So unfortunately, as the awful crack at a joke of a title suggests, I have ended up somehow with a monstrous tequila hangover! I don’t feel too sick, my head isn’t throbbing, but I have absolutely no recollection of the night before (in this case the past 4 weeks). I think I was a week behind somewhere so now I don’t know which readings to do when, but look, at least I was able to realise my mistake now and not in week 12 and from next week, be ontop of it all! As a result, this week’s post will be about 3 readings for both weeks 3 and 4. I also will stop drinking tequila from this day forward.

1)
Bruce Sterling’s take on design fiction is interesting considering he is a science fiction writer. My take away idea from what he said is that design fiction is vital to any person as it is, essentially, “a set of tools”, and I liked the way he described it as giving futurism “a second wind” in many ways.
It is ever growing, particularly in our day and age, as it seems that there has been a notable growth in regards to focusing on inventing and creating objects and services to aid human life. Design fiction is “diegetic” and focuses on the individual not the entire collective. What I mean by that is, that rather than saying, “I will cure cancer” or “I will end world poverty”, design fiction is about creating medicines and tools to help cure cancer, and bringing focus and awareness to world poverty. The final point to take from Sterling is there IS such a thing as bad design fiction…well there has to be as there is such a thing as bad design! Just look at a certain building front on the corner of Swanston and Latrobe…

2)
Vannevar Bush makes an excellent point in the opening of his piece when he mentions and provides examples of “man’s use of science”. All in all, every aspect in regards to the way we live our lives is thanks to science. I often forget to realise the impact science has made to the material environment, the way in which we are so effortlessly able to communicate, the improvements to the foods I eat, the clothing I wear, how and where I live, how I travel, what I do or take when I am sick, how I feel secure, why I can expect to live for far longer than my ancestors, just to name a few. All the resources and objects that fall under these categories are thanks to the constant development and inventions made by science.
He goes on to mention how much science has progressed and in what ways, but the second point he makes is also highly important. Records in science must be reassessed, consulted with, revisited, kept up to date, and MUST foremost, be continually updated. It is, however, a pity he chose to further explain this with the example of a camera, one of the four things that boggles my pea sized mind the most in the world (the other 3 things are, how does a telephone work, how does a video camera work, and what came first- the chicken or the egg?). Overall, it was an interesting reading I found, as it wasn’t a thesis on science fiction, nor was it a professor trying to parade his knowledge, using complex and cryptic language. I found the content, again like the last reading, to be something I would stop and properly read if I came across it in a newspaper or magazine!

3)
As a side note before I start, I loved this reading. It kept me engaged, I actually enjoyed reading it, it was easy to understand and the content was informative!

Designers never design for the here and now, it is always for the future, be that tomorrow, a week, a month or 2 years from when they publish or make public their designs, they are created for a world “yet to exist”, a world that is “just slightly, out of sight”.
Matthew Ward aims to reveal in depth and address what this notion of design fiction really is. He aims to get his students and the rest of the world for that matter who happened to have stumbled upon this paper, thinking differently about the concept of design fiction.
“All design is ideological” and for this reason the ideologies need to be closely examined, explored, exposed and deconstructed on numerous levels.

There were multiple “rules” if you like, that stood out to me, as they are so relevant and relatable (and highly useful to keep in mind) when I am creating and designing. “The decisions you make have consequences”. We have been taught this from a young age when our mother’s let us play with fire (or was that just mine?). “What first seems like a good idea, can have unexpected, unintended and undesirable consequences” – I am beginning to think this guy also did years as a psychologist.
“Pretend before you mess the world up”- seems like a practical enough solution.
“Immerse yourself in the literary world”- particularly for writing, I was always told, to build a good vocabulary and imagination, read, read and read some more!
“Borrow from your past”- The base point to many of my stories.
Loved how he approached it, definitely one of the most insightful readings I have read in a while!