Science Fiction Prototyping. Brian David JohnsonЧитать онлайн книгу.
Make it So, authors Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel delve into the relationship between interface design in science fiction and the real world. Shedroff is the program chair for the California College of Arts’ MBA in Design Strategy program, and Noessel is Director of interaction design at Cooper in San Francisco. Their book is an in-depth and scholarly analysis of the technology and user interfaces (UI) which have been developed and used in science fiction film and television. They look at how scifi interfaces have changed through time and what we can learn from them.
One fun and thoughtful example can be found in how George Lucas’ Star Wars uses holograms. The production designers’ use of holographic technology (in academic circles they are more accurately called “volumetric displays”) can tell us, the audience, a lot about not only the Empire and the Jedi technology but also their social order. In turn, this gives us some clues about what it might be like to work for the Empire as opposed to the Jedi. But on a more serious level, we can also learn what we should and should not do when we are designing social technologies; whether they be volumetric displays or simply a video call. If you have not seen the Star Wars movies recently, I will try to fill in a little of the story, but really you should just watch them again.
In Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, when the villain of the movie, Darth Vader, a Dark Lord of the Sith and leader of the Empire’s Imperial star fleet, calls his boss and Sith Master Emperor Palpatine, the Emperor is represented by a massive, room-sized hologram of his head. We can only see the Emperors head and it looms over Vader. There is obviously a serious chain of command when you work for the Empire. It is imposing and quite scary.
In contrast to this, in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, when we see the Jedi council meeting, it includes some holograms of Jedis attending remotely. Each and every hologram is their natural size. The Jedi take pains to make sure that the holograms of the council match their egalitarian principles. Powerful Jedi master, Yoda, is his usual small self, and Jedi Master Mace Windu, played by American actor Samuel L. Jackson, remains his usual six-foot three-inch height. This shows us that when you are a Jedi, you are who you are. There is no hierarchy, and all are equal.
Shedroff and Noessel’s book is filled with insights for both professional designers and science fiction movie buffs. Also, in the book, the authors have a great real-world example of how science fiction and science fact have influenced each other.
In 2000, Douglas Caldwell, an engineer with the US Army Topographic Engineering Center, went to see the film X-Men by his teenaged son. He wasn’t really a fan of science fiction, but while watching he saw something extraordinary that changed the direction his work. In a scene, the X-Men mutants are gathered around a 3D “pin” map big enough for all to see the representation of their plan to thwart the villain Magneto. As they describe the mission and the coordination needed, the map shifts to reveal different scales, topologies, and locations, as needed.
This isn’t a unique theme in science fiction, but these kinds of collaborative map tools are usually depicted as visualizations (sometimes holographic, sometimes projected on a flat surface, and sometimes screen-based). In X-Men, however, the map is three-dimensional and rendered as solids constantly shifting (as if each solid pixel was a magnetically controlled metal cube).
What was astonishing to Mr. Caldwell was that this interface, in front of him, was a more advanced vision for what he was in charge of developing. One of the responsibilities of the US Army Topographic Engineering Center is to provide generals in the field with “sand tables,” 3D representations of terrain in the theater of war that helps generals and other military personnel to coordinate military tactics. These devices are descendants of actual tables filled with sand that could be built up to mimic actual terrain. More advanced versions were needed to allow complex actions to be planned without hauling heavy and bulky equipment around the world.
When Mr. Caldwell saw the 3D table in X-Men, he instantly saw a solution he had never considered. He knew that the technology in the film was fantasy but he also surmised that the user experience was valid. At least, in this very limited snapshot, it worked for him and he tho.
What is different about SF prototypes is that they endeavor to create science fiction developed specifically on science fact as a way to inspire a conversation about the future and ultimately explore the implications of that science on the everyday lives of people. In this way, an SF prototype is a tool that can help us build better technology and sometimes practically speed up the development of hardware and software (more about that in Chapter 7).
In WarGames, Joshua the AI asked, “Shall we play a game?” SF prototypes are a kind of game; a thought experiment that imagines what would really happen if … What would happen if this technology truly went wrong? What would happen if everyone on the planet had access to this? What’s the best thing that could happen? What are the legal, ethical and moral implications? What does this mean for our future? What kind of future do we want to live in? … and I can think of no better questions to try and answer.
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CHAPTER 2
Religious Robots and Runaway Were-Tigers: A Brief Overview of the Science and the Fiction that Went Into Two SF Prototypes
First, a little background.
The blending of science fiction and science fact is nothing new. Their symbiotic relationship stretches back in history for hundreds of years. No one would really argue that scientific research and technology inspires writers to dream up thrilling stories and amazing new worlds. Likewise, generations of scientists have had their imaginations set on fire by science fiction stories, inspiring them to devote their lives to science.
I was speaking a while back at a science convention not too long ago about the link between science fiction and science fact and SF prototypes. After my talk, at least five different roboticists pulled me aside and told me that the real reason they had gotten into robots in the first place was because of C3PO and R2D2 in George Lucas’ 1977 space opera classic, Star Wars. When each of these incredibly intelligent scientists confessed this to me, they spoke in a hushed voice as if they were telling me a dirty little secret. But I quickly laughed and told them that they were not alone!
It is well documented that science fiction has inspired generations of scientists, researchers and even astronauts. British science fiction author, inventor and futurist, Arthur C. Clark, summed it up this way in his essay “Aspects of Science Fiction”: “All of the pioneers of astronautics were inspired by Jules Verne, and several (e.g., Goddard, Oberth, von Braun) actually wrote fiction to popularize their ideas. And I know from personal experience that many American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts were inspired to take up their careers by the space travel stories they read as children (one of my proudest possessions is a little monograph, Wingless on Luna, bearing the inscription, ‘To Arthur, who visualized the nuances of lunar flying long before I experienced them!—Neil Armstrong’)” (Clark, 1999).
Clark’s story does a good job of showing that science fact and fiction have been explicitly intermingled for most of the twentieth century. Physicists and rocketry pioneers, Robert Goddard, Hermann Oberth and Wernher von Braum, used stories as a way to popularize their thinking, while astronaut Neil Armstrong was inspired and driven by Clark’s writing.
The writer J.G. Ballard said, “Science Fiction is the only true literature of the twentieth century.” This is a provocative and challenging statement. Is it true? Looking back, science fiction captured the wonder and promise of the magnificent world that many believed and hoped our scientific advances would bring us. With the end of WWII and the development of the atomic bomb, science fiction gave us an outlet to explore our darkest fears that may be by splitting the atom that the human race had overstepped its bounds, unleashing a demon that would eventually wipe us all off the face of the earth. After the 1960s, life seemed to imitate science fiction; we landed on the moon, robots built our cars,