about design fictions

This week’s reading about design fiction is totally a new concept to me. Bruce Sterling defines design fiction as “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend belief’s about change.” It is to speculate about new ideas and think about the future. In another word from Matthew Ward in Design Fiction as Pedagogic Practice, “We always design for a world that sits, sometimes just slightly, out of sight. We engage in a complex set of actors in order to move our fictions into the realm of the real”. Design fiction is useful in a way that asking the ‘what if ‘ question actually provokes so many possibilities. Hollywood movies always explore what our future can be like. How about The Daily Prophet in the Harry Potter movies – the interactive newspaper?  What if people are able to touch different parts of the paper to watch advertising clips or listen to audio reporters? This idea is innovative. Could it become the reality? That would be cool if it existed.

02 unlecture

Here comes the second week of the unlecture.

From now on, we are not allowed to use laptops during the lecture. It does not affect me much as I usually stick to the old-school style notes taking. At first  I found it quite unreasonable, this subject is NETWORKED media and about how we fit ourselves into this technological modern time. But it is true that when on laptop, everybody is multi-tasking. Probably not everyone is 100% focusing on the lecturers.

Then we were asked to write a question on a piece of paper for Adrian about the course. I was lost. I found myself looking at the blank paper while everyone handed their paper to Elliot and Jasmine. I didn’t submit a question. Adrian is right. Everyone should have a question; even a simple one. Why couldn’t I think of a stupid question at that moment? I am not afraid of asking a silly question and people laugh at it; I guess I am not used to this fast thinking session. My mind was like empty for a while whenever people asked me to think.

Adrian talked about the copyright issue in the lecture as well. I found it useful. Things on my blog; once I post it, it is mine.