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Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers To Predict Their Futures (medium.com)
Brian Merchant, writing for Medium : In 2017, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the professional services firm that advises 440 of the Fortune 500 companies, published a blueprint for using science fiction to explore business innovation. The same year, the Harvard Business Review argued that "business leaders need to read more science fiction" in order to stay ahead of the curve. "We're already seeing science fiction become reality today," said Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt in 2012. "Think back to Star Trek, or my favorite, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- much of what those writers imagined is now possible," he said, ticking off auto-translation, voice recognition, and electronic books. Jeff Bezos' product design team built the Kindle to spec from Neal Stephenson's book The Diamond Age. (Stephenson himself is the chief future at the multibillion-dollar-valued Magic Leap.) Josh Wolfe, a managing partner at Lux Capital, is pouring millions of dollars into companies building what he explicitly describes as "the sci-fi future." "I'm looking for things that feel like they were once written about in science fiction," he told Fortune. "The gap between 'sci-fi,' -- that which was once imagined -- and 'sci-fact,' that which becomes manifest and real, is shrinking."
A number of companies, along with a loose constellation of designers, marketers, and consultants, have formed to expedite the messy creative visualization process that used to take decades. For a fee, they'll prototype a possible future for a client, replete with characters who live in it, at as deep a level as a company can afford. They aim to do what science fiction has always done -- build rich speculative worlds, describe that world's bounty and perils, and, finally, envision how that future might fall to pieces. Alternatively referred to as sci-fi prototyping, futurecasting, or worldbuilding, the goal of these companies is generally the same: help clients create forward-looking fiction to generate ideas and IP for progress or profit. Each of the biggest practitioners believe they have their own formulas for helping clients negotiate the future. And corporations like Ford, Nike, Intel, and Hershey's, it turns out, are willing to pay hefty sums for their own in-house Minority Reports.
A number of companies, along with a loose constellation of designers, marketers, and consultants, have formed to expedite the messy creative visualization process that used to take decades. For a fee, they'll prototype a possible future for a client, replete with characters who live in it, at as deep a level as a company can afford. They aim to do what science fiction has always done -- build rich speculative worlds, describe that world's bounty and perils, and, finally, envision how that future might fall to pieces. Alternatively referred to as sci-fi prototyping, futurecasting, or worldbuilding, the goal of these companies is generally the same: help clients create forward-looking fiction to generate ideas and IP for progress or profit. Each of the biggest practitioners believe they have their own formulas for helping clients negotiate the future. And corporations like Ford, Nike, Intel, and Hershey's, it turns out, are willing to pay hefty sums for their own in-house Minority Reports.
Potatoes already made it in Star Wars.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Amazing. Send them an invoice in super large print. You know Bezos eyes are ruined from years of staring at UPS and FEDEX tracking screens.
Paying science fiction writers to predict the future is idiotic. If you poll the entirety of science fiction you will certainly find several ideas that have become reality, but you'll also find countless others that did not or failed to materialize.
I predict that companies that find out what customers want right now and figure out how to deliver that to them at the greatest cost will have profitable futures. I'm less certain about those that waste money on things like this. I foresee the departure of the idiots that approved this idea (which is probably just a way to get someone they know a job at the company) in the near future when the quarterlies don't meet investor expectations.
There is a bit of a difference between Sci-Fi writers and Futurists.
The biggest problem Science Fiction is the Fiction part. For every technology that came into use, there is a dozen that never made it, even if it is considered possible nowadays.
For TV and Movies one of the biggest things they love to show is the holographic or transparent display. This makes for good visuals, because you can see people working on the technology without the technology blocking their faces. But in real life, your text will be hard to read and often distracting with everything happening behind it. Think of setting you Term settings in Linux/OS X to be 100% transparent (I normally keep it below 10%). It may look interesting for a while but shortly it is more of a problem then it helps, with windows with text behind it. or with a color that matches your text color....
Futurists on the other hand are not interested in the story, but thinking of the natural progression of such products and just giving the possibilities on what may be expected. Low Energy Aircraft, means cheaper operations, which means more leg room, because you don't need to cram people in the plane to make a flight profitable. Or shoes that fit better on different types of feet, that are easier to put on and off while maintaining the perfect fit.
A sci-fi writer will take these ideas and just have a comfortable flight in an electric aircraft, or able to bolt on comfortable shoes. While their plot is more interested in something else.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's strange this is happening now when it seems Sci-Fi as a genre seems to be a historic low. I was just talking to a good friend about the difficultly of finding anything good among recently written sci-fi novels, it seems everything has devolved into incoherent fanfic-like neofantasy. I tend to think we've just moved to a point where trying to imagine the world in 40 years is almost impossible, the few futurists we do have seem to produce what would have been regarded in the past as modest goals and short horizons. I wonder if this is related: does the lack of public futurism mean that the private businesses have to create their own?
+Oh, that's already been done.
Fred Hoyle talked of geoengineering in A for Andromeda, back in the 1950s, a bit more potent than the sort being discussed these days.
Carl Sagan's Contact discussed self-describing engineering schematics. You need know nothing but mathematics. Self-describing data formats exist, but not to that degree.
Terry Nation discussed automatically self-healing systems. Perhaps some form of Von Neumann Universal Constructor. Only Zen knows for sure.
He also described the Tarriel Cell, a revolutionary new way to perform computations, complete with SPECTRE bug. Shows he was ahead of his time. However, the Tarriel Cell seems to be a highly advanced Quantum Computing device that is compact and portable.
The sonic screwdriver may take a little longer.
Regeneration, however, is very doable. You just need to have nanobots in each cell that have the turbo codes for each gene in the DNA, Reed-Solomon codes for each codon and Universal Constructor blueprints on how to build a cell. Then, no matter what happens, the cell can be reconstructed from scratch without inhibiting the cell's own ability to restructure itself.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Boeing's future includes flying wing airliners or at least blended wing body airliners. Fuel efficiency will eventually demand it.
For a short time, I once joined one of those high IQ societies. It was kind of like Mensa, although it was much more restrictive. I dropped out when real life got too distracting. One of the most interesting things, at least to me, was that there were periodically offers of payment, by various firms and other organizations, to members, if we would just participate on their blogs (these were not blogs open to the general public).
It's hardly surprising to see them hoping to mine ideas from other sources as well. The benefit to cost payoff is potentially huge, especially as the money involved probably wouldn't even have kept gas in my car.
Have gnu, will travel.
His recommendation: spend whatever it takes to reach the stars. Then upon encountering the very first problem there, immediately give up.
They said Nike and Boeing. Not Nike and SpaceX.
Boeing would be about getting your tennis shoes stuck under the airline seat in front of you.
Have gnu, will travel.
Or one of the many other forms of corporate death. Nothing lasts forever.
Reread that: If you’re right, if people stop wearing shoes because something is transporting them around, who’s going to design/build/maintain/profit from those transporters? New Nike?
Who’s going to do the same for the mini aircraft, New Boeing?
If you think new environments/techs are going to displace the old and so this is a worthless exercise, you missed the point.
I can't remember the novel it came from, but there was a sci-fi book where there's a flashback about one of the main characters when he ran a marathon on the moon. It was a neat account of overcoming the challenges of running in a specialized suit that could handle the challenges of air processing, temperature, sharp regolith, etc. for running on the moon. I imagined it with various logos from current sporting goods companies. It puts a different twist on Nike's "Lunar Flyknit" shoes.
I think it might have been a Heinlein book.
TFS refers to both the Nike shoe company and the book- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well, right there Nike can save a small fortune by simply reading that book. It predicts the future of the shoe industry as revealed by our favorite SciFi writer:
"The Shoe Event Horizon is an economic theory that draws a correlation between the level of economic (and emotional) depression of a society and the number of shoe shops the society has.
The theory is summarized as such: as a society sinks into depression, the people of the society need to cheer themselves up by buying themselves gifts, often shoes. It is also linked to the fact that when you are depressed you look down at your shoes and decide they aren't good enough quality so buy more expensive replacements. As more money is spent on shoes, more shoe shops are built, and the quality of the shoes begins to diminish as the demand for different types of shoes increases. This makes people buy more shoes.
The above turns into a vicious cycle, causing other industries to decline.
Eventually the titular Shoe Event Horizon is reached, where the only type of store economically viable to build is a shoe shop. At this point, society ceases to function, and the economy collapses, sending a world spiraling into ruin." https://hitchhikers.fandom.com...
The Firesign Theater had their own thoughts on the economics of shoes:
"Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead! Shoes for Industry!
HI! I'm Joe Beats.
Say, what chance does a deceased returning war veteran have for that good payin' job, more sugar, and that free Mule we've all been dreaming of?
Now take off your shoes.
Now you can see how increased spending opportunities, mean harder work for everyone, and more of it, too! So, do yourself a favor, Joe. Join with millions of your friends and neighbors, and, TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!
"For INDUSTRY!"
...omphaloskepsis often...
There will be no peace for science fiction writers, will there? They just keep on writing.
Dude, some of the stories these guys write are really sweet sci-fi novellas
Niven and Pournelle were on it. Raygun started doing it.
https://www.newamerica.org/wee...
And there's an sf think tank...
Now, on the other hand, the folks here who here who think they know what sf is are ignorant idiots. SF is FICTION. It's written to tell a story. One of the classic definitions of what sf is is the literature of "what if?"
SF authors are not writing to Predict The Future, they're writing to tell a good story. Can some things in those stories create enthusiasm for science and engineering? We knw they do. Can they suggest lines of thought that might lead to new ides? Of course. But confusing the literature of sf and "predictions" is for the clueless.
Kodak hired a futurist company to envision the future of film, and they said the future was digital - so Kodak fired them.
Any well-established business will violently dismiss anything truly useful that comes out of such a creative exercise.
Nothing to see here.