Science fiction, science faction
The Dutch Waag Society together with CyberspaceSalvations are organizing a series of seminars titled ‘Science fiction, science faction’, dealing with the crossroads between science and science fiction.
First up yesterday were Bruce Sterling and Peter Pels, moderated by Sally Wyatt.
On the program for the coming months are (April 11th) cyberpunks RU Sirius and Rudy Rucker, moderated by Giselinde Kuipers, and (May 2nd), the lovely Brenda Laurel, Bruce ‘Avatar’ Damer and Galen Brandt moderated by Christian van ‘t Hof.
Videostreams of the events will be available on KillerTV soon.
Our friend Nicolas over at the ever-insightful PastaAndVinegar, also blogged a line or two about the relationship between science fiction and foresight today, after also spotting this article in Information Week, which quotes John de Lancie (Q in Star Trek) saying:
“today’s technology, whether it’s cell phones or Second Life, is feeding off the fictional technology dreamed up by science fiction writers years ago“
We couldn’t agree more when Nicolas points to the strength of the story in bringing the future to life, increasing its impact and leaving a stronger mark on many people’s minds than traditional ‘futurist’/foresight writings. He correctly arguments:
(a) narratives are good way to give a flavor of the future, of things to come,
(b) Scifi folks write about problems, why things work, do not work, lead to crisis, create social issues (or social issues that create innovation),
(c) they put things in context, [...]
(d) they have their own rules.To some extent, reading scifi is somehow like opposing “critical foresight” to “futurism”.
Stories form a powerful, subtle, experiential envelope which invite listeners and readers to join in on a co-creation journey to visualize another world. As our experiences show, they are a fantastic tool to render the future ‘experiencable‘ and to get higher qualitative response from people in terms of what the ‘storyboarded’ future awakens in them, emotionally as well as rationally.
PS. For those of you interested in the power of storytelling in an organizational/learning context, you might want to check out Steve Denning‘s books.
Via our dutch friends from ExtendLimits
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