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Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling Explains The Intriguing New Concept of Design Fiction - Reader View
Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling Explains The Intriguing New Concept of Design Fiction - Reader View
slate.com /technology/2012/03/bruce-sterling-on-design-fictions.html
Before the iPad, there was a tablet computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I’m in Tempe, Ariz., today for Emerge: Artists and Scientists Redesign the Future, a conference at Arizona
State University. One intriguing new way to think about the future is through the concept of “design fiction.”
When you first hear the phrase, it sounds slightly nebulous. One usefuldefinition calls design fiction “an
approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.”
Bruce Sterling, a Hugo Award-winning science-fiction writer, has been one of the most vocal advocates of
design fictions.* In the edited conversation below, he explains why design fictions are so important—and
what the hell the term means.
and services. There’s some element of intellectual sex appeal that makes people forward them to other
people.
Slate: What’s one design fiction that people might be familiar with?
Sterling: In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the guy’s holding what’s clearly an iPad. It just really looks like one,
right? This actually showed up in the recent lawsuits between Samsung and Apple. That’s kind of a
successful design fiction in the sense that it’s a diegetic prototype. You see an iPad in this movie and your
response is not just, “Oh, what’s that’s that?” But “That would be cool if it existed.”
Another bad concept would be hoaxes, like this metal bracelet would cure cancer. I’m lying to you, I’m
taking your money. Design fiction is not something that tries to convince you [that something that does not
exist really does]. That’s fraud, that’s a criminal act.
Correction, March 3, 2012: This blog post originally misspelled the Hugo Award as the Huge Award (of
course, it is indeed a huge deal).
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