So, what is design fiction?

Bruce Sterling: It’s the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.

Important: diegetic.

“It means you’re thinking very seriously about potential objects and services and trying to get people to concentrate on those rather than entire worlds or political trends or geopolitical strategies.”

It tells worlds rather than stories.

For example…video vignettes.

SORRY I GOT DISTRACTED BY WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE AND ALSO THE ARTICLE IN THE SIDEBAR: “HOOKUPS ARE PRETTY RARE. UNLESS YOU’RE WHITE AND WEALTHY.”

Intellectual sex appeal.

“All design is fiction”. Designers produce propositions for a world that is yet to exist, no matter how far away they are.

What’s the Dark Matter, anyway?

LONG ASS MANIFESTO

1. All design is ideological

2. Fiction as a testing ground for reality

3. Re-inscribing behaviour and responsibility

4. The decisions you make have consequences: prototype them in the stories you tell

5. Normalise to persuade (tell that to every single white male narrative creative team in Hollywood)

6. Make space for experimentation

7. Think through making

8. Things that work don’t create interesting stories

9. Build from ideas to aesthetics

10. Things live in their interaction with their context

11. People are the protagonists in the production of reality.

12. Craft the narrative.

13. Don’t mistake the training for the race.

14. Understand what your fiction is doing in reality

It’s interesting that this class is talking a lot about sci-fi. I like it.