talking about. A prototype in software design is wildly different than a prototype to the automotive industry. Both in academia and in the field of design, the definition is hotly debated. There is so much robust discussion and arguing for good reason.
In the technology development process, a prototype is important to the design and development process. This is because in both hardware and software development, there is great uncertainty as to whether a new design will actually do what is desired. The website Wikipedia explains that new designs often have unexpected problems. A prototype is often used as part of the product design process to allow engineers and designers the ability to explore design alternatives, test theories and confirm performance prior to starting production of a new product. Engineers use their experience to tailor the prototype according to the specific unknowns still present in the intended design.
But we are going to take a step back to look at prototypes a bit differently. I believe that a prototype is really just a fiction. A prototype is a story or a fictional depiction of a product. The prototype is not the actual thing that we want to build; it is an example, a rough approximation of the thing we hope to one day build. This works for software just as much as it works for concept cars. Prototypes are not the thing, they are the story or the fiction about the thing that we hope to build. We then use these fictions to get our minds around what that thing might one day be and we also use it to explain together what we hope to build.
Nathan Shedroff has an interesting take on the nature of design and prototypes. Shedroff is the program chair for the California College of Arts’ MBA Strategy in Design program and is the author of several books on design like Experience Design and Design Is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable. He believes that all design is a kind of fiction. On stage at Macworld in 2011, he said that, “Every sketch, model, and prototype is an elaborate fiction on the road to something becoming real. But, it’s still fiction until (and if) it actually gets built. Think of all of the design work left on the drawing board. Every logo, model, variation, and failed prototype was a fiction that didn’t come to be. In truth, all business plans—and planning—are fiction. Anyone who has ever created Proforma financial statements or written a business plan has confronted this. It’s all made-up, even if it’s based on sound assumptions.”
SF prototyping, as a kind of fictional prototyping, provides a new lens through which emerging theories can be viewed differently, explored freely and ultimately developed further. Bleecker makes an excellent observation: “Productively confusing science fact and science fiction may be the only way for the science of fact to reach beyond itself and achieve more than incremental forms of innovation.” (Bleecker, 2009) It is precisely this productive confusion and fusion of fact and fiction that can unlock, broaden and expand the boundaries of current scientific thinking.
TWO EXAMPLES OF SF PROTOTYPES
To get things started let us take a look at two SF prototypes. I have summarized both the stories and the scientific papers and research that went into them. If you want to dive in completely, you can take a look at the complete SF prototypes in Appendix A.
Religious Robots: Trouble at the Piazzi Mine
In 2008, I developed an SF prototype based upon some robotics and AI work that was going on in England and Malaysia. The basic idea of the work asked: What if robots and AI made both rational and irrational decisions? The story went like this:
There is trouble at the Piazzi mine on the dwarf planet Ceres 1. The facility’s all-robotic mining crew is behaving strangely. One day a week, they are shutting themselves down completely. No work is getting done. The owners of the mine are losing 2.5 billion euros a week. Something has to be done.
Dr. Simon Egerton, a roboticist and freelance investigator, is brought in to find out what is really happening. Egerton and his body guard, Nigel Kempwright, are given two days to uncover the mystery.
“What is all this nonsense about mining bots going to church on Sundays?” Kempwright tugged on his shaggy blond hair. “Are they serious? I mean really.
Are they serious? Who’s the bright guy who can’t just reprogram them or something?”
“They tried that I think,” Egerton replied. “It didn’t work. I guess everything they’ve tried hasn’t worked.”
Landing at the Piazzi Mine … was like descending into the mouth of hell … the place looked like a giant worm had burrowed deep into the rock, leaving its eggs along the interior of the shaft to hatch and continue its work. These eggs were the buildings and outbuildings of the mining facility, screwed precariously into the sides of the tunnel, and connected by a maze of spidery catwalks and walkways. Two massive mining chutes dove down into the blackness of the pit.
Egerton and Kempwright emerged from the battered shuttle to the vast loading deck of the Piazzi Mine … The deck was crowded with the tremendous robotic loaders, recklessly filling mega-haulers. Their shuttle was dwarfed by the size of the operation and Egerton and Kempwright were barely visible amongst the giants.
Everything looked normal. Egerton imagined the AI agent sub-systems orchestrating every action of the various bots and machines; reacting to the mine’s changing conditions, updating, correcting, always taking in information and reacting. When Egerton thought of the dirty little mine in that way it was quite delicate and beautiful; hardware and software dancing elegantly together.
“This is our only hotel at the mine,” the security bot said stopping in front of a small shabby trailer. “It doesn’t get much use as you can imagine.”
The automatic doors hissed open and Egerton could see another bot waiting for them inside.
“And what’s that?” Kempwright asked, still standing on the narrow street. He pointed to a massive warehouse directly opposite the mine’s main shaft.
Egerton stepped back out into the street and instantly saw the massive structure. It stood out not because of its size but because it was spotless in a swarm of grime.
“That is the church,” the security bot replied calmly.
The church was larger than he had expected. The calm air smelled of industrial lubricant and electricity. Across the expanse hung a fifty foot electric-yellow cross, crudely constructed out of two mine support beams. Lined up in front of the cross, in massive neat rows was every bot from the Piazzi mine.
Moving down the center aisle, Egerton could see it wasn’t just the ambulatory bots, the ones that moved freely that had come. It was all the robots. Even the massive diggers had been un-bolted from the mine shafts and carried in; the wheel-less, the legless, the immobile; no bot had been left behind. Egerton found himself searching the air for signs of the unseen nano-bots.
Stopping mid-way up the aisle, Egerton knew he had to get back to catch the
