Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction

by Brian David Johnson

Science fiction is the playground of the imagination. If you are interested in science or fascinated with the future then science fiction is where you explore new ideas and let your dreams and nightmares duke it out on the safety of the page or screen. But what if we could use science fiction to do more than that? What if we could use science fiction based on science fact to not only imagine our future but develop new technologies and products? What if we could use stories, movies and comics as a kind of tool to explore the real world implications and uses of future technologies today?

Science Fiction Prototyping is a practical guide to using fiction as a way to imagine our future in a whole new way. Filled with history, real world examples and conversations with experts like best selling science fiction author Cory Doctorow, senior editor at Dark Horse Comics Chris Warner and Hollywood science expert Sidney Perkowitz, Science Fiction Prototyping will give you the tools you need to begin designing the future with science fiction.

The future is Brian David Johnson’s business. As a futurist at Intel Corporation, his charter is to develop an actionable vision for computing in 2021. His work is called “future casting”—using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and even science fiction to create a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. Johnson has been pioneering development in artificial intelligence, robotics, and reinventing TV. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science fiction short stories and novels (Fake Plastic Love and Screen The Future of Entertainment, Computing and the Devices We Love). He has directed two feature films and is an illustrator and commissioned painter.

Table of Preface / Foreword / Epilogue / Dedication / Acknowledgments / 1. The Future Is in Your Hands / 2. Religious Robots and Runaway A Brief Overview of the Science and the Fiction that Went Into Two SF Prototypes / 3. How to Build Your Own SF Prototype in Five Steps or Less / 4. I, From Asimov to Exploring Short Fiction as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Cory Doctorow / 5. The Men in the Exploring Movies as an SF Prototype and a Conversation with Sidney Perkowitz / 6. Science in the Exploring Comics as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Chris Warner / 7. Making the Now that You Have Developed Your SF Prototype, What’s Next? / 8. Einstein’s Thought Experiments and Asimov’s Second Dream / Appendix The SF Prototypes / Notes / Author Biography

Genres: Science Fiction, Design, Research, Writing

179 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 2, 2011

About the author

The future is BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON's business. From 2009 to 2016, Johnson was Intel Corporation’s first-ever futurist. Currently, he is a professor of practice at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and a Futurist and Fellow at Frost & Sullivan, a visionary innovation company that’s focused on growth. He also works with a broad range of groups including governments, militaries, academics, non-profits, private industries, trade organizations, and startups to help them envision their future. Johnson has more than 40 patents, and he has been published in many consumer and trade publications, including The Wall Street Journal and Slate, and he appears regularly on Bloomberg TV, PBS, Fox News, and the Discovery Channel.

Reviews

[John Carter McKnight · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst-written book ever, or just bottom 10? Rife with misspellings, typos, glaring factual errors (Steve Ditka did not create a Marvel Comics character called "Super-Man"), crimes against grammar - the book is frankly an affront to the whole notion of human communication. I am astonished that the author has been able to hold down a job involving anything other than lifting things.

That said, interviews with science fiction and comics authors provide a few fun nuggets, even if they're badly transcribed: extended commentary from Cory Doctorow on Isaac Asimov and his laws of robotics redeemed the couple hours I spent with the book (which, thankfully, I got for free at a conference. Please don't spend money on it).

Johnson's notion of "science fiction prototyping" is basically encouraging scientists to tell stories, or collaborate with storytellers, about the impact of technology, usually in a workshop setting. It's nothing new, but the notion and some methods and examples would have made a nice 10-page guide, if written by someone literate in some - any! - form of human communication.

[Michael Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

To do full review later:

Overall: I can't believe I wasted my time on this! Ideas are a dime a dozen.

Info: non-fiction book about a creative process. The author proposes to use sci-fi prototyping, that is, constructing sci-fi (short) stories that explore how contemporary scientific topics might affect human individuals and even societies. By formatting these stories in common entertainment media such as books, comics, and movies, the story becomes a prototype. The prototype could then inform both the public about the potential of using potential products derived from science, and the scientists about the potential of science.
+++ I love the idea. It's intuitive, close to my heart as hardcore sci-fi reader, and as computer scientist and person who enjoys seeing how science truly helps our society.
+ I like the idea of exploring the potential of this idea by creating a two-way communication process in which creative professionals (book writers, movie makers, and comics creators) use valid science in their stories, and science professionals (scientists, r&d teams) use sci-fi stories to guide or expand their work.
--- The problem is that my intuition and no proof a very poor method make. There is too little evidence (this is British for none) that the idea would work.
--- There is much overselling of the idea, to the point where the author simply descredits the idea with name-dropping, cherry picking examples to support own argument without care for counter-examples, claims of quality by quantity, claims that sci-fi prototyping would extend scientific thought experiments, etc. Name-dropping starts with the author trying to sell the idea through his own former role at ultra-known tech company Intel, and ends with cherrypicking words of Nobel-prize-winner Einstein and hugely popular science-writer Steven Hawking (read this sentence to understand how the entire book reads).
--- Quantity is achieved by filling up page after page with oversold little bits of the two-way communication, where the author expands much effort to identify the science in several beloved, but cherry-picked books, movies, and comics, and also in much tinier and flawed little events engaging students/writers and a cherry picked AI scientist/group that together compose sci-fi short stories; quality, which is avoided throughout, would have been to engage one of the big names dropped throughout the book and develop a sci-fi prototype with them, or develop a sci-fi prototype that affects demonstrably a field of science (I'll get back to this) or society.
--- The claim sci-fi prototyping extends scientific thought-experiments requires proof. Thought experiments as part of the scientific method have a long history, a formed philosophy, and mechanisms to verify their findings. They are not sci-fi, meaning the understanding of science from their users is deep, the knowledge required to do them is expert-level, and the use of fiction to replace what is known to be true is allowed only for demonstrations by reduction to absurd statements. In contrast, sci-fi prototypes built with the method presented in this book require minimal understanding of science (as in the class exercise described in the book), could use expert-level knowledge (as in the work with the AI scientist) but this is not required, and, as many of the creative professionals interviewed for this book state, leave much room for creative license to ignore or bend or simply not depixt science for any reason. (The author concludes, after all movie-prof interviews, that adapting to the audience is vital, and one of the interviewees explicitly states that explaining the science could take too much valuable time from the movie so yes it just gets cut.)
--- Similarly, the idea that, by creating sci-fi prototypes, scientists would become what the society labels creatives (so, recognizable as book-writers, movie-makers, comics-creators) and, vice-versa, creatives would become what the scientific world recognizes as peers (so, scientists) requires evidence. Besides rejection based on ignorance or fear of the new, the scientific community needs proper evidence sci-fi prototyping actually makes its users become able to conduct science. Only such people can be scientists, and nothing else, surely not things like being able to write a story, or to think about how society could use tech products, counts. These activities are useful and respected by the society, but they are not doing science. Note that scientists can write books (try Richard Feynman) and can create tech that impacts on our society (try Matei Zahsria's Spark), and that the modern job of being a scientist also includes (besides expanding human knowledge with new findings) aspects like PR, publishing open-source software, engaging with society about adopting the scientist's tech advances, etc.
--- Overall, it seems the creative professionals do not agree with the claims and the method proposed by the author, and there is no interview with a top-grade scientist to support the author's claims either.
--- The formulation used in the book indicates a lack of understanding of science. The author even confuses science (concepts, designs, e.g., in computer science) and technology derived from it. Corey Doctorow gently corrects the author about this, in his interview included in the book.
--- The confusion also spreads to technology, but to a more limited degree. Here, the worst offender is the term prototyping (of sci-fi prototyping), which seems required by the tech company who sponsored the initial idea, whereas what the author actually did is rooted in story-boarding, writing fiction, and in general not in tech prototyping.
--- Despite the name-dropping, and the fancy name of the Tomorrow Project, there is no example of how sci-fi storytelling was used by a major tech company to improve its fit with society needs, or by a major group of scientists to improve their science, or by a well-known creative to improve their existing processes.
--- Te autor does not trace the lineage of the sci-fi prototyping to its creative writing and storytelling roots.
--- The structure of the book could be improved. Common: lengthy explanation, including buleted lists, appears when discussing tangentials and related work; topic not part of the main thread of the chapter spans a couple of screens; lengthy material copied from other published sources, instead of paraphrase; etc. As an example, at the end the author returns to motivating the need and potential use of sci-fi prototyping, name-dropping Einstein and Hawking for the first time in the process; I get the conclusion should revisit the main motivation, but also the conclusion is summative, so it should not introduce new elements (ask your trial lawyer).

[path · Rating 2 out of 5]

Underwhelming. The book tantalizes readers with the goal of investigating the generative capacity of science fiction for furthering technical and scientific research/development. In a constrained way, the book delivers on that promise in the first 25 (of 162) pages, but the deliverable amounts to not much more than the observation that SF creates scenarios or thought experiments in which to iterate technological and/or scientific concepts/products. Okay. I buy that -- we know that scenario building is important to user experience design work and technical documentation, but it is the "how" that is unaddressed.

We get a simple formula: 1) pick your science and build your world, 2) introduce the science to that world, 3) examine the ramifications on people, 4) consider what needs to be changed about the science/society, 5) reflect on what was learned. There is a lot of space between those steps and a lot of nuance to those steps that is just not spelled out very clearly.

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poorly edited and compiled. Probably a very good idea badly executed. Hopefully there will be a revised version.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I really did, but despite his qualifications, Brian Johnson didn't do the legwork necessary to achieve his goals. Brian Johnson is a futurist at Intel, who develops various scenarios to guide the company's development over the next 10 to 20 years (approximately forever in IT time). The back of the book claims that "Science Fiction Prototyping is a practical guide to using fiction as a way to imagine our future in a whole new way."



Instead, what I got was five bullet points on how to do what Johnson gets paid to do, totaling about a page, surrounded by interviews with various media figures about the difference between writing, film, and comics books, and some of Johnson's short fiction. What I wanted (and what I think it's fair to expect) is a detailed guide to gathering views of emerging technologies, sitting down with a group (classroom, corporate, academic, whatever), and somehow using sci-fi to work out the extrapolations. There's nothing like that; not a list of places of Johnson goes to gather his data (you try reading scientific journal abstracts as a layperson), no list of sci-fi works that are particularly good examples of prototyping, and nothing that tells you how to write a story, or what makes it a prototype rather than just an amusement.



I that science-fiction can play a useful role in helping people engage with the future. Almost nobody reads government, military, and corporate predictions: sci-fi is technology assessment for the rest of us. Moreover, I believe that the narrative elements of a story can provide deeper, fuller, and richer visions than sterile graphs and analyses. Not that sci-fi predicts the future, but it can act as design fiction, guiding inventors and scientists towards new discoveries, and an object that create Prevail-style flexibility towards unknowable contingencies. I guess I'll have to make my own plan for how to do that.