FUTURES: the human best friend.

Nobody thought that the first American astronaut in the space would be a monkey, at that time around the 60’s, even nobody thought that any earth creature would be able to go there. It was a dream, a distant future, humans were scared in front of a new event, the space race, completely unknown and without any control about it.
They decided to send an “animal”, without rights, without power of decision, to substitute them in the risks, but not in the glory.
How far can go humans using our lovely neighbours in using them for testing new technologies?, are they the main characters of the future?, is the human race scary about its own capability to progress?.
The interaction designer Anab Jain, has created a project about a near future, from now to 2012, where is a society that demands new needs and as a consequence of this, new jobs.
After a huge research, included some collaborations with the institute of the future Palo Alto, she have created some characters which represents the evolution of the current trends in the human work places, as the rising self employed workers who pass 75% of the time in front of a computer, or the use of new technologies to help the growth of the ambition of some entrepreneurs aspirants.
One of her characters is a dog called “Luka”, whose owner is a hacker, nomadic city worker, the classic profile of a men behind the shadow, who use “Luka” to design a strategy to sell himself and his future business.
He and his partner, a pet surgeon, implant a Wi-Fi embodied in a microchip which is made by some experimental materials, as ceramic nanoparticles included in nanotechnologies which are currently carefully tested by scientifics, and are potentially dangerous.
Basically the dog works as a Podcast, that store the information that can be shared in every moment in every place in the neighbourhood.
Jain, through her research and his collaborators is trying to tell us something about human nature and its relation with the future through the metaphor of “Luka”, why is human capable of using his called “best friend”, in using it to design their personal targets, profits and purposes?, what about the dog?.
Humans feel anxiety when they think in the future, they don’t think clear and become collapsed, sometimes without planning properly and with hurry, so then arrive the mistakes, no sustainable systems , inequality, poverty, war.


-http://www.littlebrinkland.com
- The Visions of the future BBC doc. DVD (goldsmiths dvd collection)