Sci-fi Storytelling Workshop Recap
A panel discussion exploring science-fiction’s influence on breakthroughs, innovation, ethics, and how we think about the future.
At DXLabs we’re passionate about understanding the feedback loop between the narratives that our society tells about the future and the entrepreneurs and creators who make it happen. In practice, we’re constantly inspired by science fiction as a tool to think about the future. So, we had an idea:
What if we brought together science fiction authors, futurists, entrepreneurs, and change makers to discuss the feedback loop between science fiction and reality. Then, host an interactive workshop where participants could come up with their own science fiction narrative?
So last November, we held our first Sci-Fi Storytelling Workshop. Gratefully, we were able to rally the assistance of some of our favorite co-conspirators. Hosted by our very own Lance Cassidy, CEO of DXLabs, the panel consisted of Kathryn Myronuk, co-founder of Singularity University and profound futurist. Kevin Bankston, sci-fi author and profoundly secretive of his role at a rather important company that shall not be named. And Hannu Rajaniemi, biomedical entrepreneur and award-winning sci-fi author of The Quantum Thief.
This is what we explored…
The Panel
When people think about their future, especially in the world of business, it tends to be short-term. Why would I put myself into a Sci-Fi context if what I’m working on has a 2–5 year timeline?
What’s the benefit of putting ourselves 15–25 years into the future?
Kathryn revealed how placing ourselves into future contexts in which our greatest challenge has been solved allows us to shed the self-censoring voice that constricts our thinking. Thinking that could trace back to actions you can take right now.
It’s because sci-fi narrative allows us the space to think idealistically about solutions and brainstorm from an unconfined position. This is the key starting point of our Futurecast process, imagining a realistic sci-fi future state. From this state, we can think backward to define how we can achieve the future with increasing scrutiny, to create a strategy from fiction to reality. We can only achieve this if we first suspend our self-disbelief.
It is phenomena that was uncovered by Lance’s question:
How can technologists and entrepreneurs use sci-fi to think through their products and desired futures?
Let’s imagine its 2030, let’s imagine your’e done. Tell a story about a person that isn’t worried about this problem anymore. Suddenly that censorship goes away.
The person can work around this natural censorship, it makes it feel realistic, and once you got that story you can start working backwards. You believe it is possible. So now you can think about what you’re missing, whose missing from the table. It is a tool for personal optimism — it can be a tool for short term for businesses working through a problem, they can tell a story.Kathryn
Our panelists then began to explore how sci-fi enables us to be proactive about solutions rather than reactive to immediate trends. When we allow ourselves to think freely about the future we go from short-term to sustainable, inspiring design.
History shows this pattern: Jules Verne’s From The Earth to The Moon, written in 1865, inspired actual rocket scientists like the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who first outlined the mathematical theory of rocket motion in 1903. And scientific successes then feed back into the imaginations of writers coming up with increasingly vivid visions of the future. As technology progresses exponentially it seems that Sci-Fi and reality are co-mingling on the edge of our imaginations — and in order to stay proactive we must push ourselves further into the future.
Kevin Bankston explored this inextricable feedback loop between sci-fi storytelling and it’s influence on technology (a topic he has examined in length in his Sci-Fi Loop series,) sharing an insight from a famous author who inspired him:
Frederik Pohl has said that the job of the sci-fi writer is not anticipate the car, it is to anticipate the traffic jam. If this technical change were to occur, what would the impact be.
Kevin
So it is the role of the Sci-Fi writer, and anyone using Sci-Fi narrative to be proactive and wholistically explore a world created by their invention.
Like the anticipation of the traffic jam, when we extrapolate into the future we gain a new understanding of how our actions, technological innovations, and social decisions can impact the world. We see how the butterfly effect of our actions echoes forward and demands that we take action with purpose. Not just pragmatism. Instead of creating traffic jams, how do we untangle the future?
It’s not always easy to come up with ideal futures. Many Sci-Fi novels, from H.G. Wells Time Machine, Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park are explorations of how social structures, ideologies, or technologies can go haywire. Our panel delved into the need for these cautionary visions of the future and the superpower sci-fi grants us to think through second order impacts of technology via various play-throughs of potential scenarios. Kathryn gave us another perspective: storytelling is partly successful due to sufficient dramatic tension and learning about the world through imaginary difficulties. These dystopian tales are a safe way to explore dangerous paradigms — and to ponder how we can avoid them!
Why is most popular science-fiction dystopian?
Utopian vision making is hard. When people make a utopian story, it is often boring. So being able to pull it off is much harder. You still need tension.
Fiction, when you go back to fairy tales, it is practice. It is practice being someone you’re not, practice being in events you’re not in.Do you want to dress people up as angels or do you want to dress them up as zombies?
Kathyrn
And, finishing our panel’s journey with a dramatic twist, Hannu explained how the most impfactful future application of sci-fi might change from the classic sci-fi book that has inspired generations of tech entrepreneurship to something more… novel.
What is the future manifestation of science fiction that will create the most impact?
If we want to change societies, today I might not write out, I might create a community online and test it — so fiction will not be a book, but a decentralized experiment.
Hanu
Our panelists thus explored how sci-fi storytelling helps break through some of the most common issues with companies and entrepreneurs who are situated to make the biggest impact on our futures
Some of the key ways sci-fi narrative helps us is that it allows us to:
- Suspend our disbelief.
- Think proactively rather than re-actively.
- Think through sustainable rather than short-term solutions.
- Inspire purposeful rather than pragmatic solutions.
The Sci-Fi Story Writing Exercise
After our expert panel and discussion our participants had the opportunity to experience a consolidated version of our sci-fi story sprint, guided by Hannu.
We want to give people the ability to leverage the power of sci-fi storytelling, even if they aren’t trying to be the next best-selling author — how can they apply sci-fi narrative to think through the future and create a compelling tale so they can crystallize their vision and take action, today?
First, we came up provocative statements about the future in 15–25 years. Participants were asked to peek into their imagination of the future and witness something they believe would be true that not a lot of people would.
What if everyone worked from home?
What if healthcare was democratized?
What if all education was free and better than MIT?
This exercise unlocks…
The Novum
In sci-fi, this is often the core technological solution that defines the world we see. In sci-fi movies this is often immediately apparent. In Steven Spielberg’s crime noir sci-fi thriller Minority Report, for instance, where the novum is the pre-crime system- the entire world is themed with translucent glass and ocular motifs. In Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi horror Alien, the Alien itself is the novum- and the set-designs progress from the newborn alien’s white flesh to a shiny black as the creature develops.
But it’s not just visual, we want to think about how this novum effects every aspect of the future! What about social interactions, mental health, and the economy? This is called world-building. In great sci-fi, the resulting world isn’t just a flashy CES tech showcase- it helps create the wholistic context that will be the ideal foil for….
The Hero
Next, we defined our characters. What drives them? How are they critically effected and changed by the novum? What is the challenge that they will overcome to achieve a better world and a new normal?
To create a believable fiction you must start with a strong foundation in reality. So, we asked our participants to think of a subject which they would feel confident enough about that they’d want to go on a game-show to compete. There is a reason why Stephen King tends to pick main characters who are authors — writing about what you know is a great way to make life easier on yourself and reduce the anxiety about delving into a subject without credibility. Why spend hours trying to pretend you know about molecular bag piping when you can focus on…
The Story
With a futuristic technology key to the existence of our future world, a character we identify with and can care about, and an expertise and motive — it was time to write. Each participant had 10 minutes of free-form continuous writing to explore the most interesting day in the life of their future. We performed this exercise twice and our participants shared their creations!
The result? Sometimes impassioned, always enlightening we glimpsed into thirty unique versions of the future! By reducing the anxiety over accurately judging the next 2 years of trends and starting from the aspirational we learned how to practice expanding our ability to brainstorm solutions that will lead to futures we can get excited about.
Facing a world of undifferentiated possible futures, with global crisis and turmoil, allowing ourselves to experience the calm of contemplating a future state beyond the chaos isn’t just a much needed respite- it’s essential to planning the way forward with clarity. In hard times, we lean on narratives to assure us of who we are and where we are going.
Let’s go somewhere great!
If you are interested in exploring how sci-fi narrative can be used to inspire long-term visioning for you and your teams we invite you to be a co-conspirator.
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Explore our DX Futures publication to see examples of how we use sci-fi to think through the future. https://dxfutures.co/
