The Mutual Influence of Science Fiction and Innovation
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Nesta Working Paper No. 13/07 Better Made Up: The Mutual Influence of Science fiction and Innovation Caroline Bassett Ed Steinmueller George Voss Better Made Up: The Mutual Influence of Science fiction and Innovation Caroline Bassett Ed Steinmueller George Voss Reader in Digital Media, Professor of Information and Research Fellow, Faculty of Arts, Research Centre for Material Technology, SPRU, University University of Brighton, Visiting Digital Culture, School of of Communication Sussex Fellow at SPRU, University of Media, Film and Music, Sussex University of Sussex Nesta Working Paper 13/07 March 2013 www.nesta.org.uk/wp13-07 Abstract This report examines the relationship between SF and innovation, defined as one of mutual engagement and even co-constitution. It develops a framework for tracing the relationships between real world science and technology and innovation and science fiction/speculative fiction involving processes of transformation, central to which are questions of influence, persuasion, and desire. This is contrasted with the more commonplace assumption of direct linear transmission, SF providing the inventive seed for innovation– instances of which are the exception rather than the rule. The model of influence is developed through an investigation of the nature and evolution of genre, the various effects/appeals of different forms of expression, and the ways in which SF may be appropriated by its various audiences. This is undertaken (i) via an inter- disciplinary survey of work on SF, and a consideration the historical construction of genre and its on-going importance, (ii) through the development of a prototype database exploring transformational paths, and via more elaborated loops extracted from the database, and (iii) via experiments with the development of a web crawl tool, to understand at a different scale, using tools of digital humanities, how fictional ideas travel. SF influences science and vice versa. We find multi-directional and on-going pathways connecting SF and science and we suggest that this has important implications for those considering Foresight, horizon scanning, questions of acculturation, the relations between humanities and science and technology, and the broader public understanding of science and participation in the governance of science and technology. Keywords: research, technology, Our Crawl tool was written by Andy Holyer who also contributed fully to designing the Crawl experiments and who certainly did far more than we paid him for. Many thanks. We would also like to thank the helpful comments and reviewers who commented for NESTA and in particular Joan Haran, for her in-depth and incisive reading. Finally thanks to Jessica Bland for her energy and commitment. Author: Dr. Caroline Bassett, School of Media, Film and Music, Silverstone 200, School of Media, Film and Music , University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RQ, [email protected] The Nesta Working Paper Series is intended to make available early results of research undertaken or supported by Nesta and its partners in order to elicit comments and suggestions for revisions and to encourage discussion and further debate prior to publication (ISSN 2050-9820). © 2013 by the author(s). Short sections of text, tables and figures may be reproduced without explicit permission provided that full credit is given to the source. The views expressed in this working paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of Nesta. 1 Better Made Up: The Mutual Influence of Science Fiction and Innovation “‘We’re almost always wrong,’ said Gibson”… ‘The thing that Neuromancer predicts as being actually like the internet isn’t actually like the internet at all!’” (Interview in Wired, September, 2012, (Dayal 2012)). I. Introduction Buzz Aldrin, who really did stand on the moon, recently offered a transporter to Mars to a Radio Four programme asking for donations to an imaginary museum. It was received as the first way to ‘hitch a ride into space’… ‘since science fiction’. Aldrin, who has criticized NASA’s priorities, who seeks a Mars programme, and who has been engaged in work on a Mars Cycler, intended this fictional gift to be a real world intervention. Science Fiction and Science ‘fact’ – science and technology innovation, policy, public knowledge, investment - are not two separate realities but are two entangled and overlapping fields. This engagement is widely recognized. From Mars to flying cars to digital drugs, robot friends to teleportation, GPS to mobile communicators1, smart food to mitochondrial reproduction techniques, links are often drawn between science fiction and technological innovation. Sunday supplements and popular blogs as well as academic journals make frequent reference to technologies that have ‘crossed over’ from science fiction into present fact. One popular and often repeated example is the attribution of the invention of the communication satellite to Arthur C. Clarke2. The starting point of this report is that these assumptions are justified – there is traffic between fictional and real worlds of science and technology and these worlds are connected. As a mode of fiction centrally investigating possible worlds, interrogating present conditions and exploring possible futures, SF is inevitably caught up in the discourses of real-world ‘science’ and ‘technology’ (see (Dourish and Bell 2008)) and these discourses have results. SF outputs – and the discourses of SF as they permeate in various ways into broader arenas – are drawn upon by scientists and technologists, and also by particular sub-cultural groups including those valorising science or technology. Moreover SF is often a resource supporting the value of science in popular culture and in the wider public sphere. SF may intervene in, or 1 See e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7911939/The-science-fiction-that-turned-into-science-fact.html, Last Accessed, 25 November 2012. 2 See text box. constitute a part of, discourses shaping thinking on ‘the future’, understandings of how science and technology are made, and understandings of the social and cultural ‘consequences’ of technological innovation (notably through its utopian/dystopian figurations).3 In particular, SF plays an important role in the shaping of desire – for change, for progress, for novelty, for a sense of wonder and of discovery. This shaping role is played not only because of what SF imagines as possible somewhere else, or in some future time, but because it supports a vision of the present world as being evanescent and contingent, subject to, or calling for, dramatic change. SF may intervene in these areas in different Arthur C. Clarke and the Communication Satellite ways. Ethical debates around science may To foreshadow a main thread of our argument, Clarke has noted (McAleer 1992:54) that his speculations concerning communication lean on fictional pre-figurations of satellites may have been influenced by his colleague, George O. Smith, whose stories in Astounding Science Fictions, (later published as (Smith 1976)), envisaged a satellite in geosynchronous orbit around particular dilemmas or puzzle cases likely Venus serving as a communication relay station for Venus, Earth and Mars. to arise in the near future (see e.g. Clarke’s article appeared 12 years before the Soviet Sputnik and 20 years before Comsat, the first commercial communication technology. (Macleod 2012)’s Intrusion, for a recent Although Clarke wryly claimed that his 1945 publication may have advanced communication satellite technology by about 15 minutes example). Possible consequences of (McAleer, ibid), his article was noted by Robert P. Haviland, a US Navy reserve office, who wrote an internal memo for the US Navy innovation are spectacularly visualised in advocating a manned space station. Haviland later was recognized by the IEEE as life fellow for his contributions to satellite communications. blockbuster films such as Steven Of course, the extent to which advance in satellite communications was prompted by Clarke’s article is a matter of speculation about a Spielberg’s A.I (2001), Andy and Lana ‘counter-factual,’ itself a SF trope giving rise to alternative history and other SF sub-genres. The systematic examination of counter-factual Wachowski’s the Matrix (1999), or Steven scenarios is, however, an important methodology in economic history and innovation studies, see (Mokyr 1999) who also notes that the Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993), whilst counterfactual is a major tools in mainstream historical study. Using these methods, it has been argued that the publicly funded research in early satellite technologies generated substantial increases in social the same films normalize or make desirable welfare by shortening the period of development, see (Teubal and Steinmueller 1982). certain forms of (imaginary) technology Robert Merton, the leading 20th century sociologist claimed that ‘multiples’ were the norm of scientific discovery (and by extension, (e.g. intelligent robotic companions). More technology and innovation).1 While not dismissing the role of genius in discovery or invention, Merton argued the cumulative nature of science directly suggestive paths to innovation, or (a feature which innovation also shares) contributed to possibilities being ‘in the air’ and thereby possible for many individuals of varying inspirations for invention, may be evoked capacities and interests to see with varying degrees of precision and insight. Merton also argued that science was permeated by