Design Fiction
Is a new method for designing technology that explores the futures that ordinary people would prefer. Design fictions are provocative and engage people, encouraging them to envision, explain and raise questions about the direction of future technology and society.
Design fictions are now being used in sectors ranging from health to defence tech forecasting, and even policy making. In this way, science fiction can be used as a tool to help design future societies and technologies, giving the public a say on it too.
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Some of the tech appearing in movies wasn’t the fruit of random predictions but of consultations with industrial designers, futurists and advertising specialists.
Liquid-fuelled rocket, 3D gesture-based user interfaces, tablet computer and mobile phones are all examples of technology that first appeared on sci-fi works. However a piece of technology came to be, its undebatable that sci-fi works have accurately predicted and paved the way for many of the pieces of technology we enjoy today.
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- The electronic tablet on 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- Insect-derived foodstuffs on Snowpiercer. Nowadays there are insect-based flour and protein bars.
- Smart home devices on the 1999 Disney film Smart House. In the film, a house is run by a robot that can perform most of the functions a digital assistant like Alexa does today.
- Personalized adverts on Minority Report. The movie had Billboards that identified the passersby and targeted adverts towards them, much like search engines and some actual billboards do today.
- Autonomous cars on Total Recall. The movie had driverless cabs not very different from the ones we have today.
- Autonomous military vehicles on Short Circuit. Although we are still far behind on the AI part the rest is already available to the military.
- Human-looking androids on Metropolis.
- Video conferencing/calling on Aliens or Bladerunner.
- Mobile phones/Smartwatches on Star Trek.
- Wearable technology on Back to the Future Part II. The movie had "smart eyewear" that resembles modern head-mounted virtual reality devices
Science fiction, by definition, is science that isn’t real. But looking beyond the fantastical elements there are some very innovative ideas, a lot of which have had a real influence on modern technology. Here are some examples:
- Star Trek: The motion Picture predicted the Internet as embodied in the movie by the all-enveloping sentient machine ‘V’Ger’.
- Ready Player One predicted VR technology and virtual workplaces.
- Total Recall predicted self-driving cars.
- iRobot predicted self-driving cars that would allow the driver to take over too.
- Minority Report predicted interactive augmented reality now being commercialized as wearable pair of glasses.
- Back to the Future predicted the self-tying shoes.
Many researchers acknowledge the role that science fiction has played in triggering their interest in science and inspiring breakthroughs. Even technology companies increasingly employ science fiction artists to explore potential new technologies and their social impact – also known as science fiction prototyping.
A research that looked for science-fiction-related terms in academic papers indicates that science fiction plays a significant role in scientific work and its impact is on the increase, especially on areas related to human-computer interactions.