Being a digital creative, my mind most of the time is occupied with thoughts of how to reach desirable results for the objectives I have. Sometimes the mind gets crazy and wild, taking to weird places. What follows next is the instant doubt. Should I let my mind indulge in these kinds of thoughts? Does it have any value for my creative process? Am I not just wasting my precious time? Will those ideas ever gonna see the light and be understandable by the bigger audience? Trying to understand better what impact all of this has on the overall creative process, I explored the phenomenon of SCI - FI. Embarking on this intellectual journey I tried to understand how we could benefit from the mindset that this genre is shaping.
Somehow, the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about SCI - FI is a famous movie trilogy - "THE MATRIX". When I first saw all three movies I was around 15 or 16 years old. Actually, before that I had never been a die hard fan of SCI - FI genre and even after the movie, which was great, I haven’t hooked with all that as well. However, the concept of the story that we live in a simulation and that artificial intelligence is superior to humankind was exciting. But it was exciting in the realm of fantasy as much as the talking trees from "THE LORD OF THE RINGS ". I never hardly considered that things presented in "THE MATRIX" could become true one day or that it is already happening. And yet, as we reach out to the future, we can see that technology moving at tremendous speed forward leaves no doubts that artificial intelligence will be created.It leaves us with only one question - when it will be created?
Patric Purdy, the author of the article “FROM SCIENCE FICTION TO SCIENCE FACT: HOW DESIGN CAN INFLUENCE FUTURE”, presents an example, how a famous TV show - "STAR TREK" - influenced the creator Martin Cooper to invent handheld cell phone in 1973. The article presents an idea of how huge impact SCI - FI has to the development of our technology, as well he emphasises that the understanding of SCI - FI technology should fit within the audience's general understanding of technology at that time. He points out:
“The more difficult a given concept is to understand, the less it will be absorbed (if it is absorbed at all).”
By absorbed he means that technology presented in SCI - FI far beyond our perceivable reality could face a risk not to be accepted by mainstream audiences and die out without a chance to become a reality. The logic is understandable and quite convincing, but it puts everything in perspective where imagination is constrained. Should we really be concerned if our ideas could be too crazy?
It is true, for me as a teenager the concept of "THE MATRIX" was crazy enough and far beyond my imagination of what is possible in our lifetime. And yet these ideas at that time already were mainstream. We should go way back in time, I mean on the human civilisation scale, to have a glimpse of when it really was crazy and when it wasn't considered at all as a serious matter.
On the LEX FRIDMAN PODCAST, featuring artificial intelligence researcher Ben Groetzel, there is a part where he talks about the Gerald Feinberg's book "THE PROMETHEUS PROJECT" which was written in 1968. The podcast guest tells that a book is about how humanity in the next couple decades will create super human thinking machines, molecular nanotechnology and human immortality. And then the challenge we will have is what to do with it, should we use it to expand human consciousness in a positive direction or we use it just to further vapid consumerism. It is a pretty crazy thought considering those times when digital technology was at it’s baby steps compared to what we have now or even when I was a teenager watching "THE MATRIX". Needless to say, Gerald Feinberg's ideas at those times couldn’t be understood by the majority of society as reachable or possible, however today we have a totally different picture where topics like this don't seem that off. The podcast participants came up with conclusion that only when enabling technologies got to the certain point those ideas became mainstream and possible to become our reality. So in some way Patric Purdy was right. Technology that is out of our perceivable reality doesn't have a chance to be created. On the other hand it doesn’t mean that it will be forgotten until that technology becomes available. Ben Groetzel's example of “THE PROMETHEUS PROJECT” prompts that we shouldn't be afraid of getting too wild with our imagination. There is no need to think that ideas not fitting in a frame of enabling technology could become just a ghost of the past.
To constrain our imagination because of the fear to be misunderstood is unreasonable considering one's creativity and curiosity. All humanity in history have never been certain about anything. We march into the future with no guarantees.
“The only way forward is through something we’ve never done, so we run full speed into the great imagined unknown to make this world for one another.“
- THE SHAPE OF DESIGN Frank Chimero ( chapter 5 “FICTION AND BRIDGES” )
And this trip is not linear, all of human's progress runs in spirals. So we should not think that our sincere endeavour will be left in vain, forgotten, not important. No matter what we do or create ( hopefully it's for the sake of our planet and it goes toward a positive direction) it will always have an impact and if it fails to be relevant nowadays, maybe it will be an inspiration for the future generations. EHSAN NOURSALEHI puts nicely in his book called “WHY DO WE INTERFACE”:
“Design isn't a march toward something known. Design, instead, is more like a dance—never done and almost always a little off the first time.”
The book is about interface and experience design, but his idea is applicable to any form of creativity. The meaning of this is that there are many new inventions that conceptually are quite old, but if those concepts weren’t created in the first place, no matter how imperfect they were, our progress wouldn’t be possible. Ideas are perfect and the reflection of them in a physical world always contains flaws. But as original expressions and inventions most of the time come in bits and pieces from other's works fused together, there is always a possibility that those imperfect reflections might be a foundation for something extraordinary in the future.
As we soar at an incredible speed through the universe we should not lose the momentum with our ideas as well. Our thoughts should be in constant flux, reaching and crossing boundaries of our perceivable reality. We should not let ourselves sink in comfort trying to escape all risks of being misunderstood. On the contrary, having these kind of doubts could indicate that one is walking on the right path.
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