Bruce Sterling says in an interview that ‘design fiction’, (thinking up new ideas for technologies and trying to find ways to bring them to life) could foster a new wave of problem solving around the world. Sterling’s idea is an interesting one as he asks us to move away from totalising theories about the future, to leave behind the grand, apocalyptic designs of the 60’s, in favour of small-scale practical solutions to everyday life. This kind of atomised, independently-driven thought, asks questions like “how do we solve this specific problem and what steps do we have to take to bring about this change?” instead of “how do we solve every problem simultaneously?”

Sterling believes this more modest approach to thinking about change could prompt a new wave of interest in futurism, most likely due to the way that things will somehow become more manageable, instead of merely being put in the ‘too-hard’ basket. Design fiction does have a few illustrious champions already. Maven sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke was the inspiration behind the first satellite and Sterling also mentions how a version of the modern “i-pad” appears in that epic Clarke/Kubrick collaboration ‘2001’. Unfortunately, Clarke’s ‘space-elevator’ has failed to materialise. Perhaps he was thinking too big?

Sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson, in his novel ‘Snowcrash’, alludes to a system that resembles for all intents and purposes what we now know as ‘Google Earth’ and was, according to the creators, the direct inspiration for that self-same program. Orwell’s ‘telescreen’ sounds perilously close to Microsoft’s controversial addition to the x-box and once quantum computing makes its way into households, why not upload our consciousnesses into hard-drives ala William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’? Still, all this comes back to thinking versus doing. Perhaps by looking at problems individually and practically, rather than all at once, real change may become science-fact, rather than science-fiction.