ARTICLE 9. PROTOTYPING: INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE FICTION

: Publications

ARTICLE 9. PROTOTYPING: INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE FICTION

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Dan Novy and Sophia Brueckner argue that "... worlds created by authors such as Philip Dick and Arthur Clark can help not only invent new wonders of technology, but also to calculate the consequences of their appearance..." We live in the 21st century...

The modern world is accelerating so fast that the ability to invent new devices far exceeds the speed we can be aware of them. We can assume that now we need about 10 years to gain an understanding of technology importance since the advent of it.

People are so attached to their computers and mobile phones that it can be described as follows - we are in the stream!!! At first computing acquired the features of an industrial era. According to Marshall McLuhan the first version of the new information carrier imitates this type of communication, such as commercial computers based on the concept of "office." "Desktop", "folders", "files" appeared on the screens. They were created hierarchically, like the industrial era itself. The second digital era has shifted the concept of office toward the Internet. Files have been replaced by the concept of "page". Pages are located not in folders but on the web. Therefore the Internet is billions of mutually linked pages displaying everything - stored information and active knowledge. As a result, the desktop has been replaced by a "browser" - a standard computer program that allows us to look at pages on the Internet. Today we are in the third era of computing. Pages and browsers are no longer important, and "streams" become the basic units. Agree we constantly monitor the feeds of "Facebook", "Twitter", "LinkedIn" and others. We post our fresh photo, "take selfies", and this happens constantly in real time. Take a closer look at the bottom of the TV screen and the running line tells us about the latest events more and more often. We subscribe to "YouTube", which we call channels, to RRS Blog Feeds, latest news, movies, books, etc. We are "swimming" in the flow of messages and updates. "Tags" replace links. After all, we put "like" under those publications in the tape that we like. And we share them with our friends in real time. Some of our streams - "WhatsApp", "Viber", "WeChat", "Snapchat", etc. work exclusively in real time - "here and now". And they have no past, no future, they just swim near us. If you didn’t go through any of them - it means you were late.

Estrangement increases between us as a result of this, and people begin to suffer from loneliness, despite the fact that we have been online longer and longer. Scientists are already interested in creating empathic technology that will allow you to feel a connection with another person or animal, a representative of a "different civilization" of the Earth. Like Bernard Verber with his Linguinston. You must admit that some of the most remarkable ideas from science fiction are realized only much later! The human mind can invent something that did not exist before, and then create it. This is "magic" - the power that we attribute to deities and wizards, according to Alan Moore.

Our "Science Fiction Project" is engaged in research "under the microscope" and subsequent prototyping of just such "magic", offering solutions to problems and ways to create technologies through Innovative Artefacts (IA). As a good storyteller helps us live longer lives of our heroes, innovative design and prototyping based on science fiction allow us repeatedly comprehend our creations before they see life at its best.

Science fiction artworks often predict and guide scientific and technological progress, inspiring scientists and inventors. The books written by Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ian Banks, Neil Stevenson, Stanisław Lem, the Strugatsky brothers and others are bright representatives of the science fiction artworks. Jeff Bezos, the CEO and President of "Amazon" and "Blue Origin", Bill Gates, the founder of "Microsoft", Elon Musk, CEO of "Tesla", Inc. and "SpaceX", and other innovators have grown on their books. The head of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg is among fans of Chinese science fiction writers. It got to the point that NASA engages authors to write about the latest achievements of the space agency.

In the Ian Banks series of novels "Culture" about space super civilization, as an example, the population lives on artificially constructed in space "orbitals", and each of them has its own "mind" - a machine with a huge level of intelligence. All these machines are controlled by "superminds", which are entire worlds of star ships.

The Conference Hall in the company "Deep Mind", which is engaged in the development of artificial intelligence, is named after Banks. When the head of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg led the book club in 2015, the novel The Player from Banks’ Culture series was among the books he recommended.

Let us monitor at the selected events of prototyping in the historical aspect of the recent past, for example, from the middle of the 20th century...

...At the beginning of the 40s of the 20th century Winston Churchill ordered to create the "death ray", a favourite weapon of science fiction writers of the 1920s and 1930s. It was believed that such a beam would be able to shoot down enemy aircrafts, but the result of it was the invention of the radar. Radar, which was created with the help of MIT, helped the British to win the battle for Britain!!!

...In 1945 an American engineer, ideologist and developer of an analogue computer and President Roosevelt Science Advisor Vannevar Bush described the basic idea of the Internet as "hyperlinked pages". But the first scientist who tried to build this concept was the inventor of the concept of "hypertext" and a number of other terms, such as "teledildonics", the creator of the Xanadu hypertext system, the philosopher Ted Nelson who introduced his own scheme in 1965. Unfortunately, Nelson achieved modest progress in combining digital information units, and his efforts remained known only to a limited circle of his students. It was his brilliant idea of hypertext that each document should be linked to other documents, and computers could make this connection visible and permanent. At that time, it was an innovative idea of the space of a global metatext that Nelson called "docuverse". Nelson mentioned "virtual inclusion" and "mutual symmetrical structure"...

In 1945 Arthur Clark in his works for the first time described geostationary communications satellites...

...In 1968 science fiction writer Philip Dick foresaw an empathoscope. A person holding onto the handrails of an empathoscope connects to other people who use such devices at the same time. The devices that he describes in his works have a future. For example, a "mood modulator" is a device on which it is enough to type a code to experience the desired mood. One of the characters dials 888 to "experience the urge to watch any TV show", but Dick also points out some unpleasant aspects of the existence of such a technology...

...In 1971 it was a mention of the "Singing Statues" model in J. G. Ballard’s story. "... Art affects all feelings at the same time and generates visual and acoustic compositions using algorithms and even responds to the thoughts and feelings of viewers in real time..." For example, Sofia Bruckner, the researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is engaged in the construction of "kinetic acoustic sculpture")...

...In 1999 the revival of science fiction began in China. Science fiction in China was prohibited in the 60-70s of the last century. This genre was declared counter-revolutionary, and its representatives were accused of "alien ties with the West." The ban began to weaken only in the early 90's. Chinese writer Chen Qiufang believes that China’s modern science fiction was born in June 1999, when more than three million Chinese students were preparing for their national university entrance exam. Since the themes of the compositions were patriotic, now the question was raised about the future - "What if the memories could be transplanted?" In the same year, an article on the same topic was published in China's most popular science fiction magazine, The World of Science Fiction. Many parents felt: "Reading science fiction can help my children to get into a good college." In the 21st century, Chinese science fiction is developing under the auspices of the authorities. In 2007, English science fiction writer Neil Gaiman attended the first science fiction festival in China which was sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party. It turns out that the authorities were worried that China did not invent high technology, but only reproduce what was invented in other countries. That's why the Chinese authorities decided to support science fiction and fantasy officially. Now the Chinese government allocates billions of dollars to develop science fiction in the country.Mark Zuckerberg is among his fans...

...In 2011 NASA jointly with the publishing house "Top-Forge Books" launched a project of a series of science fiction books "Artworks inspired by NASA." Writers are encouraged to create science fiction artworks. And in 2014 the first book of this series was published. It was "The Pillar to Heaven" by William Forsten. It describes the near future, when oil reserves run out on Earth, the level of pollution catastrophically increases, and there is not enough water. A group of scientists develops the concept of building a giant elevator that can make space flights quick and affordable, as well as provide humanity with cheap solar energy...

...In 2015 German engineers jointly with a Japanese automobile company presented a flying board - Lexus Hoverboard (rises several centimetres above the floor, held by the strength of the magnetic field). Or else, the fly board of the French racing pilot Frankie Zapata allows you to accelerate through the air at a speed of up to 140 kilometres per hour. Hoverboard was called a skateboard while duplicating the Back to the Future trilogy into Russian. (This device helped the young hero of the movie, who fell from the 1980s to 2015, to escape from his pursuers). In some countries, the term “hoverboard” refers to a self-propelled skateboard without wheels...

...In 2018, Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon and the founder of the aerospace company Blue Origin, announced that he planned to film the artworks of Banks and the cyberpunk novel "Avalanche" by Neil Stevenson about the near future, where corporations rule the world and there is a virtual reality - the Metaverse or the Meta-universe. Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ favourite books are Stevenson’s works. His creativity influenced the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein are among the most in-demand science fiction writers chosen by the inhabitants of Silicon Valley. Bezos recalls that he grew up on their books "about rebellious moon colonies, robots that show mental abilities in only one limited area, and societies based on "psychohistory"- a mixture of economics, history and what is now called big data." Elon Musk sees a vivid illustration of how civilizations are developing in the books written by Asimov. It is also important that the creators of high technologies are interested of potential threats. So, after having read the book "The Last Invention of Humanity" by James Barrat, Musk began to talk about the fact that artificial intelligence could threaten the existence of mankind. Consequently, the innovators of our time persistently develop their imagination. Futurologist Jason Silva notes: "Imagination allows you to experience exciting future opportunities, to choose the most amazing, and move the present forward to finally meet it..." And what will happen next, we will monitor.

CONCLUSIONS:

Humanity is obsessed with creating and solving problems. Today, someone is already working to make sci-fi prototyping a broader sense. In other words, the point is that the edges between science and science fiction are becoming more blurred. Every day, the Internet brings news of stunning discoveries, advancements, or inventions that should not have happened in the coming years. The ability to create scenarios in the future and the development of new opportunities becomes useful not only for writers - it becomes a key skill for creating these opportunities, first of all, by humanity. This we understand as prototyping. It is no coincidence that Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile raises the problem - how long does it takes for something to be around us: the longer this "something" exists, the longer it will probably remain. As technologies come and go, and as we experiment with virtually every aspect of our environment and consciousness, the instinct for storytelling will continue to be a fundamental human trait. The future is already here, it has just not yet spread widely...

Add comment

JComments

FICTION REALITY

...23.09.1999, the space station NASA "Mars" started the mid-flight engines to stay at the orbit of the planet. Ten-month journey from Earth to Mars has ended. The station was programmed to follow all the instructions and, passing the reverse side of Mars, disappeared from the radar. Engineers were looking forward to her appearance on the other side. It took 10 minutes (waiting limit). Nothing. The Flight Operations Control Center became nervous, (not a joke - 10 years of difficult work !!!). They searched the Mars atmosphere but to no avail.

The space station had disappeared!
Turns out that the spaceship entered another orbit, flying too low. As a result, it was burned in the atmosphere. In fact, it took a lot of time to understand the cause of the incident: in a mathematical equation, the units of measurement have not been transfered from English to metric system of measurement, and a $ 300 million space station went to certain death. The ship was doomed...

..We found a similar content,, where the man but not the space station, died during the teleportation from one point of space to another. And the reason was a small invisible programme, which is installed on all our computers...
So, if NASA engineers have studied the content, it is likely that the station would not have been lost.

What do you think?
We will inform you, dear readers, about the unique designs and solutions that reveal the wonderful world of the potential technologies and the power of the human spirit ...

Best regards, author of the idea
Vasyl Stepanchenko