Design Fiction Rationale #24

There are a number of good reasons to practice design fiction. A few:

• It’s the foresight side of design thinking.
• It generates ideas free of constraints like, “How many can we sell?”
• It helps foster an appreciation for the interdependency of things. 

And then there are provocations about the implications of creating any design, it’s affect on society, on behavior, on other things.

I have already written about this in my MFA thesis, When Designers Ask, “What If?”, and more or less predicted it, but as it has been widely reported over the last couple of weeks, a 3D printer has produced a gun that has been successfully printed and fired. In a web article, this quote fell out:

“An undetectable firearm constructed on your computer may sound like science fiction, but unfortunately, it’s already here and our laws have never contemplated this scenario,” D.C. City Council member Tommy Wells, who introduced the legislation, said in a press release. “These weapons create a significant and immediate threat to public safety.”

I hate break it to the D.C. City Council, but laws do not contemplate anything and more often than not, laws are created to fix problems that people never contemplated. So, now we have a new problem that city councils all over U.S. will have to create laws for and governments will have to regulate.

Roll your own. Source: ibitimes

But let’s face it, the cat is out of the bag. You can make it against the law to do anything, which works for the wide majority of people, except outlaws, terrorists, and loose-cannon regimes.

Did anyone think about potential ramifications of a home 3D printer in the hands of a bad person? Perhaps, but as is often the case these “black cloud” scenarios are usually brushed off with the positive outweighs the negative types of comments. There’s heavy pressure for progress and precautionary types are dismissed as “Debbie Downers.” I think we build things because we can, and then think about it later.

We like to think that technology will save us, save us from destruction, from cancer, from obesity, from boredom, from death. Some folks are holding out for it. But there is always a downside, like with Uranium gone missing, or texting while driving, bovine growth hormone. In the future it may be that our perfect selves along with a 24/7 virtual fantasy in our heads will become … boring. Then there’s that death thing. What could be wrong with scientists and artists and loving wonderful people that live forever? Except, of course, for the people that aren’t so wonderful or just plain evil.

And that’s one way we can use design fiction, with our diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change, so that people can look at the possible future with this new thing or that new thing and maybe take extra time to think about the downside. Like Bruce Sterling says, “It’s important to explicitly acknowledge the drawbacks of any technological transformation—to “think the underside first,” to think in a precautionary way” (Sterling, Shaping Things, 2006:12).

Maybe the bigger question is this: If we knew then what we know now, would anything have changed? Are we even capable of stopping ourselves from building, or injecting, or releasing the next big thing because of those few minor, potential mishaps? Should we? After all, surely we can find some technology to prevent the downside from even happening.

As many a CG artist will tell you, finding something productive to do between renders can be a real challenge. I’ve manage to submit an article to a magazine and an abstract for a conference in Berlin this summer, but that seemed too go awfully fast. To make the time a bit more productive, I have been immersing myself in the world of cyberpunk, via Tumblr. I’ve managed to post and research quite a few images, and there seems to be no end to the creative visions of whoever my fellow Tumblr’s are. The hashtags are pretty consistent: #dystopia, #cyberpunk, #urban, #urban decay, #architecture, #futuristic, #transhuman, #sci-fi, #science fiction, #tech, #cyborg, #android, #crime thriller, #design fiction. But the well is very deep. If you are interested in seeing what I’ve compiled thus far stop on over to The Chrons.

Page 27

Need some cheap replacement retinas, a refurb on your artificial skin, a 50 finger massage, virtual, synthetic, or any other kind of sex you can imagine (or would rather not)? You’ve come to the right place: DownTown, Hong Kong 2, in the Mong Kok sector. Sean has arrived as of last week, his location logged by cyber-surveillance, and in panel 1, he has just crossed the street where he encounters throngs of people (using the term loosely) as well as all of the diversions DownTown has to offer. Sometimes I wish this really was a movie instead of still images, because in panel 1 the woman to the left of Sean has programmable skin that shows live action video of… whatever.

But Sean is on a mission and in panel 2, “A few minutes later” he has walked to a less crowded alleyway. Sean is a bit of a fish out of water here and the locals know it. A street urchin goads his friend to hit on the guy who looks like he’s from TopCity. Maybe the boots are a dead giveaway; too clean.

In panel 3, Sean has arrived a his destination, an antique electronics store that looks like it has all the most popular antique brand names from the 20th century (zoom opportunity).

What or who awaits him?

Page 26 commentary

This is another one of my favorite pages. Sean has just emerged from the MagShuttle that descended the more than 300 floors to DownTown Mong Kok. There’s lots going on with this page but I have not spelled it out hoping that you will download and zoom in to the high resolution image. I’ve discussed the mesh in previous commentaries, so you already know that the New Asia government prides itself on knowing where everyone and what they are doing at any moment. In the year 2159 just say, “Goodbye privacy.” The only consolation is that most of the visual record of your life is monitored by dispassionate synthetics or biocomputers that aren’t voyeurs and they don’t make personal judgements. That is, unless they determine that you are breaking one of the laws of the New Asia Protocols. Risky business.

In panel 1 Sean is being scanned by a Hong Kong Police surveillance drone TS-1. If you don’t speak Chinese, these signs highlight the fact that this section of town specializes in buying and selling experiences – some legal, some not.

The TS-1 surveillance drone.

The drone in panel 2 captures both a visual of Sean and his identity data stored on the chipset that you are implanted with at birth that lives at the base of your cerebellum. This chipset is continually updated throughout your life with memories, emotions and experiences. The resulting readout gives a complete dossier on young Sean, but there is some data missing.

Even computers in the 22nd century have glitches.

Now that I have secured the Master of Fine Arts diploma in Design Development, and successfully submitted my thesis to the Graduate School at The Ohio State University, I can officially close that chapter on my ongoing adventure. Choosing the word chapter is appropriate since this book is anything but over and I’m not just talking about the graphic novel that continues to be a central focus of my research. This chapter that I reference is the beginning of a new career after 30+ years as a professional designer to that of Assistant Professor of Design Foundations at OSU. As a professional designer I also managed a bit of mastery across the design spectrum in everything from product design, visual communications, interior, set, brand and experience design along with creative direction and running three companies.

The professorship will begin in August after an appointment this summer as lecturer. My summer will be focused on generating more chapters for the graphic novel/web comic, and preparing curriculum for fall semester. Once I settle into the summer groove I hope to have Chapter 2 completed in the next few weeks and Chapter 3 by summer’s end.

That’s the update.

This week’s web comic artist’s commentary. Page 25

Welcome to The Lightstream Chronicles web comic and graphic novel. Today, the cyberpunk, crime thriller takes us to a dangerous part of town. Dr. Sean Colbert has descended the 300 + floors to street level in the Mong Kong district.

Background

Unfortunately it is not as charming as Mong Kok district is today. In 2159, despite the fact that it is home to millions of people, as the city has continued to grow upward, DownTown is the result of decades of neglect by the New Asian government. Crime is tolerated within reason and here you will find the nefarious, the aberrant and the deviant. The New Asian social order is predicated on consent, first and foremost. Therefore, some crimes such as non-consensual rape or murder are considered capital crimes. If the visitor to DownTown is looking for illegal experiences such as those stolen from victims of assault crimes this is the place. These are usually obtained from human victims who are “headjacked” to extract the experience. Headjacking is accomplished through a small device that is attached at the back of the head where humans have their implanted “chipset.”  The device extracts the experience and all of the victim’s sensations. Even in these bizarre situations some persons consent to being “jacked” for a share in the profits when the experience is sold.  If the subject survives the crime, headjacking can result in partial or total memory erasure, and in some cases, death. The experience trade flourishes in DownTown and has made it’s way to TopCity as well.

Page 25

Another scene from DownTown. The Mong Kok Sector, Hong Kong 2. Year 2159. Click to Enlarge.

As Sean arrives at street level, the pristine cleanliness of TopCity is replaced by a dank and decaying darkness. It is not unusual to see transgens, (human/animal genetic creations), more primitive versions of synthetics, and the ever-present security synths. DownTown has a curfew each night at 2300 hours, when everyone is supposed to be off the street. Many of the local establishments are open around the clock to accommodate the patron who is not ready to go home. We will be staying awhile.

Herewith the director’s/artist’s/writer’s commentary on page 24 of The Lightstream Chronicles.

Now things are getting interesting. Last week Sean was about to step into the MagShuttle to head down to the dangerous street level in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong 2. Things will get a little grittier now and the oppressed, cyberpunk side of this society begins to gain some legibility.  In panel 1 Sean is inside and looking out at the view from more than 300 stories above. Upon entering and by virtue of the fact that his identity was logged before the shuttle doors would open, the mesh promptly notifies him that TopCity residents are not advised to travel to that dangerous section of town. (The mesh refers to amalgamation of every network of every device, everyone’s chipset, every touch sensor, camera, scanner, electronic device and active surface in the greater 47,000 square kilometers of the Hong Kong 2 Mega City. The mesh is monitored by New Asia government computers and police security forces. It knows where you are and what you are doing. Though it is not something they advertise, the New Asia government likes to think that the mesh sees everything.

Sean waives the warning without a second thought (typical teenager – even though he’s 18) and opts for street level. As the shuttle descends, the third panel is worth inspecting with a zoom. Once the shuttle drops below the 50 story mark of the TopCity Spanner we can see the descent through the 20th century architecture of old Mong Kok.

Zoom highlights:

For those who want to get the most out of the visuals, a zoom into panel 1 on this page and the last panel of the previous page shows some details of the MagShuttle interior, interface and navigation cameras, and panel 2 features a giant light panel (billboard) for the a synthetic companion from Almost Human Corporation, Sean’s employer. Panel 3 gives you a taste of the Mong Kok neighborhood.

A view from DownTown as the MagShuttle approaches.

To read more about the Hong Kong Mega city and the mesh see pages 5 & 6 of The Lightstream Chronicles, and there is additional backstory on the story or the 2159 pages.

So far, The Lightstream Chronicles has focused on the area known as TopCity high above the poverty and crime of DownTown, but that is about to change. This will start to reveal the punkier part of this cyberpunk crime thriller.

TopCity travel in Hong Kong 2 is swift. About 10 minutes after leaving his lab, Sean is an the airtunnel clear across town having boarded the Wan Chai to Kowloon Cross-Harbour Connector. The airtunnel is almost deserted at this hour since curfew is in an hour and a half and the shuttles will stop running. I was going for a clean, pristine look with floating advertisements  talking to no one. A little on the creepy side. Sean is about to board the MagShuttle which is a magnetic levitation system that moves between the 300 levels of the city. Below 50 stories is the old city. Crime ridden and in disrepair it is known as DownTown. The mag-lev transportation traverses the city of Hong Kong 2 to both vertical and horizontal destinations, including DownTown. I chose the standard Asian meme of a happy character as the logo for the Mag Shuttle. (It also happens to mimic the shape of the shuttle capsule).

Signage for the MagShuttle. So friendly. Don’t worry. Be happy.

In panel 3, Sean is met with a warning that recommends he think twice before venturing into the “unsafe zone.” Sean appears unruffled as he accesses the touch panel to open the shuttle doors. If we think about this, it is just one of the many ways that the authorities keep tabs on the general public. By placing his fingertip implants (luminous implants) on the touch pad the system not only knows who he is and virtually everything about him, but where he is in the city. As the shuttle door opens we see a spacious enclosure with great views of the surrounding area including a billboard for Luminous Implants.

The plot thickens.

Since the beginning, I have been referring to The Lightstream Chronicles as a science fiction crime thriller, but a more accomplished comic artist than myself referred to the work as a cyberpunk crime thriller. Admittedly, through my own ignorance, this term seemed off-base. I thought of Tank Girl as cyberpunk. So, I did more research. It would appear that there are more genres of science fiction than I was aware of. I think it is fair to say that for the purposes of my thesis, When Designers Ask, “What If?” that I did exhaustive research on comics and graphic novels, as well as the topic of design fiction, but science fiction is this enormous thing that encompasses a vast array of genres and sub-genres that I frankly did not have the ability to explore within the context of the thesis proper. Now, however, that the thesis is complete and submitted to the Internet database as one of a gazillion theses, I can begin to explore those areas that time and scope did not permit. Hence, cyberpunk has caught my attention and beckoned me to further examination.

As in design fiction, there does not seem to be any one authority on the subject and it has morphed in its collective understanding over the years. The combination of “cyber” from cybernetics and “punk” most commonly associated with the early 70′s and 80′s rock music genre could literally be interpreted as thinking machines with attitude. But over the years, the term now confers a sort of uber-technological society where people are not just human and machines are not just machines; there is a shared reality, or virtual reality. An explanation from the Cyberpunk Project website offers an elucidation that I like:

“This technology is visceral. It extends itself into people via brain implants, prosthetic limbs, cloned organs. It is not outside us but under our skin, inside our minds. Technology pervades the human self; the goal is the merging of man and machine.”

“…under our skin…”

And if you want more, Lawrence Person gives an in-depth description in his Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto. I particularly like this snip:

” It may have been Isaac Asimov (though I first heard it via Howard Waldrop) who said there were three orders of science fiction, using the automobile as an example. Man invents the automobile and uses it to chase down the villain: adventure fiction. Man invents the automobile, and a few years later there are traffic jams: social problem fiction. In the third type, man invents the automobile, and another man invents moving pictures: fifty years later, people go to drive-in movies. It is this third order of fiction, social fabric fiction, that was at the heart of cyberpunk…The best postcyberpunk moves further into third-order science fiction, the plot arising organically from the world it’s set in.”

To me, that is what drives the plot of The Lightstream Chronicles. If you’ve read the backstory on the web site or on pages 3 and 4 of the web comic, then you can see the social fabric fiction at work. It is interesting to note that the godfather of cyberpunk is the same guy who coined the term design fiction: Bruce Sterling. Person (from the same manifesto), paraphrases Sterling’s assessment that, “cyberpunk carried technological extrapolation into the fabric of everyday life.”

That makes for an even more interesting topic: perhaps real design fiction is also cyberpunk. Either way, and even if it’s all really just another flavor of SF, I’m convinced that TLSC play in the cyberpunk sandbox.

Today the title has been shortened from “sci-fi, CG, crime thriller, web comic laced liberally with design fiction overtones” to the title above. What other choice did I have?

Page 22

The scene in Sean’s lab continues. He has just authorized erasure of a select set of memories from Keiji-T, his ultra-sophisticated synthetic human. As we saw on pages 17 & 18 Keiji has been commissioned by the New Asia Police Hong Kong 2 division as a state-of-the-art detective. Keiji reports to work at Police Headquarters first thing in the morning, though Sean remarks that he will be sleeping a bit later than that. We can gather from page 20 that Sean has an appointment with the face on the screen, on page 20.

Design fiction diegetic prototypes

Aside from the design of the cascading visual interface that Sean uses to erase Keiji, and the other props that make up this scene, there are a couple bits of visual design fiction that happen on page 22, and in true form we do not obsess over them or really even call them to the foreground in any overt way. As true diegetic prototypes, they blend into the background, not particularly magical and part of everyday life (at least Sean’s everyday life.) This first is the way Sean makes his worktable and chair disappear while simultaneously enclosing his work in a transparent crypt. This will keep his work off limits to his lab assistants until he gets back. The second visual trick is not so obvious and you have to be paying attention. The difference is Sean’s bodysuit. Not that in p22, panel 3 Sean is wearing his grey, AHC uniform. In the final panel, the style has changed to a digital-camo look (very fashionable in 2159). How did he manage this, you ask? Thanks to programmable fabric and the commands from his luminous implants changing your clothes is virtually instantaneous. For more on luminous implants, see this post.

In the final scene, Sean exits through a huge , aperture-like vault door to the rear of the lab. It’s interesting how so many of these props are designed to be functioning elements but are seen only as a glimpse from a distance. This is a lot like a movie production where enormous amounts of detail are built into the sets since you never know where the camera will end up pointing or how close the director will decide to get to said prop. Alas, so much of it ends up as only a passing glimpse, part of the texture and context of another world.

Comments welcome. Cheers.

Where do these ideas come from anyway? In the case of  The Lightstream Chronicles, it has been a circuitous route. At the earliest stages of the project, before there was a cohesive alignment with design fiction, the story was bits and pieces, a piece of dialog, a sketch, or an idea. There were also numerous influences absorbed over the years from a host of movies and books, but not in the way that mimics one or the other, more like interesting stuff duly noted and filed away to be expanded on someday.

But science fiction is tough to write. When you write science fiction you will inevitably be criticized for being too much like ______. Then there are the naysayers that insist anything that is derivative of any part of anything else is no longer an original idea. Of course, if you follow that logic we would have dismissed as derivative the pursuit of a better wheel design after Fred Flintstone.

Look, Martha, another wheel!

image courtesy of: waymarking.com

Many science fiction writers have lamented that the rate at which technology changes can make their ideas obsolete before a book goes to publication. Furthermore, what are now considered science fiction tropes, are probably that way for a reason: some technological advancements, like robots, seem inevitable. When you are writing about something far in the future, you expect that we will have conquered some problems and further complicated others.

More recently, themes were influenced by the forecasts and speculations of a number of futurist writers including Michio Kaku, Thomas Frey, Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, and Vernor Vinge, and from an extensive survey of emerging technologies in the areas of energy, medicine, computing, artificial intelligence, transportation, and nanotechnology.

Now all of this would probably still be churning around inside my head if not for the need to complete my thesis and the graphic novel project inside of three years. Hence, I needed to find a way to write this thing. Unfortunately, there are no classes at OSU for writing a comic book/graphic novel script. The screenplay, however, is a close cousin. Not because every graphic novel in the universe is ending up as a movie, but because a screenplay is really two things: what the characters say, and what the audience sees; pretty much the content of a graphic novel script. Fortunately such a course exists at OSU and conveniently, the product is a finished screenplay and a built-in deadline. It took a little rule-bending, since the class assignment was to write a screenplay for a short film — 30 pages or so — and mine timed out at 87 pages. But my instructor was most accommodating. I selected the freeware Celtx, to write the script, got an A in the class, and using a nice little feature in the software, I was able to convert it to something like a graphic novel structure. There was a still considerable page and panel readjustment but the software did offer designations for balloons and captions.

Things came together in surprising order. But then, why did I doubt?

The web comic was another tangent entirely. And you can read up on that in a previous post.