How We Intend to Future: Review of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby,Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s new book argues for the value of design projects that speculate about possible futures rather than just realize market-feasible futures. The claim is that our societies, and the industries responsible for furnishing our societies with products and environments, are losing the capacity to envision futures in order to evaluate their desirability. In response, Dunne and Raby, and the designers of which they approve, insist on the importance of speculations being physicalized beyond prototype but no longer (compared to their earlier “critical design” work) deployed for people to use. This review essay is critical of the “shopping” framework and taste regime that underlie Dunne and Raby’s arguments and projects.