Although this reading was a bit shorter than the usual length of readings, it was very informative and a nice change of scenery to read it from an interview format. Bruce Sterling sounds like a man that is passionate about science fiction writing and raising awareness for this new concept of thinking, “Design Fiction.”

The useful definition that Bosch includes in the opening paragraph about “design fiction” is that in order to think about the future, there is “an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.” It means that an individual has to think about speculatively on potential inventions and ideas that could have an impact in the future world. Sterling also explains that design fiction is about getting people to concentrate on thinking about this next-generation theory instead political trends or geopolitical strategies.

The interesting element of design fiction is that it has real applications in the real world and it actually works. I’m amazed by how inventions and ideas that have been created or realized in own time was predicted and thought about decades before in science fiction novels and films. Inventions like the iPad and the mobile phone have been predicted accurately in the sense that will one day it will be invented.

But like all great concepts of thinking, there is “bad” design fiction. It is thinking about ideas that are unrealistically achievable or too creative/out there to be taken seriously. Like what Sterling said, no one wants to aspire to copy an individual with a “stupid” idea.

To conclude, the importance of design fiction. I think it would be a very beneficial way of providing the future with a tool to think differently. Our future needs new thinkers and I think design fiction can go a long way of helping them.