Design Fiction
Julian Bleecker
O’Reilly ETech 2009
San Jose, California
A short slideshow on design,
March 12, 2009
science, fact and fiction

4 Quotes About The Future

“You never change things by ghting the existing model. To
change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete”
~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

“Fiction is evolutionarily valuable because it allows low-
cost experimentation compared to trying things for real”
~ Dennis Dutton OH on @kevinmarks’ Twitter

“The Future Is Always Over Sold And Under Imagined”
~ Chris Luebkeman

Hi.
My Name Is Julian Bleecker

This Is My Context..

I Play Here

And I Also Play Here

These Ideas Do Not Represent..

But In Some Near Future, They May..

Here are some thoughts about a productive convergence of design,
science, fact and ction to help think about ways to meaningfully
shape the future, bring about change, make new sorts of habitable
\\

A Convergence?
Some Examples And Stories About What I Mean
(The Details And Nuances Are In A Larger Project Available Here - http://cli.gs/DesignFictionEssay)

One.
Science, Fact and Fiction Are All Knotted Up, Anyway.

http://cli.gs/p4X92W
2002. Minority Report Interface: http://cli.gs/p4X92W
This is a purposely long clip, because I want to emphasize not the technology and gee-whiz aspects of the
“Minority Report Interface”, but that there is a drama that helps move the story forward, setting up an unusual
framework that is crucial to understand the rest of the drama. Itʼs not the technology; itʼs the people story that
matters and makes things legible to an audience. This is what circulates the concept; not the tech itself.

Blurry lines between the sci-fi props and
research prototypes

“e Film”

Right alongside of “Science”
Jeff Hahn at TED 2008
Whole bunch of links to people who claim
“minority report interface” research

Blurry boundaries between reality and?? Science fiction. Entanglements and knots help move and circulate the
concept of new interaction rituals indexed by Minority Report (the movie). Doesnʼt matter where things start —
the legible concept swirls about helping reality become real.

http://cli.gs/bEpXGe
Jeff Hahn at TED 2006: http://cli.gs/bEpXGe

http://cli.gs/s9NNgp
CNN Reports
Transcript: http://cli.gs/s9NNgp
Video: http://cli.gs/TZ4tzG

Even more. CeBIT 2008, more ideas anchored by the Google search of “Minority Report interface”

Two.
Stories Matter More Than Features, Specs And Engineering

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.

More entangled science-fiction and science-fact
SGI plays on the production / construction of dinosaurs in this advertisement during Jurassic Park filming

More entangled science-fiction and science-fact
Muddled associations amongst science, film and previous “truths” about dinosaurs.

More entangled science-fiction and science-fact
Wow..

Diegetic Prototype
\"..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)
What does this all suggest in terms of how knowledge is created and circulated about speculative activities?

Diegetic Prototype
\"..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)
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.

Three.
Science Fiction Can Do Things Science Fact Cannot.

A hybrid science-fiction / science-fact can do more things.
1. better knowledge circulation and idea sharing
2. expanding the realm of possible futures
3. exploring aspects of technology-as-culture that science-fact by itself is very poorly equipped to do.

How William Shatner Changed The World
http://cli.gs/tUJs1d
How William Shatner Changed The World — http://cli.gs/tUJs1d
Looks at the “science behind the science-fiction of Star Trek”

Star Fleet Technical Manual, by Franz Joseph
http://cli.gs/rduvjm
Star Fleet Technical Manual, by Franz Joseph
http://cli.gs/rduvjm

Published: January 11, 1976
Copyright © The New York Times
Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual becomes a best seller, early-days user-generated content. Elements
and illustrations from the Manual make it into the science fiction of Star Trek (films, etc.) Designs and concepts
in the Manual are entirely speculative, not actual props found in the show, etc.
Best Sellers — Mass Market Paperbacks. 1976. The New York Times, January 11, 1976, BR7. http://cli.gs/
E52ZQq.

Franz Josephʼs Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual http://cli.gs/rduvjm

COMMUNICATOR
STANDARD FIELD EQUIPMENT ITEM
Communicator concept drawn by Franz Joseph, speculating about science fiction ideas in material form. http://
cli.gs/rduvjm

Star Trek communicator speculative electronics schematic and parts list!

“Death Star Over San Francisco” by Michael Horn (2008)
http://cli.gs/mmBtgN
Michael Horn. 2008. Death Star Over San Francisco. http://cli.gs/mmBtgN.
Speculative imagining of a world in which the Star Wars Empire exists in the San Francisco Bay.

“Metalosis Maligna” by Floris Kaayk (2005)
http://cli.gs/R3TSSD
Floris Kaayk. 2006. Metalosis Maligna. http://cli.gs/R3TSSD.
Speculating on unintended consequences of advanced medical science

Dark Knight
http://cli.gs/GzHJhW
Christopher Nolan. 2008. The Dark Knight. [http://cli.gs/GzHJhW]
Ubiquitous Sensor Prototype, and immediately about the ethical dimensions.
The collaboration between a sci-fact proposition and science-fiction allows one to place attention on things that
science-fact just has no means to do; just doesnʼt know how to do engineering and ethics at the same time.
Not just technically, and with special effects, but with, for example, ethics questions. There is no API for ethics
in engineering, nor is it understood particularly well, and rarely taught. Itʼs fluff that lies on the outside,
someone elses problem.
Sascha Pohfleppʼs considerations of 23 and Me and their rush to market. No time to ask those kinds of
questions. Itʼs not a legal thing, itʼs just not part of the epistemology. But, in film production its comes up
because it adds drama to the production, which is at the root of the ontology of sci-fi film, which makes it more
compelling to think of remarkable ways that sci-fiction and science-fact can collaborate explicitly.

Listening Post (Hansen & Rubin)
Does the same thing Cross-talk and entanglements
between the surveillance mode of visualization in Dark
Knight and this design/art/science project “Listening
Post” by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen.

http://cli.gs/ZX9R5t
Kubrick engaged many scientists and engineers,
including two fellows called Harry Lange and Frederick
Ordway. Lange and Ordway happened to arrive in New
York City while Clarke and Kubrick were there
scriptwriting. They were in town to attend a
conference of the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics and to promote a book their space
consultancy company had written on extra-terrestrial
intelligence.
Piers Bizony. 2000. 2001: Filming the Future. http://
cli.gs/ZX9R5t

Clarke and Kubrick collaborate along with Douglas
Trumbull, NASA, proper engineering consultancies
who could speculate with engineering principles on
what’s what in the film. I’ll just show UI examples that
were marveled by NASA and other aerospace
engineers for their precision. This is all happening
during the space race. Clarke had concerns about
what would happen if man got to the moon before the
film was completed.

Graphical User Interfaces..before there were Graphical
User Interfaces.

Why Muddle Design, Science, Fact and Fiction

It Is Valuable To Explain.
To Imagine.
To Materialize Ideas.
To Speculate About A Different Kind Of World.

It Is Useful To Think Of P.K. Dick
As A System Administrator

There Are Insights To Be Had When You Read
Bruce Sterling As Software Documentation

It Helps To Think Of Science Fiction Props As Conclusions
To Today’s Engineering Prototypes
So, what? Why does all of this matter? It all matters
because we care about imagining and materializing
future habitable worlds. We care so much that
eective mechanisms for creating these more
habitable worlds is “our” concern. Smart, creative,
imaginative ways of linking ideas to their
materialization really do matter, because the future
matters, and will use whatever means possible to do
this, including the simultaneous deployment of
science, fact, fiction and design.

Thank You.
http://cli.gs/DesignFictionEssay
Julian Bleecker
http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com
julian at nearfuturelaboratory dot com
julian.bleecker at nokia dot com