Archive

Welcome back.

My name is Johannes Kleske; I’m a critical futurist and strategic designer living in Berlin, Germany. And you are still subscribed to my newsletter. It’s been over a year since I last checked in, and I’m long overdue for a general update.

Goodbye Third Wave

So let me start with the big one. Last autumn, Igor and I sold our foresight and strategic design studio Third Wave to the design consultancy Edenspiekermann. Here’s the official announcement.

Welcome back My name is Johannes Kleske. I’m a critical futurist and partner at Third Wave. Thank you for opening my newsletter.

Last time, I told you about my notes blog, which I use to expose seedlings—rough and unpolished thoughts—to the open air. It’s been less than a month since the last edition, which I take as a sign that I might have stumbled upon a concept and a setup that works for me. I’ve also set up a digital garden—a space for the seedlings to grow and intertwine—at garden.johanneskleske.com. While the notes blog is for publishing ideas, the digital garden is for putting them into context and developing a wiki-style repository of terms and concepts.

I finally have a space now where I can translate my master’s thesis on future imaginaries and connect it to other concepts in (critical) futures studies. As you can see, one purpose of the garden is to create explainer articles that I can link to instead of having to explain them in every new piece.

Below you’ll find the latest seedlings from the notes blog. As always, please feel free to hit ‘reply’ and let me know your thoughts and questions.

Welcome back

My name is Johannes Kleske, and you’re subscribed to my newsletter.

As you might notice by receiving this newsletter only once or twice a year, I have problems getting my thoughts formulated into proper texts. Doing a decent article or newsletter issue always feels like it needs a lot of time and, thus, too big a hurdle. But recently, someone pointed me towards Matt Webb’s 15 rules for blogging, which lower the bar tremendously. So to just put thoughts into rough and unpolished words on a website, I’ve now started a notes blog at notes.johanneskleske.com. What follows are the first three “seedlings” I put out this week.

Welcome back, I’m Johannes Kleske, partner at Third Wave, critical futurist, and you’re subscribed to my newsletter Productive Procrastination.

In all these critical reflections about technology and its failed promises, you know how sometimes a service with an app comes along that is indeed helpful and brings great joy? Over the last year, that has been Readwise for me.

Readwise is a platform for collecting anything you read. The missing link between all the services and devices you read on and then work with what you’ve read.

Welcome back. That’s right. You’re still subscribed to my newsletter. In case you have forgotten, my name is Johannes Kleske. I’m a critical futurist and partner at the Berlin-based studio Third Wave (freshly relaunched website). It’s been more than two years since we last spoke via this medium. As you might imagine, a couple of things have happened since.

From Substack to Buttondown

Welcome back.

As one does on the Internet of Newsletters, these days, this newsletter has moved to Substack. The reason I’m following this trend is rather simple: I have been paying a monthly fee to be able to send you people a newsletter, which doesn’t really make sense with my current “release schedule.” Substack, as you surely know by now, has a different business model, taking 10 percent of paid subscriptions. So this works much better for me, right now, and leaves the option for the future to allow subscribers to chip in. Just to be clear: There is no paid option right now. If you’re not comfortable with this newsletter coming via Substack or if you want to unsubscribe for any other reason, always feel free to do so.

Take care

If you’re looking for older issues of Productive Procrastination, you can still find them at newsletter.jkleske.com.