When I imagined Regarding Tomorrow as a social site, part of it was crowdsourcing member ideas to build towards greater accuracy of what the future might hold - specifically how new advancements might impact our cultures. Always on the lookout for information helping me to better understand what the site needs to offer, I ran across three tweets today, all very close to one another, that struck a chord as I consider my first major site refresh.

The first was from Ali Madad:

Design Fiction is where Science Fiction lives now. —@warrenellis #SXSW #MLSciFi

— Ali Madad (@amadad) March 10, 2014

It's an interesting point, we're so far into the realm of science fiction with today's technologies and social advancements (not all of which are dependent on cutting-edge technology) that scifi is able to break into a growing array of niches: medical, agriculture and romance are a Google search away.

Design fiction? Absolutely. In a paper dating back to 2008, Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell identified that "Design-oriented research is an act of collective imagining." (“Resistance is Futile”: Reading Science Fiction Alongside  Ubiquitous Computing) Looking back at scifi, Lucas built computers the size of refrigerators into Star Wars scenes. In STTNG, they have to shuffle computer components the size of Atari cartridges to save the ship - no app for that?

Paul Otellini, the ex-president of Intel, is quoted as saying, "Today your smartphone has more computing than existed in all of Nasa in 1969." (Which ignores the human value in some ways. My smartphone doesn't make me as smart as the group of scientists they had working at NASA in 1969). As the Internet of Everything becomes smaller, more networked and more efficient, the options for application rise exponentially. Design fiction should crowd source technological innovation, because there was only so much you could do with a beige box computer connected to a monitor 20" deep. With such an array of shrinking technologies to compute, sense, update, inform, network and power everything around us, every person's opinions are worth more than ever when it comes to dreaming up ways to apply them with good design.

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The second Tweet is exactly why I like to focus on social impact based on existing trends. As Alec Pollak points out:

Almost impossible to write near-term sci-fi these days because science/technology is moving so fast. @warrenellis #sxsw #MLSXSW

— Alec Pollak (@apollak) March 10, 2014

In No Maps for These Territories, William Gibson stated one of my favorite quotes about the rush of advancements making the news every day:

I think there is a pervasive sense of loss, and a pervasive excitement at what we seem to be gaining. [...] Those two feelings seem to go together, in effect, to be parts of the same feeling. It's like Frederic Jameson's "postmodern divide": you have it right there. That sense of loss, and that sense of Christmas morning, at the same time.

If you're into scifi, every single day is another episode of the future. Just in the last few weeks, I can recall news about anti-HIV gels, prosthetics that provide touch feeling to individuals who have lost a limb, 3D printing capable of embedding electronics, and genetic tweaking to change a mouse's facial form while in the womb - just to name a few. If cyberpunk died, it's because our technological capabilities caught up to the point the technological aspects of a cyberpunk novel or film might be antiquated before it reached a bookshelf or screen. Bruce Sterling wrote, "For the cyberpunks, technology is visceral...pervasive, utterly intimate. Not outside us, but next to us. Under our skin; often, inside our minds." Well:

• Visceral (used the other way)
• Pervasive
• Intimate
• Next to us
• Under our skin
• Inside our minds

I'd say they're all correct.

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The third could be a bit concerning. From GovLab - "Creating extraordinary connections between future trends and the federal government." - we get this:

MT @tiffany_wan Imagine a group that writes scifi full time for Feds. Corps are already doing this. It’s scifi with an NDA! @itsDanielSuarez

— GovLab (@GovLab) March 10, 2014

DARPA is consistently announcing futurist projects and interests. Looking back to 2010, Naked Law gives us a dozen "insane" DARPA projects. Four years later and a few Google searches show that artificial blood, exoskeletons, cyborg insects, mind-controlled prosthetics, robots that walk and balance like animals, and laser-guided bullets are all here. Today.

Why would government and corporations use science fiction to influence or possibly lead research and development? It's a good question. Science fiction is a well known form of communication and storytelling is an empowering part of our history and part of what makes us human. It should be used to empower our future, hopefully in ways that create a better world and not just as a method for creating patents and military hardware.

As a long-time Mac user, I've stated a few times that I believe Apple was looking farther into the future than most companies to identify what it might look like and then making the devices we will find in that reality. With the Microsoft Surface and XBox interface, portable computing and voice controlled media have arrived in somewhat affordable formats and many companies such as Samsung, Google and social media startups are clearly looking beyond the next mountain. Maybe the companies with the greatest longevity won't be those with the a great visionary at the top and a team of brilliant engineers, but the one who can best group of visionaries working with a team of brilliant engineers.

How cool would it be if the best companies are those who made the best use of storytelling? That investment wasn't just driven based on what they can make, but a 'why' based on how some new thingy might impact our society? Or the environment? Or privacy? Or help us realign with what our humanity used to be? For my part, I'll keep working on this site and hope it catches on. If we can get enough contributors, maybe Regarding Tomorrow can become a think tank to help produce a better tomorrow from the creativity of our members.