8. Narrate
Creating compelling narratives
Once the technologies are divided into clusters, it is time to create a compelling and innovative narrative based on the collected data throughout the research process. To ease the process and hold an editorial line, the narratives must follow the structure below:
Title
A settling title that resumes what comes next.
Slogan
A summary that collects the primary data presented by the description.
Description
A didactic essay involving in-depth discussions regarding the topics of a specific cluster. It must always follow the structure below:
Introduction
Summary
Drivers
Technological trends
Challenges and Opportunities
Future Perspectives
Title
For Taxonomic Clusters
For Trend Clusters
They must be straight, didactic and have 36 characters maximum.
The more creative and instigating the better, and must have 36 characters maximum.
Slogan
Slogans are a one-line summary of the trend or taxonomic cluster. They must be short, didactic and creative.
Description
Tone
Cluster descriptions should have an essayistic approach, which means they should not argument one single line of thought, but leave open scenarios and alternatives instead. The goal of these essays is to share possible insights regarding the impact of technological developments over multiple aspects, not to predict the future. Expressions such as if, might and have the potential to, are preferable over more unrelenting statements.
Resources
In order to create instigating scenarios, researchers and editors can use some resources to corroborate the research conclusions by using the following code lines for:
Links
Links can be applied to the cluster text to corroborate insights. It is important that these links are well-curated from sources such as full reports from renowned organizations, statistics from governmental agencies and online books.
Technologies
Technologies that appear in the study can be quoted as complement to the cluster text. Researchers should always use the full title of the technology or the title plus the letter "s", which usually configures plural. The link to the technology will be created automatically if added on TDB, so no code lines are needed.
Quotes
Using quotes is a good editorial resource when they are bold and not exceed more than two lines of text.
We believe innovation must be followed by diversity. Commonly, researchers are used to quote authors from a Western canon, but the world is wide and the dimensions of arguments and insights are likewise. In this sense, we highly recommend researchers and editors to look for a variety of discourses that can support novel ideas and triggers for a stimulating narrative.
Topics
Cluster texts should have at least 3000 characters long and adress the following topics:
Topic
Directions
Paragraphs
Introduction
All clusters texts should start with a bold paragraph that introduces the subject. This is where researchers and editors have the opportunity to fish the reader’s attention. This is the best spot to introduce eye-popping statistics, sci-fi quotes and "what if?" questions.
1
Drivers
Before going deeper on how the trend is being reflected, it is important to introduce the drivers that are leading it to emerge. Please remember to always bring economical, social, environmental and political factors that are influencing the shifts being explained during the narrative.
2-3
Summary
A paragraph that summarizes the trend and prepares the reader for what comes next. Researchers should be as didactic and concise as possible.
1
Technological Trends
The arguments start to develop around the technologies. It correlates to the drivers previously mentioned, thus highlighting and explaining how they might eventually unfold. Two or three key technologies are expected to be quoted during this part.
2-3
Challenges and Opportunities
Technology is neither good nor bad; neither is it neutral. During this part, all positive and negative sides must be presented to raise awareness among readers. Topics such as ethics, privacy issues, job creation/depletion, environmental impacts and behavioral shifts are great to corroborate counterparts. In order to better evaluate possible challenges and opportunities, researchers are expected to always go back to the brief document. *This part normally has one or two paragraphs, but sometimes is distributed throughout the text.
1-2
Future Perspectives
The whole cluster text focus on "future present" tenses, which displays how drivers of change are shifting current methods and behaviors. In the last part of the cluster texts, researchers and editors should extrapolate these views by creating far-fetched scenarios with both dystopian and utopian arguments.
2-3
The cluster descriptions should start in a Google Document (evXXX - Project Name - Cluster Description) and once is edited, reviewed and approved, it should be added to the TDB by the editor of the project.
TDB Tutorial
How to add a trend on TDB
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