What most sci-fi prototyping gets wrong
I recently got sucked into a rabbit hole called science fiction… prototyping! Science-fiction prototyping offers a way to experiment with the implications of tech before it is actually invented, enabling us to anticipate future implications of technologies and create different futures. But most sci-fi prototyping leaves a lot to be desired.
Peering into my iphone I devoured a digital version of David Brian Johnson’s superinformative book Science Fiction Prototyping in a few hours and got super excited to use this tool in my work. It wasn’t just that it merges three of my favourite things starting with an ‘s’ in the world (storytelling, science and sci-fi), I immediately sensed its potential in transforming our world for the better.
image by Wilmer Martinez
Science fiction prototyping, I discovered, is a short story, movie or comic based specifically on a science fact for the purpose of exploring the implications, effects and ramifications of that science or technology. Sci-fi prototyping is an artistic exploration on how technology influences and is influenced by the humans that use it. It specifically focuses on the everyday lives of people. Make no mistake, Johnson warns in his book: “Sci-fi prototyping is not ‘predicting the future’, which is impossible even for the best scientific model. It is about starting conversations about plausible and intricate futures.”
Anticipating near-future tech
Many organizations are capitalizing in some way or other from imagining and speculating about futures and the electrifying new technologies and possibilities we may have by than. Sony’s sci-fi prototyping project One Day 2050 that was shown in a Kyoto Exhibition in 2018 that explores future Tokyo envisioned by designers and sci-fi writers. In four dreamscapes called Life, Sense, Habitat and Well-Being, we are told stories and animated movies that give us a glimpse of future advanced technology like AI therapists and face-masks with Sensorial Entertainment. Each design prototype in the expo presents an idea for a service or product.
Sony’s ONE DAY, 2050 / Sci-Fi Prototyping exhibition overview
Microsoft’s Future Visions is another series of fictional stories written by science-fiction authors about quantum computing, real-time translation and machine learning exploring and anticipating near-future computer technology. The goal of these exercises is to inspire Microsoft’s product teams to create next level computers, just like their product Skype Translator was inspired by Star Trek’s universal translator.
Still from Star Trek in which James Tiberius Kirk holds the Universal Translator
Sci-fi prototyping is usually applied by companies who want to develop cutting edge products that will mesmerise consumers to buy their products. The 2nd annual International Science Fiction Prototyping Conference in 2018 states its goal as “coversing the transition of ideas and objects from science fiction through developmental research using simulation, modelling and AI into managerial, military, industrial and household objects and tools for our future present daily lives in order for the aforementioned to become an integral part of that future present.” Although more and more often organizations use sci-fi prototyping to create products that are sustainable and geared towards creating a ‘better’ (whatever that may mean) world, it’s still very much technology and product oriented.
Where the shit gets really real
I think that is a huge missed chance. While speculating on future possibilities and implications of technology offers interesting insights and can be important, it seems to me that technology isn’t the only, and maybe not even the most critical driving force in shaping our futures. It’s environmental changes and shifts in political, social and class systems that will be really decisive. Climate change, pollution, inequality, war, although made possible with technological innovations is not explained nor caused by it. Anticipating human effects on tech will do very little to mitigate the negative effects of these technologies as these are embedded in complex social, technological and environmental landscapes.
To me, where the shit gets really real is when we include societal and environmental developments in our future stories. If we extend into the future the reverberations of #metoo, Black Lives Matters, the climate movements and the abortion wars into the future, what kind of stories will unfold?
Sci-fi prototyping with a heart
Radical Ocean Futures is a sci-fi prototype that does not explore the future implications of a technology, but rather the futures of a non-technological development: the deterioration of our planet’s oceans. The project, funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas and started by (than) PhD student Andrew Merrie urgently and vividly calls for new narratives to #SaveOurOcean and guide efforts to transform towards more sustainable ocean governance. The project blends art and science and merges scientific fact with creative speculation. The multimedial four short stories or ‘radical futures’ are based on scientific fact to “allow multiple entry points and stimulate the imagination”, with its written texts, artwork by Simon Stålenhag and audio compilations.
Artwork of one of the four Ocean Futures from the Radical Ocean Future project (c) Simon Stålenhag
The idea here is that creativity and imagination might succeed where science has clearly not: steer our oceans to a brighter future through imagining non-linear change and taking complexity into account. The novel thing about this project is that it doesn’t just take technological change into account. It merges it with ecological, social and economic change and creates a powerful starting off point for questioning if we want to live in either of the futures imagined, and what action should be taken now to reach or avoid it.
Radical Ocean Futures shows the possibilities of sci-fi prototyping beyond tech companies and designers wish to create snazzy new products that sell well. The approach holds promise for making future scenarios more accessible and and incite movements to not just imagine but create a better (and with that I mean more equal, sustainable, less divisive) world. That this approach involves sci-fi makes it irresistible to me.