David Zach, futurist

Modern Times Poster Handout

Here's a small poster for one of my concluding themes, that of the future is most real when you're holding it in your arms. Children are the message we send to the future. What are we trying to say?

(I'm planning to add a second page to this handout that explains the specifics of the Modern Times list of the messages that children take in today, but the poster was requested by audience members from the New York Social Services audience. Here you go!)

Download Modern Times Poster pdf

Leadership Tulsa Speech

Spoke with Leadership Tulsa yesterday (after an impressive art deco tour of Tulsa - this really is a beautiful town for architecture) and got the question from an attendee regarding a quote from G. K. Chesterton about the importance of amateur, everyday people being able to the most important things in life – and that when things are done too perfectly, it means that the average person is no longer involved ...

Well, as the Memphis Airport is shut down and I'm here for an extra five hours, here's a marvelous source for Chesterton quotes: http://www.chesterton.org/discover/quotations.html

On the topic, GKC said that Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

He also said that: It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on." Patriotism and Sport, All Things Considered

And from The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist:

Freedom is glorious, but freedom is enjoyed only within the rules. We are defined by out limits, like the frame around a picture. You can free a tiger from his bars, but you cannot free him from his stripes.

Freedom gives us the privilege to govern ourselves, which is the essense, of course, of democracy. And Chesterton is a great believer in democracy.

He says that there may be some things that we do not want a man to do unless he does them well: discover the North Pole, play the church organ, write poetry. But the exercise of democracy is not one of those things. Democracy means writing your own love letters and blowing your own nose. Democracy means "that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves–the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young", and the making of laws. [Chesterton also mentions that 12 ordinary citizens are the best group to decide a court case and that someone once founded Christianity by the same means, 12 ordinary men ...]

Now Chesterton extends this defense of democracy in a surprising direction: into the past. He connects democracy with tradition. Tradition means giving the votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

And, regarding being stuck in the airport because of Memphis not having electricity, I stood in line and listened to a gentleman behind me who was calling everyone (and of course, speaking at full volume) on his list to complain about about his delayed fate ... and I was reminded of Chesterton's notions of gratitude. This guy takes too much for granted, whether that is air flight, cell phones or just life itself. The fact that we can fly through the air and live to tell about it is not to be taken for granted. It is a miraculous thing no matter how often one has flown. We should still marvel at it, even through the delays and cancelations. I would prefer not to be delayed, but I also prefer to be alive and wonder at that startling occurrence.

Chesterton said that, We should be startled by the sun, not by the eclipse; we should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. He also said that the test of all happiness is gratitude. And, The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

Executive Director of Leadership Tulsa, Wendy Thomas wrote up the talk here.

The Tulsa World newspaper reports on the talk.

Fads, Trends & Principles Handout

Here's the two page handout defining the notion of Fads, Trends & Principles. The basic mantra here is that we should play with fads, work with trends and live by principles. This is easier said that done because what you will mostly find out there is that we are seduced by fads, ignorant of trends and resistant to principles.

Download Fads, Trends & Principles pdf

How to Think Like a Futurist

And here's the one so that you too can be a futurist in the privacy of your own home. (Don't try this in public.)
Download Think Like a Futurist pdf

The Future Value of Old Ideas Handout

Download Future Quotes pdf

Here's the two page handout of quotations about the future, including most of the quotations that I typically use in my talks. If all goes well, my book, Worth Remembering: the future value of old ideas will be coming out in June. Stay tuned.

G. K. Chesterton Handout

Download Chesterton Quotes pdf

The first of a series of new handouts. This one is a collection of quotations from G. K. Chesterton. For more on Chesterton (if you haven't spotted them on my blog already ... ) visit the American Chesterton Society and to the Chesterton Society blog.

For the AIAS American Institute of Architecture Students Visitors

For all of the visitors from the AIAS - first of all, thanks for the great reception that you offered me last night. I've never given a speech on January 1st before and I am both thankful and humble for your attention and your applause. (I've never seen roll call taken that way before - or so enthusiastically responded.) Thanks also to AARP for sponsoring my talk.

As it seems that so many of you have been visiting my various websites, I didn't want you to miss these items:

A School Dr. Doolittle Would Love by a very fine architectural writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I had written an article (click here for the pdf of my article) about the school and submitted it to the paper - and they promptly ignored me. So, I canceled my subscription and then contacted Whitney who also fell in love with the school. As you will see, it was a school that was truly designed for children - as a school should be. Every school should have such things as fireplaces, sandboxes beneath hidden floor panels and story book terra cotta panels that wrap around the school.

She also wrote an article about an old river fire station that I had once tried to purchase for a studio, so instead the city allowed it to be torn down. Damn them.

Here's an article that I wrote about the art deco architecture in MKE. I suppose I should have made you aware of this while you were actually still in the city . . . but we have over 70 examples of art deco architecture. And here's an article about my own art deco antique collection.

Here's the link to the quotations handout.

If you're really curious (and have nothing to do before school starts again) check the Media Hits section on my website - lots of article about the ideas I had presented at AIAS.

There's also a lot of video clips and audio clips - in the video clips section, check out the Confessions of a Surprised Futurist, which was the talk that I gave to the AIA-WI two years ago. The talk I gave last night is quite different from this one, but many of the same ideas about the future of architecture are there.

Please link to my sites and share any of these links with your friends who have an appreciation for what architecture and architects really should be in the years to come. I'd also welcome any comments you might offer regarding the presentation last night and the ideas that hit home for you. I'm hoping to post some of them on the site in the client comments. You can leave comments here or you can email them right to me.

Several of you came up afterwards to express an appreciation for my mentioning the writer G. K. Chesterton. Please consider coming to the annual conference held in St. Paul this coming June. It's free (other than room and board) and they'll even have some so-called futurist talking about the notion of Progress from a Chesterton perspective. If you liked my talk last night, you might just enjoy this one too, but even more enjoyable, come to hear the Chesterton Society President Dale Ahlquist speak. He's really funny. Check out their website: www.chesterton.org

Finally, please remember the design manifesto that I shared with you:
The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Philpotts.

Ray Bradbury as Inspiration for Local Futurist

In the fair city of Waukesha, WI they're not burning books. Through the Waukesha Library they're making an effort to get people to read them. It's an honorable goal.

For the month of October, they're honoring Ray Bradbury and the book Fahrenheit 451. On October 13 they're bringing in Sam Weller, Bradbury's official biographer to speak, on October 16, Elena de Costa on government repression around the world and then some guy named David Zach who calls himself a futurist is going to be speaking on October 29th. It seems that this Zach guy owes a lot to Bradbury. He was his favorite author when growing up in a small southern Wisconsin town.

Bradbury wrote about the future from the perspective of innocence, youth, small towns, trust, simplicity, and a simple trust in humanity and a simple trust in the future. We could do worse.

My Talk Notes page

Some of you in my recent audiences are having trouble finding my Notes pages, so click here to find them. This is an extensive outline of my talk including some of the graphics.

This orginated from a three-hour strategic planning session with a national healthcare organization and has started growing.

This will also give the person from Norway who keeps checking my blog something more to look at! (I love speaking in Norway . . hint-hint.) And, supposedly I'm going to be featured this fall in a Norwegian TV show called Television Planet or Film Planet. A small feature - well, only my head - we used the Wisconsin Public Television studios and with a white background and a white shirt, they're taking my head and putting it inside of a crystal ball. Oh, the indignities we futurists endure just to get attention!

Last year I did three talks in Bergen, Norway; one to the Academy of Design, one to a local Rotary Club and also at the Nordic Media Festival. They were all a lot of fun, except that the night before my talk to the Media Festival I decided to skip the fjord tour and go to bed early. At the restaurant next door I twisted my knee and tore my meniscus! That hurts. A lot. I didn't sleep at all that night, but still got up the next morning and did the talk as I figured I had flown halfway around the world to give this speech . . . and I wasn't about to let a little a lot of pain get in the way.

Fortunately there was this nice woman named Ellen in the audience who works for the US Embassy who nicely explained that it was their job to take care of Americans when they have problems. I got to try out socialized medicine (sat next to two addicts in the waiting room) and they did misdiagnose the problem though in their defense you need an MRI to catch this sort of tear. They said it was a sprain and not to worry about it.

So I didn't. That night I went out bar-hopping with the two rather down-to-earth guys who do South Park (they did a talk right after mine dealing with censorship and freedom of creative expression - or so I was told– I was in the Emergency Room) and a few days later I actually marched in the Norwegian National Day parade with my Chamber of Commerce sponsors. Bergen is just beautiful.

Business Owner's Conference, Wausau, WI

September 20, 2007, I'll be speaking in Wausau, WI at a Business Owner's conference - see here for the local newspaper article and links for registration.