Learning From Science Fiction

For more than a century, science fiction has been both the conscience and the subconscious of the technology industry. Its authors have invented new ideas that became world-changing technologies and they’ve shaped the moral, philosophical and aesthetic lenses that we use to understand our changing world. We use an interface from Minority Report to operate our Star Trek communicators, in order to communicate over geostationary satellites invented by Arthur C. Clarke, to visit William Gibson’s cyberspace and experience the drifting identities and psychological dislocation described by Philip K. Dick.

As a designer, technologist and artist, Greg Borenstein has mined science fiction for storytelling tools that help communicate how new technologies feel and what they might mean to our world. In this talk, Greg presents projects that show some of what he has learned and outline ideas that may come in handy in your own practice.

Presented at FITC Toronto 2014

Transcript

1. Learning from Science Fiction
   Greg Borenstein
   MIT Media Lab, Playful Systems
   

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3. OpenCV for Processing
   github.com/atduskgreg
   

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6. A good science fiction story should
   be able to predict not the automobile
   but the traffic jam.
   — Fredrik Pohl
   

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9. “The abrupt jolt into other flesh. Matrix gone, a wave of sound
   and color . . . She was moving through a crowded street, past
   stalls vending discount software, prices felt penned on sheets
   of plastic, fragments of music from countless speakers. Smells
   of urine, free monomers, perfume, patties of frying krill. For a
   few frightened seconds he fought helplessly to control her
   body. Then he willed himself into passivity, became the
   passenger behind her eyes.”
   

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18. thingiverse.com/thing:277787
    

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19. Design Fiction
    vs.
    Science Fiction
    

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20. “the deliberate use of diegetic
    prototypes to suspend
    disbelief about change.”
    — Bruce Sterling
    

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21. Keiichi Matsuda
    Domestic Robocop, 2010
    

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22. Veronica Ranner
    Biophilia, 2011
    

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23. Kevin Grennan
    Prototype Robot Armpit, 2011
    

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24. BACKWARDS
    

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25. BACKWARDS
    BEAUTIFUL BUT
    

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26. Imagination -> Prediction
    !
    Technology -> Storytelling
    

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27. Technology -> Prediction
    !
    Storytelling -> Imagination
    

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28. Collaboration with John Powers
    2H2K
    

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29. 2H2K
    Artificial Labor
    

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33. Supervised Learning
    

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35. Martin Cuilla
    1028 emails
    

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53. All science fiction is
    really about the present.
    — Cory Doctorow
    

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54. Sophia Brueckner Dan Novy
    

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55. thanks.
    gregborenstein.com
    @atduskgreg
    

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