This week the group was supposed to build a speculative scenario of the future world of work, but I feel like our process stalled slightly after the interview. During the tutorial, we were asked for more sources to lead to our expectations of the future, like theories about the government holding the resources and nationalisation of food processes. I think it is a good time to look back at what we have and try to bring in more research to clarify ideas and support our views.

I’ve reviewed the UK deliveroo drivers and Chinese delivery drivers’ interviews and collated some of the points mentioned in common:

1.    Weather affection

2.    Dangerous traffic

3.    Start whenever they can, free working hours

4.    Inadequate terms

5.    No place to rest

Then I conducted secondary research on food nationalism and found out most of the articles are critical in tone. Food export restrictions embarked on by a growing number of countries may herald the beginning of a dangerous era of food nationalism, in which grain becomes not just a commodity but political leverage and even a weapon. Maybe the word nationalisation is too big and too serious for our project, our perspective prefers to introduce food as a human right.

In the incubator, we all brought different cutlery and collage of the future for delivery workers, which showed the different perspectives of different people on the same topic and made me realise the importance of having a visual illustration. What struck me the most while walking around the showcase was the portable library, because it reminded me of the newsagents I used to go to when I was a kid to read comics, and I would love to live in a future with it.

We also received a lot of feedback from the group, many people left comments on the notebooks and t-shirts, some were very supportive and many gave suggestions, such as we shouldn’t be too resistant to automation in the future, and that the relationship between the delivery person and the food system is not strong enough. The feedback just points out some of the issues we are more uncertain about and can make us pay more attention to the details.