in this scenario and I agree when I was looking at what were the actual tips and techniques that developed in Cape Town during this scenario, that was one that stood out to me as well. The dirtiest clothing contests at workplaces where the employee wore the clothes the most days in a row won a prize and just how can we encourage people to be flexible, rethink? I mean it's just culture that tells us we have to present in a certain way or consume in a certain way and we can recreate that culture if we want to, that does make me feel inspired. Well, thank you both for feeling such a wide range of fore-feelings. It's not always fun to think about some of these more difficult scenarios but I think it is fun to stretch our imagination and realize how vivid we can make these abstract faraway features feel. How does this tool work for you guys, what's the sort of your takeaway from this? Yeah. I think for me just putting myself in this emotional state in the future. In my work with VR and sort of creating these films in virtuality where we really want to immerse people in feelings and emotions turning sort of facts about the future into feelings about the future. I think it unlocks all sorts of realistic feelings, this exercise is probably going to be really helpful in my work. Right. I guess if you were going to create a VR experience as exchange out any of these eight scenes could become the basis for a character, a plot and action that you could ask people to concretely experience. Exactly. [inaudible] for you? Yeah. I found it really useful to put myself in these specific situations and experienced it. I experienced myself going through these situations and so it was good to put myself in these real-life tangible, plausible scenes and yes, see what could be and I found it extremely useful. And as someone who is working in the space of climate action would it be a springboard for you in any way? Yeah. I think this is a good tool to get people to move and and because I'm interested in climate action, yeah, I think that this is something that we could do to get people in order to feel the future then get them to move and actually act. It's not just based on facts but people can move based on their feelings and emotions and so it's a good way to get people to move forward. It's so true because I think people are kind of tuning out the numbers, this is a tipping point, this degree change or this many icebergs melt but it's all numbers, it's abstract and here you are connecting with people potentially where they will feel at most amazing. Well, thanks for doing this demo. This is really enlightening for me, you sparked some new thoughts for me. Hopefully now that you have seen the demo you are ready to feel four future feelings or eight future feelings or 20 future feelings on any scenario that you like. You could play with this scenario or pick any of the scenarios that you've experienced while taking this course. I wish you luck and lots of emotion and I can't wait to hear what you have felt.
