The canonical smart city: A pastiche by Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird
Sorta sci-fi from Adam.
Consider this a shooting script for one of those concept videos so beloved of the big technology vendors.
Souvenirs from the futures — GlobalFuturesLab
A collection of weird and wonderful design fiction.
This collection of “Souvenirs from the Future” envisions what the future looks like through the eyes of young and talented art, design and architecture students living in different parts of the world. Some are speculations on ideal tomorrows; others are projections and critiques on the present. Some reveal beautiful aesthetics, alternatives to the high tech; others bravely question critical issues around politics, religion or tradition.
Related links
Near Future Laboratory » Blog Archive » Designing Fiction in Volume Q.
Julian Bleecker explains design fiction in the context of science fiction using the examples of gestural interfaces and virtual reality.
Exploring the Frontiers of Visual Identity… | Speculative Identities
Brand identity in sci-fi films, like Alien, Total Recall, Robocop, and Back To The Future.
This makes for a nice companion site to Sci-fi Interfaces.
‘Black Mirror’ meets HGTV, and a new genre, home design horror, is born - Curbed
There was a time, circa 2009, when no home design story could do without a reference to Mad Men. There is a time, circa 2018, when no personal tech story should do without a Black Mirror reference.
Black Mirror Home. It’s all fun and games until the screaming starts.
When these products go haywire—as they inevitably do—the Black Mirror tweets won’t seem so funny, just as Mad Men curdled, eventually, from ha-ha how far we’ve come to, oh-no we haven’t come far enough.
The Future Mundane — hellofosta
As a corollary to the idea of mundane sci-fi, Nick Foster proposes some rules for realistically mundane design fiction:
- The Future Mundane is filled with background talent.
- The Future Mundane is an accretive space.
- The Future Mundane is a partly broken space.
When I encounter everyday design in science fiction cinema, I get a chill of excitement. From Korben’s cigarettes in the Fifth Element, the parole officer in Elysium, and countless examples in Blade Runner, these pieces of design help us get a much better hold on our future than any holographic interface ever could. The future we design should understand this. The characters in our future will not necessarily need to save the world at every turn—most of them will simply live in it, quietly enjoying each day.
Related posts
The literary operator
A beautiful machine.