It’s more like the job of a science fiction writer is not to map the territory, but to point out that there’s territory to be mapped.
Science fiction is about pointing out that there are things that are out of the frame [in real life] that don’t properly belong out of the frame, whose ruling out is arbitrary—or customary, which is another way of saying the same thing.
> Q: How many designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
> A: Does it really have to be a light bulb?
Designers are (in)famous for always trying to come up with the unexpected; the “next big thing”. Early in my career I even described my goal as delivering “not what was asked for, but something new and better”. It’s a dangerous trait that often puts us at odds with our teammates, who are typically more focused on tangible metrics and engineering milestones.
When I worked on Glass, there was disagreement among team members about whether we were building a research prototype or a mass-market consumer product. A research project would focus on pushing the boundaries and learning as much as possible. A consumer product would need to fit existing use cases and appeal to a wide audience. Unsurprisingly, people on each side of the argument proposed wildly different approaches to product design, engineering, marketing, and sales.
In the end, [we built a research prototype and marketed it as a consumer product](http://www.adweek.com/digital/google-exec-blames-google-glass-failure-bad-marketing-163535/), which didn’t work out very well. We didn’t achieve success in the market, and because we were distracted by selling, we didn’t learn as much as we should have. Glass was the classic example of a product that was ahead of its time…but of course [being too early is the same as being wrong](http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-failures-2011-5).
[This talk by Jon Friedman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5MGVbRLHaQ), a designer who worked on the Kin, the Courier, SPOT watches and other Microsoft hardware misadventures, tells some of the same stories. I admire Jon’s work (and I loved the Kin!), but watching the talk I became increasingly uncomfortable with the repeated similar failures. After all, the point of “failing fast” is not the failing–it’s the learning. Designers of these highly innovative products aren’t learning the lessons of past failures.
Glass and the failed Microsoft products share at least one trait: they all tried to change entire systems, all at once. Glass innovated on form factor, hardware technology, interface design, software architecture, marketing, sales, and support. The Microsoft Kin had new industrial design, stored your phone in the cloud, and changed the way you pay for the phone.
One of the most interesting lessons I learned from working for Tony Fadell (who took over the Glass project) was the idea that a new product should be 90% familiar and 10% wildly innovative. A product that’s too far out, that doesn’t feel connected to anything people recognize, will be too uncomfortable to succeed. But of course if you’re not innovative enough, no one will need what you’ve built. So now I set up an “innovation budget” to track how much change my designs are forcing on people, and I’m careful to keep that amount in check. The goal is to find the “sweet spot” of innovation where a design is both desirable and acceptable.
Friedman [goes on to describe his own career shift](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5MGVbRLHaQ&t=26m32s) from working on early-stage speculative new products to making smaller improvements to the Exchange platform, a mature system with lots of customers. He found that it was not only an interesting design challenge, but also fulfulling to make an immediate difference at scale.
He also describes a strategy of combining “something new and something old”–taking new technology into existing markets, or existing technology into new markets. In either case, you only have to invent half of the solution, as the other half has already been figured out.
Paul Rand said “Don’t try to be original; just try to be good.” Innovation is plentiful in design today…it’s important to stay focused on making the “basics” great as well. To evolve my younger self’s goal: the sweet spot of innovation is the place where you fulfill what was asked for, *and* provide something better.
> We congratulate ourselves on the accomplishment of democracy…But regardless of who votes, what is the real meaning of any such choices if the alternatives among which we are selecting are underimagined, or clichéd – or simply absent? – Stuart Candy
My most influential role these days is less “tastemaker” and “decider” than simply “option generator”.
[
I’m a huge fan of Neal Stephenson, and also of his newest project [Hieroglyph](http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/), which aims to inspire future scientific breakthroughs with optimistic near-future science fiction. But I found two critiques of the approach quite compelling this week.
First, Virginia Postrel (whose writing on design I’ve enjoyed in the past), writes that “[Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-08/peter-thiel-is-wrong-about-the-future)” (I’m reading his book as well), and mentions Hieroglyph as similarly misled:
> The dystopian science fiction Stephenson’s Project Hieroglyph aims to counter isn’t the cause of our cultural malaise. It’s a symptom. The obstacle to more technological ambitions isn’t our idea of the future. It’s how we think about the present and the past…
> The reason mid-20th-century Americans were optimistic about the future wasn’t that science-fiction writers told cool stories about space travel…*People believed the future would be better than the present because they believed the present was better than the past*. They constantly heard stories — not speculative, futuristic stories but news stories, fashion stories, real-estate stories, medical stories — that reinforced this belief.
It’s the same ambivalence toward today’s progress that [Louis CK rails about](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E), and that [many science fiction writers and futurists recognize](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5326). We do live in amazing times, yet the dominant cultural reaction is frustration and dissatisfaction. We don’t often celebrate the incredible progress we’ve achieved. As [David Brooks once wrote](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=481), “Americans have always been united less by a shared past than by the shared dream of a better future.”
The Guardian also [confronts the Hieroglyph collection](http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/oct/10/science-fiction-utopia-wilful-ignorance), calling the stories “built on willful ignorance”:
> But there is also a deliberate naivety to Project Hieroglyph. Stories such as Cory Doctorow’s The Man Who Sold the Moon are a veritable hymn to the culture of Silicon Valley and tech start-ups, but deftly wave away the part these cultures play in today’s corporate capitalism and all the inequalities that come with it.
I agree with their assessment of the best stories:
> The best contributions to Hieroglyph are the least optimistic, and the best attuned to the human reality that technology so often obscures. Entanglement by Vandana Singh and Madeline Ashby’s By the Time We Get to Arizona both look at the impact of new technologies in developing nations and among the world’s poorest people. They also tackle the obvious problem of technological innovation, the looming menace of climate change, environmental degradation and resource depletion that go hand in hand with new technologies.
I still believe there is a role for optimistic science fiction in changing the world. However it’s always good to be mindful of the present and past when thinking about the future, and to include messy and uncomfortable situations in even the most polished vision. The real future will be both based in today’s world and include a lot of today’s problems, and people are wise enough to recognize when those aspects are missing from stories about the future.
> One of the defining challenges of writing science fiction is explaining to the audience the amazing new things in this world while respecting the fact that the characters already live in that world… For you, this future is cool, but for them it’s just another day with the same old problems.
– [John Scalzi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi), speaking at Google
See also Jamais Cascio, “[Your Posthumanism Is Boring Me](http://io9.com/5533833/your-posthumanism-is-boring-me)” and “[Fifteen Minutes Into the Future](http://www.openthefuture.com/2008/05/fifteen_minutes_into_the_futur.html)”, and Stuart Candy, “[Amazing=Mundane](http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/amazing-mundane.html)”.
Some good guidance on which technique to use depending on what you want to say:
> It’s been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction the improbable made possible; fantasy the impossible made probable. – [Rod Serling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fk3IB9uF7A&t=3m40s)
Michael Abrash, head of Valve Software’s augmented reality efforts, [talks about why he’s joining Oculus](http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/introducing-michael-abrash-oculus-chief-scientist). It’s interesting how he focuses on the imagined experience from the books as much as the technology, which meanwhile proceeds along its own path. Blending the two is a powerful combination.
> Sometime in 1993 or 1994, I read Snow Crash, and for the first time thought something like the Metaverse might be possible in my lifetime. Around the same time, I saw the first leaked alpha version of Doom…
> Fast-forward fourteen years…
> Then two things happen at about the same time. On one path, Palmer develops his first VR prototype, John and Palmer Luckey connect, Oculus forms and its Kickstarter is wildly successful, DK1 ships, and John becomes Oculus CTO. Meanwhile, I read Ready Player One, strongly recommend it to several members of the AR group, and we come to the conclusion that VR is potentially more interesting than we thought, and far more tractable than AR.
[Some fun insights in this writeup](http://www.fastcocreate.com/3023518/designing-a-future-of-comfort-color-and-gorgeous-gadgets-in-her) of the production design for [_Her_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6p6MfLBxc):
> “We kept asking ourselves, ‘What is his new desktop going to look like when he puts the new (Samantha) software in? Finally, Spike came to this brilliant realization, saying, ‘There’s a reason we haven’t figured this out, because it shouldn’t be anything.'”
> “We had this concept: what if we could only see advertising that was all in gorgeous slow motion and there were these beautiful abstract images? Then it becomes kind of a viral game where everybody’s trying to decipher the notion of what these different ads were.”
> Barrett’s most radical re-invention for future Los Angeles: There’s not a car in sight. Steering clear of freeway traffic jams, inhabitants ride bullet trains, take subways and walk. “One of the first things I said in designing Her was, ‘I don’t want to show any cars.'” says Barrett. “It’s another gesture of going away from technology. When you look at any film from any time period and see a car, you can place it right to the year.”
> “The device wasn’t designed to stand out like a gleaming new phone, but to be something you’d lay on the night stand, like your wallet or your address book. We wanted to go right past the surface of the device and into Samantha’s voice.”