Using Coffeetropolis Mindprobes
Coffeetropolis and the associated work are linked with the five RSA manifesto challenges, the RSA Opening minds curriculum project and with a wide range of subjects and areas of study.
The work is suitable for students in Year 9, KS4 and KS5, though much of it could be adapted for use with younger students. The material could be the basis for an extended project or module or could be used selectively as required.
Using Coffeetropolis Mindprobes
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Mindprobes
Mind Probe 1: Comfortably Numb
Welcome to Coffeetropolis, the land of plenty…plenty of choice…plenty of problems…but plenty of hope too. As a citizen you choose this for yourselves. You choose what you watch on TV, we just put it there; you choose what you eat, we simply supply it; a land where you’re free…heck, even the rubbish is free to float around as it chooses. You choose not to leave because we educate, placate and delegate…so on with your lives…go out and buy…plenty…
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Mind Probe 2: Skool daze
Skool Daze, the best days of your life. Filled with fun interactive learning, exciting subjects taught by teachers who brought out the best in you. Or is that just for the few? The rest have to deal with old buildings, teachers who are just passing through and class sizes more suited to a rock concert. So should everyone get the same? How???
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Mind Probe 3: Born to shop
Want, need, must have... everything you need, we've got it, everything you don't need we'll think of a clever way to make you want it anyway. There's no escape - bigger! better! faster! newer! morer... er, well, just more...
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Mind Probe 4: Wasters
She can't take anymore she's gonna blow!!! Just where does all that packaging go? Each item individually wrapped in plastic and buried in a mound of foam chips... only to be thrown away. Coffeetropolis is fit to burst and despite the best efforts to cram the rubbish away the cracks are starting to show...
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Mind Probe 5: Replicating replicants
Good looking, funny, smart and stealing all the jobs! How dare these machine humans get the better of the Coffeetropolis human workforce. The speed and level of research into artificial intelligence is spiralling out of control and there are winners and losers.
It's alright for the people behind the machines, they still get all the money, but what about the rest of us? It's enough to make your circuitry fuse, oh hang on that means I'm... A REPLICANT... no don't get angry with me it's the others you want!
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Mind Probe 6: It came from the deep!
Take 2 technologies. On their own great but what would happen if they were to accidentally mix together, creating something new? Something that we hadn't really thought about?
Those A.I and Nano Technology factories look a bit too close together... er hang... on is that waste going straight into the water system... wait a minute there's fish coming out of the water and they look like they mean business, women children and narrators first, RUN FOR IT!!!
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Mind Probe 7: Down on the farm
I saw an old farm on the TV once, and can you believe it the animals were walking around! Talk about inefficient!! Grandpa said that in his day all this was just fields. Not sure what a field is but anyway...
People are always going on about "fresh" food. We went to a "fresh" produce market yesterday but the food was so dirty and weird it looked like it'd been dug up out of the ground! Food can only be properly stomached when it's clean, processed and wrapped in plastic. Especially cows and chickens.
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Mind Probe 8: Reality rocks
The TV in Coffeetropolis is great, there’s so much choice that even if there’s nothing on, by the time I’ve flipped through all the channels, a new show is bound to come on... and if I don’t like that one then I can just keep flipping...
There was this cool reality TV show on channel 9,561 called ‘Kids on Mars!’ and my best friend Maxine was in it, but it wasn’t very convincing so I turned over. Really, there aren't kids on Mars... but I haven’t seen Maxine for a while now, come to think of it…
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Mind Probe 9: Life is sweat...
Make it faster, make it cheaper, make 'em low and sell 'em high... A job is better than no job, right? We could use machines, but then people would starve... A job gives you a purpose. Or a porpoise, if you like exotic pets... Sure it's hard labour err I mean hard work, but profits mean growth, growth means more jobs, and more jobs means more people with a porpoise. Or is that dolphin?
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Mind Probe 10: Healthy
What's on the telly? Oh no not the news!! Get it off it's too depressing!! Change the channel quick!! Hang on it's all the same - cough! What's goi - cough -ng on? Is everyone ill?
Cough! Quick get me to the d - cough -octors! Oerr think I need to get to the - cough! - hospital, is it - cough - still - cough - open?!? I pay my t- cough - axes I want a doctor, what do you mean that I've got - cough - to pay a - cough - gain !! OOooer I feel funny...
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Mind Probe 11: City of culture
Call that art?! I call it rubbish!! What’s the point of... with the juxtaposition of that... this site specific installation... conceptualises... and theorise, of a minimalist, oh, my elbows. IS THERE A POINT TO ALL THIS - what’s the word I’m looking for? STUFF!! Well, yes. Culture and enlightenment, possibly. Transcendent experiences, perhaps. Beauty and humanity confirmed yet questioned.... maybe. Or just an excuse to use lovely long words and make us sound cleverer... er?
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Mind Probe 12: End of the mug
It had to happen, we've reached the bottom of the French plunger, the end of the filter bag, the bottom of the beans... That's right, it's the final part of the Coffeetropolis tale. And did it make you think? Did it make you angry? Did it make you confused? Perhaps it was a mixture of all three.
As you leave the good citizens of Coffeetropolis to carry on regardless, can you take one last look at the chaos they have created and see if you can help them to make some choices for the future? Go on, slurp that latte and have a last go; I dare you!
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