“Design as a practice never exists in the here and now.”
This weeks reading was based around the one simple principle “what if?”
Now the first thing that comes to mind when I think about this question, is how many movies have been based off this simple idea ‘what if?’. Whether it’s a film like Gattaca or Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind, this question seems to be a continually growing idea.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind trailer
The reading predominantly focuses on the fact that design fiction relates to this question ‘what if ?’. The question is however not as nearly simple as it seems. With endless possibilities only capped by the minds limitations, ‘what if?’ can be forever expanded on as long as someone chooses to dream up that reality. The process of taking ideas that are present currently and forming a story around subverting this idea, is something that has worked time and time again.
Further more there was the concept of constructing ideas through two completely different ideas; ‘Utopia and dystopia’.
The idea of utopia being taking part of our life and manipulating it so that our life seems perfect and care free. Dystopia is the opposite, it is distorted into an anarchistic state where everything is falling apart. For example, an example of Dystopia is the world created in John Hillcoat’s, “The Road”, whilst an example of utopia is George Roy Hill’s, “Slaughterhouse 5”. The examples in the readings of design fiction reflecting ‘utopia’ was Christina commune (Copenhagen) and The Anarchistic Experiment.
The readings also talked about how experimenting creates opportunities for future realities. It is this process that ensures that media industry is always moving forward. Google for instance gives one day of the working week to employers to work on their own ideas. It is from these ideas that such tools like twitter and tablets come from.