Design Fiction
Something and the Something in the
age of the Something.
[ideas in process. tread lightly.]
Julian Bleecker
Design Engaged 2008
Montreal
October 3, 2008

Design Fiction
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
But, like..Design? You’re an Engineer? And the Art stuff?
And that Teaching thing?

Presentation Schema
1. Representations of the Future
2. Relating the Future and the Present
3. 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, (andfuture is here. It’s just not
Quote Two the its diagram)
evenly distributed.” - WG
“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 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

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
The 3D
Linkages of
Human/Non-
Human
Collectives
Representation
of the Future
Complex knots and linkages between many disparate social practices create thick
representations of human activities, including our projections and imaginations about the
future.

Recap..
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.

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 + SciFi
Considering 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
Text
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 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. 231-268
cf. Julian Bleecker, “The Reality Effect of Technoscience” 2004, unpublished dissertation
http://tinyurl.com/3roy6s

Conversation Collectives
Deployment, 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 conversations
Pro: 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

3. Props & Prototypes
Let’s look quickly at two kinds of prototypes
1. Prototypes in their canonical form.
2. Diegetic 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.

Props & Prototypes
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.

Prototypes/Props are Idea-Mass
Offer 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 c
julian dot bleecker at nokia dot c