More awesome futuristic stuff …
The second annual Extreme Futurist Festival (XFF) will take place in Los Angeles this coming December 21 and 22. XFF is billed as an arts and technology festival, where “counterculture meets academia.” So take cutting-edge technology and add some techno music, throw in some freaks, geeks and dreadlocks … but wait, XFF aspires to be more than just a nostalgic remix of late-’90s rave culture.
From what I can gather, XFF is also an embodied statement on who gets to participate in the creation of the future, and a reaction against the perceived marginalization of youthful individualism by big institutionalized futurism. In a way, it seems to be a call to arms for the futurist fringe, via transhumanist philosophy. According to the XFF’s statement on Kurzweil AI, “It is time to rise against the dominant current of our society and declare that nothing is too extreme. We refuse to be assimilated into a carbon copied version of a new humanity. As evolutionary agents we will push the boundaries of what it means to transform our species.”
Potent words, the stuff of daring youth. And here’s the XFF trailer:
Extreme Futurist Festival 2012 Trailer from H+ Worldwide on Vimeo.
The XFF was organized by Rachel Haywire, a futurist author and the editor of Humanity+ Magazine. Check out an interview with Rachel on the XFF here. The Fest is also sponsored by Humanity+, but it was at least partially financed through a crowd funding effort on RocketHub.
Anyway, it promises to be a beautiful thing, so if you’re in the LA area at the end of the fabled Mayan calendar (i.e., December 21, 2012), support it if you can.
Kiteba: A Futurist Blog and Resource 
September 14, 2012 at 5:50 am
Postscript:
Saw some comments on twitter questioning the existence of a “big institutionalized futurism,” which is easily answered by pointing to the quasi-academic and formalized brand of futurism that is often employed in big corporations to forecast trends in the technological, economic, social and general business environment. Professional futurists are employed (or contracted through consulting firms like Weiner Edrich Brown) by corporations, governments, NGOs, other large institutions. There are also futurist-led workshops on “Institutionalizing Innovation” and similar topics within major universities, governments and Fortune 500 corporations.
Meet Ford’s futurist here: http://slate.me/OD1HNX
Meet Intel’s futurist here: http://bit.ly/HYqLuO
Futurism also has its own professional trade association. Meet the APF at http://www.profuturists.org/
So while I’ve nothing particular against the kind of futurism that is institutionalized and that serves big organizations, my intent in the post was to suggest that this kind of futurism may marginalize alternative futurist voices. I also wanted to contrast the futurist spirit of XFF with the futurist spirit of an APF convention. I imagine they’re two different experiences.
Cheers, Eric 😉