I know this is a little wild but I truly think the idea of Design Fiction is perhaps the closest thing we have to predicting the future. Imagine encompassing the ability to foretell events before they happen. No, I don’t mean that psychic thing Nicholas Cage does with all those numbers in ‘Knowing’ (which, by the way, scared the hell out of me),I mean, that through an inventive imagination, we can prepare ourselves and further, the rest of humanity to adapt to a world even beyond our existance. Hey, if that’s the case then I’ll take all the ‘What if’s’ i can get….

In reading the article with Bruce Sterling’s reflection on Design Fiction, I must say, I had a problem with his definition of ‘bad design fiction’ being due to “stupid” ideas expressed from a “goofy imagination”… Again, I don’t want to plunge into a philosophical reflection on humanities subjectivity but hey; what was considered stupidity hundreds of years ago has been proved ingenious in the last few decades. It’s what makes great people great isn’t it? The ability to imagine the unimaginable. We might consider a “goofy” idea stupid because we don’t have the resources (or rather are unaware of them) or current ways of thinking   to successfully transform  that idea into a reality. Sterling mentions that an example of bad design fiction would be a comment that goes, ” Hey, gee, wouldn’t it be great if I could flap my arms and fly to the moon?” I say, why not. Bear with me here. What if, one day, perhaps in the near future, we discover ways in which we can inject a type of chemical into our bodies that provides us with the capability to defy gravity ( maybe we won’t reach the moon, but maybe we’ll fly <– sounds like some sort of crappy political campaign ad; although it has a nice ring to it). I won’t lie, it sounds absolutely insane to me too, given that I have no knowledge in the field of aerospace dynamics. But, what if? I say we shouldn’t dismiss the ideas that are…perhaps a little crazy…