Iterating further on the Design Fiction idea, evolved a bit from Design Engaged.

1. Design Fiction
Julian Bleecker
Shift 2008
Lisbon, Portugal
October 16, 2008

2. Design Fiction
Some thoughts about design as something that can
shape the future, bring about change, craft new sorts of
habitable worlds.
Hello.
My name is Julian Bleecker.
My talk title is something like quot;Design Fiction.quot; The topic is some preliminary thoughts on the relationship between design, the future and
science-fiction.
What I am presenting is an argument for considering design as a kind of story-telling practice, crafting material visions of different
kinds of possible worlds and through those visions doing more than presenting an inert, lifeless object.
Rather, design can turn ideas into material, but also insert that material into a larger setting with broader social contexts and
consequences, and through that create a compelling story about a possible future.
In this way, the design object becomes an important property of the world. And its this notion of a property in a larger narrative-based
context that I will ultimately highlight in this talk. A prop, to borrow from film and theater production — that helps move a story
forward.
Design's various ways of articulating ideas in material to create social objects and experiences can be seen as a kind of practice that is

3. Design Fiction
A “Conversation” around some work by David A. Kirby
on what he calls “diegetic prototypes” in science-fiction
film and my own interest in creating compelling
prototypes.

4. Presentation Schema
1. Representations of the Future
2. Relating the Future and the Present
3. Props and Prototypes

5. 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?

6. 3 Representations of the Future.
..and
2.5 Provocative Quotes to go
along with them.

7. 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

8. 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

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

10. Quote Two (and its diagram)
“As I’ve said many times, the future is here. It’s just not
evenly distributed.” - WG
“As I’ve said many times, the future is here. It’s just not
evenly distributed.” - William Gibson
Sandwich Spread Representation of the Future

11. Quote Two and a half..kinda
“...” - Bruno Latour

12. Quote Two and a half (and a diagram).
“...” - Bruno Latour
The 3D
Linkages of
Human/Non-
Human
Collectives
Representation
of the Future
3D Representation of the future, lots of vectors and linkages between many other worlds, all
of our imaginations and materializations of our beliefs and models of the world.

13. Recap..

14. Linear
Representation
of the Future

15. The “Future Spread Unevenly” Future
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 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.

16. A Messy Network of “Conversations” Amongst Humans
and Non-Humans
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.

17. “Collectives” That Contain Relevant Props, Participants,
“Issues”, Matters-of-Concern.
Collectives consisting of conversations, objects, humans, scientists, film-makers, matters-
of-concern (not matters-of-fact).. the most speculative representation here

18. The Future Is Messy...It’s Also “Hand Made.”
I’m postulating this particular representation of the future because I’ve learned that neither
the linear, nor the sandwich spread model work particularly well. Things are always multiple
and rather messy; history has taught us this much at least.
And we make it, through ideas and conversations and prototype objects; it’s not offered to us
from up on high. It’s not a graph or a sandwich spread.

19. What Are Ways In Which The Future Is “Hand Made”?
How is it hand made? Science Fiction for one. An important genre for imagining the future, or
other kinds of worlds.

20. For example: How is the “Minority Report Interface” Claimed? Who
Stakes Out This Technology? What Is A Simple Example of the
Minority Report “Collective”
David A. Kirby describes this in a forthcoming essay. In the
meantime..let’s check in with Google..

21. Blurry lines between the sci-fi props
and research prototypes

23. “The Film”

24. Right alongside of “Science”
“Turtle-necked Jeff Hahn”
Presenting at TED 2006!
Whole bunch of links to people who claim
“minority report interface” as researchers, film
consultants, prior-art, etc.

25. “Destination Moon”

26. How William Shatner
Changed The World

27. Jurassic Park

28. 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.

29. More blurry sci-fi science

30. More blurry sci-fi science
Wow..

31. Okay, but..So what?
Why does this all matter? The relationship between ideas and their materialization?
Hollywood? Stories? Science-fiction?

32. Design Aspires.
We have aspirations for creating particular kinds of habitable future worlds. What I mean is
that there are specific visions of a future, or aspirations for changing some aspect of the
world in which we live. And what I am trying to work through here are the ways to connect
those aspirations, and those ideas and realize them in a variety of forms.

33. Blur The Boundary
Between “Science-Fact”
and “Science-Fiction”
Through Design.

34. Think of Prototyping As Prop-
Making For A Different Kind
of (Near Future) World.

35. 3. Props & Prototypes

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

37. Canonical Prototypes. Functionality.

38. Canonical Prototypes. Functionality.

39. Canonical Prototypes. Fit and Mechanics.

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

41. Diegetic Prototypes (“Props”)
quot;..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.quot;
David A. Kirby, “The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes, and the
Cinematic Creation of the Future” (pre-pub)

42. Diegetic Prototypes (“Props”)
quot;..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 [film] these technologies exist as “real” objects
that function properly and which people actually use.quot;
David A. Kirby, “The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes,
and the Cinematic Creation of the Future”

43. Diegetic Prototypes (“Props”)
quot;..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.quot;
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.

44. 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.

45. 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.

46. Prototypes/Props are Idea-Mass
Design can also be a kind of fiction making; design-fiction.

47. Thanks.
julian at nearfuturelaboratory dot c
julian dot bleecker at nokia dot c