出版与作家生涯2019onezero.medium.com
耐克和波音花钱请科幻作家预测它们的未来
Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures
导读
这篇报道讲的是耐克、波音等公司付费请科幻作家为它们构想未来场景，把科幻当成企业的"预测工具"。对写作者来说，它值得一读的地方在于：它逼我们思考"为谁写未来"这件事——当未来叙事被资本委托，写作的批判性还剩多少；同时也提醒我们，科幻式的"外推"有其天然的盲区。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
科幻式预测的通病是把现有事物直接外推，比如"飞行汽车"——从火车到汽车是平移，从飞机到私人飞行器却是难得多的问题；写未来时先问自己：这一步真的能平移吗？
- 02
科幻作家最终要写的是人物的体验，所以不要只堆炫酷设定，把"无聊的部分"——通勤、排队、维修、账单——写出来，未来才可信。
- 03
如果想让预测更有洞察力，可以借用反乌托邦等不要求"未来很好玩"的体裁，摆脱"必须让未来显得有趣"的束缚。
- 04
下笔前先想清楚委托方是谁：为品牌写的未来故事容易被收编成公关叙事，写作者要意识到自己的文本可能被用来支持既有的权力。
- 05
别只盯着小说，动画和游戏里已有大量关于 AR 日常化、超远期未来的具体想象，可以作为构思的素材库。
HN 评论精选
科幻的透镜会扭曲想象：外推容易造出"飞行汽车"式错误，而缺的恰恰是日常体验中"无聊的部分"；不追求"未来好玩"的反乌托邦反而更有洞察力。
其他评论者已经指出这根本不新鲜。甚至可以说，未来学家长期预测的东西，正是科幻能看到的东西。我觉得有意思的是，科幻这面透镜会扭曲人的想法。飞行汽车是最经典、也是最错误的科幻预测——它的失败之处在于，地面运动并不能直接转换成飞行运动：飞行交通确实达到了某种与地面交通相当的水平，但从"飞行巴士"（普通飞机）走到私人"飞行汽车"，比从火车走到汽车要难得多。可以说，科幻涉及对经验的外推，因为作家最终要描述角色的体验。所以整体上缺的是"无聊的部分"——至少经典科幻如此，它历史上就是把冒险小说外推到新世界（罗伯特·海因莱因的小说是范本）。从这个意义上说，反乌托邦等小说类型反而更有优势，因为它们不受"必须把未来写得有趣"的约束。E.M.福斯特的《机器停转》是个真正有趣的例子，它在 1909 年就预见了互联网的许多方面。
joe_the_user查看英文原文
Other posters have noted that this isn't new at all. One could almost say that what's been predicted by futurologists over time is what Sci-Fi can see. To me, what's interesting is the ways the lens of Sci-Fi can distort one's ideas. The flying car is the most classic, wrong science fiction prediction ever (even if it should come to pass). The way that the flying car fails is that ground motion doesn't translate directly into flying motion - flying transport has achieved some equivalence to ground motion but going from a "flying bus" (a conventional airplane) to a personal "flying car" turns out to be a vastly harder problem than going from a train to a car. One might say, Sci-Fi involves extrapolation of experience, since the writer ultimately has describe the experiences of their characters. So what's missing overall, is "the dull parts", as least for "classic Sci-Fi", which has historically been adventure novels extrapolated into a new world (the novels of Robert Heinlein being the model). Here, in a sense, dystopian and other novelist genres can give further insight a leg-up because they aren't constrained to make the future fun. A really interesting story is EM Forrester's story "The Machine Stops", predicted many aspects of the Internet in 1909! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops
被品牌委托的未来叙事会被资本收编，反而消解了它本该有的批判力量。
我在 The Verge 上看到这类故事，只觉得这是最"赛博朋克"的反转：那些本可能激发文化反抗这些巨头的文本，反而被资本重新利用、武器化，用来维持自己的统治。
ordinaryradical查看英文原文
I've noticed these stories on The Verge and all I can think is that this is the most cyberpunk twist of all: the very texts that might inspire a cultural shift against these entities are instead repurposed and weaponized by capital to support their continued reign.
动画和游戏里已有大量关于 AR 日常化、超远期未来的具体想象，是构思未来场景的好素材。
他们该去看看动画和游戏。比如《电脑线圈》，它很好地想象了 AR 眼镜和持续的全球"AR 空间"像今天的手机一样普及时，生活是什么样子；还有《Numenera》，设定在十亿年后的未来，那里的科学已经超出我们对魔法最狂野的想象。这类作品也许和耐克、波音没有直接关系，但里面有大量关于各类服装和技术的很酷的点子。
Razengan查看英文原文
They should check anime and games. Like Dennou Coil [0] with a nice vision of what life might be like when AR glasses and a persistent global "AR space" are as commonplace as smartphones today. Numenera [1] that's set a billion (!) years in the future where science is beyond even our wildest imagining of magic. And many more. They may not be relevant to Nike or Boeing specifically, but there are lots of really cool ideas for all kinds of fashion and tech. [0] https://myanimelist.net/anime/2164/Dennou_Coil [1] https://numenera.com
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