Design Fiction

Julian BleeckerDesign Engaged 2008MontrealOctober 3, 2008

Something and the Something in the age of the Something.

[ideas in process. tread lightly.]

Why Engage Design?

Design Fiction

Thinking of design as something that can shape the future, bring about change, craft new sorts of habitable

worlds.

Design Fiction

Design FictionBut, like..Design? You’re an Engineer? And the Art stuff?

And that Teaching thing?

Presentation Schema1. Representations of the Future

2. Relating the Future and the Present3. Props and Prototypes

1. Representations of the Future

How do we imagine what can come to be?What are the ways the future will be and how does that

shape what we consider reasonable, possible futures?

3 Representations of the Future...and

2.5 Provocative Quotes to go along with them.

Quote One.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the

existing model obsolete.” - R. Buckminster Fuller

Quote One (and it’s diagram).

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the

existing model obsolete.” - R. Buckminster Fuller

Linear Representation of the Future

Quote Two.

“As I’ve said many times, the future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” - William Gibson

“As I’ve said many times, the future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” - WG

Sandwich Spread

Representation of the Future

Quote Two (and its diagram)

“As I’ve said many times, the future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” - WG

Quote Two and a half..kinda

“...” - Bruno Latour

Quote Two and a half..a bit more.

“...” - Bruno Latour

“Νέα ως , Knots εκτελέσει Entanglements. Στο Imbroglios εκδόσεις . Assemblages βγήκε

περισσότερο ας σαν , μην Collectives.” - Bruno Latour

Quote Two and a half (and a diagram).

“...” - Bruno Latour

The 3D Linkages of

Human/Non-Human

Collectives Representation of the Future

The 3D Linkages of

Human/Non-Human

Collectives Representation of the Future

Two and a half.

“In 50 years, social scientists will be able to visualise the connections between human organisations and technological objects. Today we know how to visualise technological systems using scientific images and

technical drawings, but we have no idea of how to hook those designs up with the arrays of emails, spreadsheets, blogs and pieces of paper that organise the people who operate those systems.”

- Bruno Latour

Complex knots and linkages between many disparate social practices create thick representations of human activities, including our projections and imaginations about the future.

Linear Representation of the Future

Recap..

A planar representation of the future, it exists in different places simultaneously and you can smear it about to get it evenly distributed, but it is lumpy in bits and doesn’t get to everyone evenly.

Recap..

A spherical representation of the future, collections/collectives of conversations & objects, human/non-human agents. There are many futures, many possible inhabited worlds. A representation that consists of complex, messy knots/collectives/imbroglios. Some collectives are better at maintaining themselves. They’ve got strong objects with lots of attention and adhesion. They have lots of idea-mass that draws other conversations and objects towards them.

2. Ubicomp + SciFi

An example of a "collective" construction of a future world in this third representation; what are the elements that constitute the collective knot/embroglio? For ubicomp it's telling that it's more than a linear or planar track because of how much "culture" is in there, how complicated it becomes because you start involving people and their pragmatic, everyday lives very richly and thickly; anthropology in on the ubicomp game early on with Lucy Suchman's involvement at PARC; it's a more complicated, knotty, thorny, intractable endeavor. (Maybe why it's endlessly deferred.)

2. Ubicomp + SciFi

Why Ubicomp?

2. Ubicomp + SciFiConsidering a response to Bell & Dourish, “Resistance is Futile:

Reading Science Fiction Alongside of Ubiquitous Computing” (pre-pub)

"..we are interested in the ways in which science fiction – the literary figuring of future technologies rather than the practical figuring of much contemporary research – engages with a series of questions about the social and cultural contexts of technology use 

that help us reflect upon assumptions within technological research." Bell & Dourish, “Resistance is Futile: Reading Science Fiction Alongside of Ubiquitous Computing”

The look at:

Five Shows: Dr. Who, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Blake's 7, Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

Three Themes: Bureacracy, Technological Breakdown, Frontier and Empire

Put together to fashion a perspective that tells a story about ubiquitous computing-y things as they’re projected into various sci-fi

narratives

But..I Would Say..Ubicomp Is SciFi!

Huh?Ubicomp ties intricately and plainly to a larger cultural

imaginary; more so than many other “engineering” practices. It’s fodder for film and, as importantly (maybe more so?) it provides a reference point for engineers

and scientists in the laboratory!

For example: How is the “Minority Report Interface” Claimed? Who Stakes Out This Idiom? How is this phrase a

Messy Latorian Assemblage?

Ask The Google..

Blurry lines between the sci-fi props and research prototypes

“The Film”

Right alongside of “Science”

“Turtle-necked Jeff Hahn”(friend, so it’s all good)

Whole bunch of links to people who claim “minority report interface” research

More blurry sci-fi science

More blurry sci-fi science

Realistic dinosaurs as a special-effect, produced to be visually compelling as a “prop” to help tell a story more

compelling than a dowdy documentary.

Text

More blurry sci-fi science

More blurry sci-fi science

Wow..

cf. David A. Kirby “Science Consultants, Fictional Films, and Scientific Practice” Social Studies of Science 33/2 (April 2003) pp. 231-268cf. Julian Bleecker, “The Reality Effect of Technoscience” 2004, unpublished dissertationhttp://tinyurl.com/3roy6s

Conversation CollectivesDeployment, refraction and idea-mass, a 3D Latourian

representation of the future.Conversations shaped by human and non-human objects and

their deployment, circulation and potential to draw more agents.

Con: Biggest mouth, and wallet, makes bigger conversationsPro: Their can be many multiple collectives, with varying degrees of “idea-mass”Con: It can be frustrating to have some good stuff that can make more habitable worlds, and not have the most idea-massive collective.Pro: But..you can still have your future, even if it is not everyone elses.

3. Props & Prototypes

Let’s look quickly at two kinds of prototypes

1. Prototypes in their canonical form.2. Diegetic Prototypes

3. Props & Prototypes

Canonical Prototypes. Functionality.

Canonical Prototypes. Fit and Mechanics.

Canonical Prototypes

Diegetic Prototypes (“Props”)

Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement. - Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Californication,” 1999 

Diegetic Prototypes (“Props”)

"..cinematic depictions of future technologies are actually “diegetic prototypes” that demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, benevolence, and viability. I show how diegetic prototypes have a major rhetorical advantage over true prototypes: in the diegesis these technologies exist as “real” objects that function properly and which people actually use."David A. Kirby, “The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes, and the Cinematic Creation of the Future” (pre-pub)

Diegetic Prototypes (“Props”)

"..cinematic depictions of future technologies are actually “diegetic prototypes” that demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, benevolence, and viability. I show how diegetic prototypes have a major rhetorical advantage over true prototypes: in the diegesis these technologies exist as “real” objects that function properly and which people actually use."David A. Kirby, “The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes, and the Cinematic Creation of the Future”

Diegetic Prototypes (“Props”)

"..cinematic depictions of future technologies are actually “diegetic prototypes” that demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, benevolence, and viability. I show how diegetic prototypes have a major rhetorical advantage over true prototypes: in the diegesis these technologies exist as “real” objects that function properly and which people actually use."David A. Kirby, “The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes, and the Cinematic Creation of the Future”

Wow. Stories matter when designing the future. Maybe even more than the “real thing” in terms of their ability to flash-bang the imagination of real people. Ideas are more powerful than a crappy product that aspires to the idea.

Think of design as prop-making for the near future. Design makes objects (non-humans) around which stories/conversations ensure, and imaginary

worlds come into being.

Props & Prototypes

Prototypes/Props are Idea-MassOffer ways of telling stories and crafting adhesion to these collectives of ideas and conversations through an object. Props and prototypes provide

the seeds for evolving conversation-collectives.They behave as constitutive elements for the collectives/knots/embroglios — the collectives need material props of some sort, human/non-human

elements to create idea-mass, to collect more attention.

Prototypes/Props are Idea-Mass

Design can also be a kind of fiction making; design-fiction.

Prototypes/Props are Idea-Mass

Design is speculative prototypes; things that are real sci-fi, really curious and orthogonal to the conventions of technology-market-economies. Measure of success: “Stupidest fucking idea..EVER!”Probes into imaginary, peculiar worlds.

So..what?Objects tell stories for people, not scenarios for users.

There are many futures, no inevitabilities.Make lots of stuff, quickly.

Assume weird (or no) market models; weird imaginary worlds.Assume you are from a future.

Thanks.

julian at nearfuturelaboratory dot cjulian dot bleecker at nokia dot c