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Lesson 4

Topic

Pop Culture & Storytelling

Reading Material

Kirby, D. 2010. "The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films". In Generating Real-World Technological Development. Social Studies of Science.

kirby.pdf

1) What are the new terms in this text? How are they defined? Where do they come from?

  • In order to overcome public anxiety, three criteria have to be met: Necessity, Normalcy and Viability.
  • Diegetic prototypes: design or object that exists in the fictional world and is created through “dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure.
  • Performative artefacts: artefacts that establish the viability and possibilities of new/emerging technologies

2) Who are the authors? Where do they work? Who do they refer to?

  • David A. Kirby: American professor of science communication studies, Cal Poly University.
  • He researches/writes about and teaches science communication and history of science
  • Text was published in 2010

3) What questions come to your mind from reading this text?

  • How does a filmmaker (or any storyteller) balance the ethics of "shaping" the future by portraying a technology in a certain way?

4) How does it affect your design practice? What applications do you see in your practice?

  • Narratives (films or stories) can be used to reduce public anxiety of new technologies, stimulate desire in audiences, or also to warn of possible future events in the hopes of stimulating public action to prevent them from happening.
Kien M. 2023. "Historically Informed HCI: Reflecting on Contemporary Technology through Anachronistic Fiction". In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions. 29, 6.

kien.pdf

1) What are the new terms in this text? How are they defined? Where do they come from?

  • Anachronistic Fiction: How previous eras might have looked like if todays technology already existed.
  • Counterfactual History: Imagining an alternative history to explore the ramifications/influences of technology.

2) Who are the authors? Where do they work? Who do they refer to?

  • Kien Mesonge: Independent Researcher from Bulgaria
  • Text was published in 2023

3) What questions come to your mind from reading this text?

  • Is there a way to systematicly apply anarchronistic fiction to evaluate potetial consequences of current technology, or are we stuck with the phrase "hinsight is 20-20"?

4) How does it affect your design practice? What applications do you see in your practice?

  • Analyzing historical parallels can be a very useful tool to learn what has worked before and what hasnt.
  • Using speculative methods like anarchronistic fiction can help "test" the impacts of technology.
Rosén, A. et al. 2022. "Towards More-Than-Human-Centred Design: Learning from Gardening". In International Journal of Design.

rosen.pdf

1) What are the new terms in this text? How are they defined? Where do they come from?

  • More-Than-Human-Centered Design: expands human centered design to also include nonhuman actors.
  • Posthumanism: Philosophical framework critical of anthropocentrism (anthropo --> human)
  • Noticing: culturally and politically sensitive skill, to recognize the interconnectedness of ecological, economic, and cultural systems.

2) Who are the authors? Where do they work? Who do they refer to?

  • Anton Poikolainen Rosén: PHD student in Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction and Informatics, Södertörn & Umeå University, Sweden
  • Maria Normark: has a PHD in Human-Computer Interaction, associate professor in Media technology at Södertörn University, Sweden
  • Mikael Wiberg: has a PHD in informatics, Professor in informatics at Umeå University, as well as professor of interaction design at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
  • Text was published in 2022

3) What questions come to your mind from reading this text?

  • Will the principles of more-than-human centered design ever be widespread, or will it always be something that only people privileged enough (or that dont have to worry about hunger, survival, money etc) can afford to think about?

4) How does it affect your design practice? What applications do you see in your practice?

  • The future will likely require a shift from anthropocentic approaches/solutions.
  • "Noticing" is an important tool to analyze and understand complex and interconnected ecosystems.

Brief Summary of Lesson

The lesson was hosted by Domenico and Aline. It revolved around the general concepts of storytelling, and how stories can help shape the publics opinion on things, and especially emerging technologies. The exercise for the students revolved around the "characteristics" and "experiences" of one of two objects, either a nail or a toothpick. First, we had to characterize the object and then think about the experience from the objects perspective, and then we had to do the same thing but imagine it in a completely different historical context, like the middle ages or the roman empire. This was interesting, as it both highlighted that both of the objects probably didnt experience a lot of radical changes in the past couple of centuries, and also because it showed that many people formed different narratives around the objects despite all of them having the same task.

Takeaways

The main takeaways from this lesson were that stories are an incredibly important and also potentially dangerous or manipulative tool. They often contain "stereotypes" and are often (over)simplified. Many stories share similar structures, or whatever a stories equivalent of an "architype" is. Often, they are also regurgitated, and are also very prevalent in propaganda. New technologies always create hopes and fears, and it is up to the creators and the public to contextualize it.