Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Boeing's future includes flying wing airliners or at least blended wing body airliners. Fuel efficiency will eventually demand it.
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 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.
The companies that will have a more profitable future are the ones that can find out what customers will want in X years, where X is the number of years it takes to get the product to market. If you wait until you can see what people are buying, you run the risk of not being able to catch up.
I couldn't agree with this more. I write hard and semi-hard (at least plausible) speculative fiction. But I only self-publish, since most houses mostly all just want Marvel-esque adventure stories, filed with superhero and/or gaming-protagonist tropes. That is, if they're interested at all - and there are economic reasons why they shouldn't.
Real Science Fiction inherently appeals to only a small segment of the market already (i.e. intelligent people). This is why "Rick and Morty" struggles, while "Big Bang Theory" (which makes fun of intelligent people) succeeds.
If that were actually easy, some company would have completely taken over the planet by now. The other side of that is if you invest in something that doesn't pan out, you've not only spent a large amount of time and resources producing something that has little or no value, but you're in exactly the same position you would have been had you taken a wait and see approach.
Over the long run, it's probably better to take a wait and see approach and get good and building things at lower cost. In a lot of ways, I think this is the approach that Apple has taken. They very rarely invent some new way of doing things, but they are pretty good at identifying a good idea and polishing the hell out of it to bring it to the mass market. People like to praise the vision of Steve Jobs, but it would have been almost entirely useless without the execution of Tim Cook.
When Apple does try to guess where things are headed next, they've rarely had anywhere near the success as taking something that consumers want now, and figuring out how to supply that at low costs. People like to think that Apple just makes computers and overcharges for them, but the other way of looking at that is that Apple has identified what customers are willing to buy and has figured out how to supply that product for a fraction of the sale price.
If you're particularly good at playing catch up, why spend money chasing down the next idea when you can get others to spend the time and effort doing that for you. Meanwhile, invest your money into manufacturing techniques that will enable you to deliver products at lower cost, enabling you to be more competitive on price or to haul in a larger share of profit.
It's probably because just about anything written about in the past sci-fi novels is now possible. Those little worm drones in Dune that could climb walls, relay video and sound as well as inject poison? That's doable. Tiny little drones with cameras? Done. Tricorder with multispectral scanner? Done. Touchscreens? Done. Full dome displays? Done. VR headsets? Done. Swarms of microbots? Done.
Video-on-Demand by cable? Done. Talking car? Done. Remote surveillance of your home by pocket videoscreen? Done.
If we look at how we lived back in the 1960's compared to now, the only changes have been the shape and size of TV screens, electronics and home appliances. We've mapped the human genome, virome, proteonome, and every other -ome there is.
The only things left are holographic displays, light sabers, flying cars, time travel and teleportation. Maybe the first two can be done using air ionization:
https://nerdist.com/the-future...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads