'Perform at your best in the ultimate data-driven office?'
Labor Lab #2: Queen B
2019
What will our future look like when we equip our daily environments with smart, AI technologies? In the media, techno-optimists and critics are battling out whether we are heading towards a future in which our cities, homes and offices become so ‘smart’ that they can adapt to each individual. Is this a future we want? Rather than discussing, dreading, or dreaming about this scenario, Studio LONK has built the speculative interior ‘Queen B’, for people to experience today.
“Based on your profile, I have reserved a spot in the lounge for you”
Queen B is a workspace and experimental AI service that collects your data and steers you throughout the day, by sending personalized voice messages (“You look a bit tired, I suggest you grab a coffee”, “I would not formulate that sentence that way”, I gathered that you are a morning person. Start the afternoon in the meditation zone." etc.). By suggesting particular actions and movements, Queen B supports you to be at your most productive. Is this a convenient service, helping us to be the best we can be, or a daunting scenario, undermining our privacy and autonomy?
See a video of Queen B at work here
LABOR LAB
What will our workplace look like in the future? With speculative interiors and subsequent events, Studio LONK will explore the major themes that will change work and the work environment. Queen B is the second chapter of the triptych "Labor Lab": a spatial exploration of our future work landscape. With three speculative interiors and events in co-working spaces, we challenge influential parties from the field to think about the future by experiencing it now and by entering into debate.
The three scenarios are: Senior Spaces (in collaboration with TSH Collab and Brightpensioen); (how) are we going to work until our last phase of life? Queen B (in collaboration with IBM, Blubrick|Nexton, Locatify and B. Amsterdam); how do we respond to an office that knows us better than we know ourselves? And the third, Leisure for Life; what role does (the) work(place) still have in a world of far-reaching robotisation and basic income?
The objective of Labor Lab is to get different parties, those who develop, design and use workplaces, to think and discuss about possible scenarios. Which major technological, cultural and demographic developments will drastically change work in the future? Are these scenarios to look forward to, is this a likely future, and what role do I play in enabling or adjusting it?