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Welcome to Emerging Futures -- Volume 204! Nine Concepts Worthy of Critique...
Good Morning becomings of various surprising temporalities,
Over the summer, we have been thinking a lot about a lot of concepts – we have been working on a group of fifty-seven concepts to add to our glossary. It’s going to be a long process, but I mention the number just to give a sense of how big the scope of the experiment is.
Part of the impetus for this has to do with reviewing our first two hundred newsletters, and part of it has to do with the really interesting discussions in our community of creative practice: WorldMakers.
As you saw from the last newsletter where we developed an annotated guide to the 200 hundred newsletters – and as we discussed with some of you after – it is really interesting to see:
Over the next five months of the year, we will be writing a few newsletters that will curate various collections of these terms (around the nexus of beauty-sensing-feeling, causality-quasicausality, and thresholds, to name a few). And we will also be directly adding many concepts to our online glossary (as well as creatively transforming many of our existing ones).
This week will be the first of this series, and we are turning our attention to concepts that we have, cautiously, negative, and skeptical feelings towards from the perspective of how they engage with creative processes and practices.
Here is the List in alphabetical order:
You might have noticed that this is twelve concepts, while the title claims there are “nine concepts worthy of critique” – so what of the extra three?
As a newsletter, we are interested in not just presenting an alphabetical list of concepts, but in bringing the concepts together in a way that illuminates the issues that we have with them – and in this case, a suggestion of a helpful alternative direction.
The final thing to say before beginning, while we are critical of these concepts, we are not critical in the same way of all of these terms. And they all have a use. But as Foucault reminds us, given the right circumstances, everything is dangerous – and so we need to proceed both experimentally and with the requisite contextual caution as we experiment with these problematic concepts.
Here are seven related concepts that all stem from the legacy of a linear approach to causality and the dematerialized and individualistic logic of who is creative and how…
Romantic Creation refers to a historically specific and still-dominant model of creativity that centers on the figure of the lone, heroic individual who imposes immaterial ideas onto passive matter.
We all recognize that when we hear these names together: Steve Jobs, Da Vinci, Einstein – we are speaking about “creative genius.”
This logic is a legacy of 17th to 19th-century Western thought, characterized by the belief that creativity is an internal, sovereign act of ideation, separate from the world and enacted by a self-contained and ultimately rational, very unique but ultimately universal subject. This approach positions the creator as outside and above what is created, with form and meaning originating as an immaterial idea in the mind of the great individual – and only later instantiated in the world.
Romantic Creation is not merely a discrete ideology or a static model, but the emergent effect of a broader configuration—a technology or “abstract machine”—that has co-evolved with broadly Western practices, environments, and concepts of creativity. It is best understood as a relational outcome: the felt experience that creativity is the imposition of form by an autonomous subject upon inert matter, guided by pre-existing ideas or plans. This model is deeply immanent in Western habits, infrastructures, and institutions, shaping how we experience ourselves and our creative capacities.
See also: God Model, Enaction, Abstract Machine, Dispositif
Direct Design refers to a model of creativity and innovation that treats the act of creative design as the straightforward execution of a pre-existing idea or plan. In this approach, the creative process is imagined as a linear sequence: first, one conceives a big idea; next, one develops a detailed plan; finally, one simply carries out this plan to bring the idea into material reality. The underlying assumption is that novelty and value originate in the mind as immaterial, fixed ideas, which are then imposed upon a passive world through making.
At its heart, Direct Design is the belief that creativity begins with ideation—the generation of a fully formed concept or solution—which is then translated into a plan and executed step by step. The world, in this view, is a blank canvas or inert matter, awaiting the imprint of the designer’s vision. The designer is positioned as a kind of mini-god, accessing a realm of ideal forms or truths, and then manifesting these in the world through direct action. This model is deeply rooted in Western traditions, from ancient Greek philosophy to the romanticism of the lone genius to contemporary design thinking, and persists in practices such as brainstorming sessions, design sprints, the individualization and dematerialization of ideation processes, and the architectural studio critique.
See also: Romantic Creation, Design Thinking, Ideation, The God Model
Development, in the context of creativity and innovation, refers to the ongoing processes by which things come into being, persist, and transform.
In this context, development is most often implicitly understood as the set of processes that produce incremental, continuous, and quantitative changes—what might be called “change in degree.” These are the slow, steady elaborations and improvements that expand, refine, and stabilize existing worlds, practices, or systems (what might also be termed Developmental Design).
The danger with this concept is when the logic of linear development becomes a metaphysical doctrine, which is what we see in concepts like “progress” or in the discussion of so-called third-world “development” or lack of development. Development no longer simply denotes a quantitative process but now gives form to an ideology of universal and singular progress.
This linear universalism contains within it an implicit sense that there is ultimately one way to develop or progress. Such an approach has been effectively deployed for the last two centuries to dominate, control, and exploit vast regions of the planet while denying cultures their autonomy, agency, and difference.
See also: WorldMaking, Qualitative Difference
The "deficit approach" refers to a pervasive approach in creativity and innovation that frames the process as one of identifying and filling gaps, lacks, or needs—in essence, treating creativity as a response to a pre-existing problem or deficiency.
In this ubiquitous model, in which the creative act is conceived as the generation of solutions to known problems, with the underlying assumption that the world presents us with deficits to be remedied and that novelty emerges by ideating ways to fill these voids.
At its core, the deficit approach is a logic of innovation rooted in problem-solving: it presumes that the creative process begins with recognizing a lack of, articulating a problem, and then ideating solutions to address this absence. This approach is deeply embedded in Enlightenment traditions of making and thinking, where the world is seen as a set of universal needs, functions, or purposes waiting to be satisfied by human ingenuity. Additionally, the model is linear: identify the deficit, ideate, plan, and implement—a sequence that privileges ideation and mental abstraction over embodied, relational engagement with the world.
As such, it cannot come to terms with the processes that creatively generate new ways of being alive, new creative problems, and the ongoing creative nature of reality that is excessive and open (rather than lacking and striving towards completion/closure/finality).
See also: Direct Design (below), Development (below), Problems, Change-in-Degree, Change-in-Kind
Abduction is the term that the American Pragmatist philosopher, Semiotician, and logician C. S. Pierce coined for a unique form of logical reasoning. Pierce saw it as one of three logical forms of reasoning: Deduction, Induction, and Abduction.
Deduction moves from general principles to specific conclusions.
Induction moves from specific observations to general patterns.
Abduction seeks to identify the most plausible explanation for what has been observed via a process of inference that generates speculative hypotheses to account for puzzling phenomena.
There is nothing wrong with this, and all three can play important roles in creative practices. What we find to be problematic in the context of creativity and innovation is that abduction has gained significant attention from management consultants who claim that "innovation is abductive in nature". This essentialist perspective suggests abduction is a type of silver bullet, where creative breakthroughs emerge from the novel mixing of unrelated concepts through abductive reasoning processes. The problem with such an approach is that we are back into the problematic paradigm of disembodied and disengaged ideation. Abduction can be carried out as a type of brainstorming, far removed from an experimentally engaged materially agential and emergent practice.
In practice, putting abductive reasoning at the imagined center of a creative practice is to fall back into the worst habits of Western dematerialized, individualistic, and idea-driven approaches to creativity and innovation.
See also: Enaction, God Model, Ideation, Know-How
Future Backwards Design invites us to begin by believing we can escape the powerful tacit logics of the present via speculative ideation. These practices seduce us with the provocation of a future we wish to inhabit. The unfounded claim is that rather than projecting forward from today’s trends, this approach allows us to escape the horizon of the present: What if we start from a novel vision of 10, 20, or even 30 years out—and work backwards to map the critical inflection points, capabilities, and actions needed to get there?
At its heart, Future Backwards Practices claim to be a strategic methodology for creativity and innovation that reverses the usual direction of planning. Instead of forecasting from the present into the unknown, we anchor ourselves in a compelling future scenario and trace our way back, step by step, to the present.
The profound problem with these methods is that they assume that the future will be an extension of the present. And because of this, they have no way of accounting for qualitative novelty or emergence. As such, they give us a false sense of causality, the nature of the future, and how the future emerges in a non-linear and radically indirect manner from the present.
We need to move away from such logics toward emergent, distributed, enactive logics that refuse the illusion of future backwards planning and embrace the creative act of co-emerging with an open, dynamic future-in-the-making.
See also: Emergence, Exaptation, Configurations
Underpinning the heroic model of creativity and its attendant linear logic of ideation-driven design is an assumption that intention and outcome can be the same. But purpose and intention are not a quality of things in themselves. What things “are” is always an outcome of how they participate in whatever they can participate in. This is open-ended, fully relational, and emergent. Here we investigate these related concepts, and some alternatives:
Intention is commonly understood as the mental act of directing one’s will or purpose toward a particular outcome—a plan, a goal, or a desired effect. This logic then shapes both the creative design process and the outcome: we intend this thing we make to do this and that. And in doing this, we fall prey to confusing the independence and relational agency of things with our intentions.
But in the context of creativity and innovation, the role of intention is far less straightforward. Rather than being the sovereign driver of action, intention is just one thread in a much larger tapestry of relations, agencies, and emergent effects. To ask “What was the intention?” is often to miss the deeper, more generative question: What is actually happening? What are the actual relational effects? What is being made possible, beyond and despite intention? And being deeply attuned to these questions is critical to creativity and the emergence of anything new and different.
A final thought: Intention, in creative practice, is the explicit aim or purpose we bring to an action or design. Yet, intention is neither the origin nor the ultimate measure of what unfolds. The world is not passively shaped by our intentions; instead, things, environments, and assemblages possess their own agencies and propensities that interact with, transform, and often exceed our intended outcomes. Intention is thus a participant—sometimes a catalyst, sometimes an obstacle—in a broader, relational process of worldmaking.
See also: Effects (below), Unintended Effects (below), Agency, Configurations, Propensities
Unintended effects are simply effects – the outcomes, consequences, or affordances of actions, designs, or innovations that arise beyond or outside the scope of original intentions or purposes. And such, these effects are inherent in all design processes: nothing that exists is reducible to purpose or intention. In some sense, to add the category of “unintended” to effects is to simply muddy our understanding of effects, which always exceed intention.
If we are to use the concept, we need to be clear that unintended effects are not simply accidental by-products or side effects, but are intrinsic to the way things, systems, and practices participate in the world. In creative practice and innovation, unintended effects are not peripheral—they are the very ground from which novelty, transformation, and new worlds emerge.
To speak of unintended effects is to acknowledge that every action, artifact, or system participates in a complex web of relations that exceeds any singular purpose or plan. From the moment something comes into existence, it immediately generates effects that ripple far beyond its intended use. These can be minor quirks, radical shifts, or even entirely new fields of possibility. Unintended effects are not just “accidents” or “errors”; they are the ongoing, collaborative outcomes of things, people, environments, and practices entangled in dynamic assemblages.
See also: Effects (below), Exaptation, Affordances, Agency
Effects are the actual outcomes, consequences, and transformations that emerge from any action, object, or process. Effects are distinct from and often divergent from their intended purposes or functions. Effects encompass the full spectrum of what actually happens in the world when something is made, done, or introduced, including the unintended, emergent, and systemic consequences that ripple across multiple scales and domains of experience.
Because effects exist distinct from both intention and defined function, effects challenge our conventional focus on fixed concepts of utility, function, and purpose. While we habitually ask, "Is it useful? Does it do what you intended it to do?" – These questions ironically take us away from understanding what something actually does in the world. A chair may be designed for sitting, but its effects include shaping social arrangements, influencing posture and health, participating in economic systems, and contributing to material flows and environmental impacts.
The measure of things is not found in their intended utility but in their relational effects - how they participate in actual ways of being alive. These effects are neither contained within objects nor reducible to designers' intentions. They emerge from the dynamic relationships between things, contexts, and the ongoing processes of life.
Effects are fundamentally processes of worldmaking. When innovation happens, problems are not simply solved - worlds are made. Every effect participates in the continuous creation and transformation of the conditions within which we live, think, and act. This worldmaking dimension of effects operates at multiple scales simultaneously, from intimate bodily experiences to global ecological and social systems.
Consider the effects of the smartphone as a technological ensemble. Beyond its intended functions of communication and information access, its effects include the transformation of attention patterns, the reshaping of social interaction, changes in urban navigation, new forms of surveillance, altered sleep cycles, and the emergence of entirely new economic and social structures. These effects are not accidents or side effects - they are the actual world that the smartphone participates in making.
Effects can be understood as the agency of assemblages - the capacity of relational wholes to transform their constituent parts and contexts. When elements come together in specific configurations, they generate effects that exceed the sum of their individual properties. These emergent effects then feed back to reshape the very elements that produced them, creating ongoing cycles of mutual transformation.
Effects also reveal the political dimension of making. We do not create neutral objects that people can freely choose to use responsibly or otherwise. The things we make are world makers - they actively shape reality and fundamentally contribute to who we become. Recognizing effects means acknowledging that making is always already political, always participating in the construction of particular ways of being alive.
Effects emerge from relationships and cannot be located in any single component. They are properties of assemblages rather than discrete objects or individuals.
Understanding effects transforms how we approach creative work. Rather than focusing primarily on solving predefined problems or fulfilling intended functions, we learn to sense and work with the actual worlds our actions participate in making. This requires developing capacities for world-disclosing - the ongoing practice of sensing the propensities and tendencies of what is emerging from our creative engagements.
Effects-based thinking also reveals the profound responsibility inherent in all making. Since everything we create participates in worldmaking, the critical question becomes: what world does this participate in making stronger and more widespread? This shifts creative practice from a focus on individual expression or problem-solving toward collective world-tending.
Working with effects requires experimental and responsive approaches rather than predictive planning. Since effects emerge from complex relational dynamics, they cannot be fully known in advance but must be discovered through engaged experimentation and careful attention to what actually unfolds.
This suggests moving from solution-centric approaches to world-making approaches that take complexity into account. Rather than assuming we can control outcomes through better design or implementation, we learn to work with the creative agency of the systems we participate in, developing skills in sensing, following, and responsively shaping emergent processes.
Effects-based practice also emphasizes the importance of ongoing attention and adjustment. Since effects continue to evolve and generate new effects, creative work becomes a continuous process of engagement rather than a discrete project with a defined endpoint.
The concept of effects ultimately invites us to expand our understanding of creativity and innovation beyond human-centered, individualistic models toward recognition of the more-than-human, relational, and worldmaking dimensions of all creative action. In this expanded view, creativity becomes a collaborative practice of participating in the ongoing invention of worlds worth inhabiting.
See also: Technology, Assemblages, Worldmaking
How do we know what we cannot yet imagine? Emergent Knowing is the practice and process of coming to know in the midst of the new coming into being—a knowing that is not about possessing facts or concepts, but about the creative participating in the unfolding of novelty itself. It is a form of knowing that arises not from the mind’s representations, but from embodied, embedded, and extended engagement – action with and of the world, where meaning, sense, understandin, and identity co-emerge with the creative process itself.
Emergent Knowing is the process by which understanding arises through active participation in emergent, creative processes. Rather than drawing on pre-existing knowledge or abstract ideation, Emergent Knowing is enacted through experimental engagement, attunement, and sense-making within a dynamic and unpredictable environment. It is a distributed, relational, and more-than-human phenomenon—a knowing that is felt, enacted, and stabilized as novel worlds and possibilities take shape.
See also: Enaction, Know-How, Emergence, Practice
What if emptiness is not a void to be feared, nor a lack to be filled, but a generative space—a pause, a gap, a radical openness that makes the new possible? Emptyness, in creative practice, is less an absence and more a presence: a dynamic field where the known is suspended, and the not-yet emerges. It is the fertile silence before the first note, the blank canvas that unsettles, the moment when habitual sense-making falters and something wholly unexpected can arise.
Emptyness is the active, generative condition that arises when the known is blocked, refused, or suspended—when we intentionally create a gap in our habitual patterns, ideas, or practices. This is not the binary opposite of fullness, nor a nihilistic void. Rather, it is a relational and dynamic field of potential, what might be called "empty-fullness": a space that is empty of the given, yet full of possibility. In this sense, emptiness is akin to the Japanese concept of ma—a generative pause or interval, not mere nothingness but a site where creativity can take root.
See also: Enabling Constraints, Becoming, Blocking, Exaptation
In rereading this newsletter, there is something profoundly hopeful in this move towards a trust in our ability to engage, be of what is emerging, and enact experimental processes that allow paths to emerge “in the walking”.
Let's keep en-active and let’s keep engaged as we believe in this world ever-in-the-making. And as we like to sign off – let’s strive to keep differences – those that exceed us and our knowing alive – and be alive to and with emergent differences that exceed us.
Have a great, active, and experimental week!
Keep Your Difference Alive!
Jason, Andrew, and Iain
Emergent Futures Lab
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