Watching the second video in Bruce Sterling’s article on design fictions, I was in awe. Of course these applications for different styles of glass are only fictional, but they somehow seem within our reach. The fact that someone has thought of them is a good enough start for me!
The other day when I got to dancing, one of the girls was telling a story of this amazing new gadget that her brother had just bought that day. I can’t remember the exact name but I can most definitely remember it’s functions as they drew a gobsmacked reaction from everyone listening.
She described this “box” that you place in front of the TV and interact with.. You can’t actually see the box with which you are interacting, but it is there and allows you to use your hands to play games for example “cut the rope”, in which you have to use your hand to slice the rope on the TV screen. It sounds like a really simple game but the idea of being able to play it without actually touching a screen or controller is mouth-watering.
In a sense I thought of this as design-fiction.. I still haven’t seen the proof that it exists and I can hardly believe that it could work the way that she explained it, but this is what I think is so amazing about it. Many people have probably imagined having a piece of technology that worked along these lines and letting their imagination run wild would have lead them to create a piece of design fiction of their own. However, it is this design fiction that eventually leads to the actual creation. I loved watching the video about A Day In Glass, because it allows me to imagine a life with these inventions helping me out. It would be incredible! As Sterling says “it is cool to imagine if they existed”.
What is scary is that I am sure in one hundred years this “box” my friend told me about will be as uninteresting and useless to the population as the first mobile phone is to us now, and an I Pad will be a relic of the past. However for now it is totally futuristic and so are the gadgets seen in A Day In Glass, so I am going to make the most of appreciating their intelligence while I can.