“How to Rebuild an Imaginary Future”
https://medium.com/@bruces/how-to-rebuild-an-imaginary-future-2025-0b14e511e7b6
The “print” version of an extemporaneous speech given in Austin on March 12 at SXSW 2025.
Twenty years ago, here at South By Southwest, I was on a panel where the term “design fiction” was made public. Before Julian Bleecker invented and deployed that term, there were many things going on that resembled “design fiction.” But nobody knew “how to do design fiction.” The ideas and approaches were diffuse, they weren’t crystallised.
This current speech is taking place two decades later, in a era where “design fiction” has been normalized, and it’s practiced widely. “Design Fiction” has never been a major industry. It’s more of a creative design approach, but it is established, and is part of the worlds of design and futurism. This speech, “How to Rebuild an Imaginary Future,” is also about futurism, design, and design-fiction “diegetic prototypes.”
It’s about historical diegetic prototypes, such as this “Classic Star Trek Communicator” which I have in the glossy cardboard toy-box here….
