Very interesting rush of resources emerging from the group - science fiction and movies are obviously key ingredients in the cultural life of designers and design scholars. Before DVDs and YouTube I used to run movie sessions for design students to make sure they were seeing some of the key films. These days, students mostly point me to films.
There are very interesting philosophical concepts that might be drawn from the field of science fiction that can help illustrate design thinking (and all kinds of creative thinking).
While there are very interesting differences between science fiction and fantasy fiction one of the key concepts that goes across both genres is that of the hypothetical. That is, the "what if" aspects.
Tolkien, writing about fantasy, points out the adjectival nature of the underlying psychology of fantasy. That is, fantasy fiction is an exploration of which attributes do and don't go with certain substances. And, by extension, what are substances and what are attributes. A car (substance) can be green (attribute) or blue. Could blue be a thing in itself? Growing up is in many ways a learning about what is fixed, what moves, what sticks, what comes off, what can be replaced, what can be changed. We grow by imaginatively and literally throwing things at things and working out the consequences (ad-ject = throw at). For some of us, this understanding of the world is addictive and compulsive - we keep questioning why things are as they are, how they might be diffferent and what if the basic rules, as we understand them, might be changed (bouncing concrete).
In the Japanese manga/anime, Doraemon, the magic blue cat is a science fictionalist. That is, in response to his owner, Nobita Nobi's questions, Doraemon will produce a new thing. Say there were no mirrors, what would life be like? Say we could visit the future, what would things be like. One of the key magic devices that Doraemon has at his command is the "what-if" phone. You just dial up a hypothesis.
In many senses, design thinking is a kind of "what-if" phone.
cheers
keith
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