Irrelevant of the future, technologies of the present are outlandish enough for me.

August 9, 2013 · by · in

This week’s discussion of design fictions got me thinking about technologies and products we now accept as commonplace that say, twenty, even ten years ago, would’ve seemed completely and utterly inconceivable.

Google Glass, for instance.

Google Glass. Source: The Verge

Video: Project Glass: One day…

Google Glass in the early conceptual stages. 

This is an early concept video made when Project Glass was just an idea. This is how the Google designers and engineers envisioned Google Glass in prototype form – with the ability to give directions, create media, share with friends and family, set reminders, and lots of other functions, all through voice command.

In his article, Design Fiction as Pedagogic Practice, Matthew Ward explores the world of design fiction, from the perspective that “all design is fiction”.

Design as a practice never exists in the here and now. Whether a week, month, year or decade away, designers produce propositions for a world that is yet to exist. Every decision we make is for a world and a set of conditions that are yet to be, we are a contingent practice that operates at the boundaries of reality. What’s different is the temporality, possibility and practicality of the fictions we write.

Design fictions depicting wearable computers have been around for eons. Paul Miller gives a comprehensive history of the wearable computer here.

Fascinating stuff.

Other technologies that, even now, seem completely outlandish and still cause me disbelief:

  • 3D printers
  • 3D anything
  • Touch-sensitive computing technologies (for instance, the iPhone)
  • Wireless internet
  • The Internet
  • The telephone

I could go on.

Someone once said that the Internet was the only technology that man had created that man didn’t understand. The veracity of that statement still resonates with me – I’m not sure we’ll ever understand it.

Okay so I thought I was finished with this post, and then I stumbled upon this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imbFjtX0Gc0&feature=player_embedded

Mind BLOWN.