fbpx
Categories
Approximate Thinking Art Books Creativity Cultural Products Cultural Resources Culture Education Films Fuzzy Thinking Incompleteness Innovation Knowledge Learning Psychology Science Stories Tech Technology Thinking Wisdom

On the Virtues of (extreme) Imagination & Creativity : Sci-Fi and Fantasy (can be) Practical !

Extreme Imagination and Creativity (Sci-Fi and Fantasy) can be practical : Be it as inspiration, for education, and as innovation inputs.

Extreme Imagination and Creativity (as in Sci-Fi and Fantasy) can be practical. They are useful as inspiration, for education, and even as inputs into scientific and engineering processes.

Here are a few thoughts on that.

Extreme Fiction : Free Imagination & Creativity

I’ve always been a fan of imaginative fiction… Strange creatures, weird worlds, and unlikely events… Futuristic, ancient, or parallel. Someone a while back asked: “What’s the use of all that?”.

This actually something I wanted to write about for a while. People dismissing story-telling and the arts as ‘inconsequential’ frequently miss the power of the human imagination and how invention (and innovation) really work. Art leads science. Science leads engineering. All three are beautiful in their own right.

Some people are – justifiably – inclined to look at things with a pragmatic eye. “What can I gain from this?”, or “It has to be practical”, they will say.

It can, but even if it didn’t, we’d still do it.

Extreme Imagination and Creativity: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Can Be Practical
Extreme Imagination and Creativity: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Can Be Practical

On the Virtues of Extreme Imagination & Creativity

All stories are imaginative… but some stories in particular go further from reality. They are freed from many restrictions of our existing and accepted facts.

I believe that this freedom allows the creator to explore more extreme cases, and this itself might lead to insights… In design, an extreme user is not your typical user, but thinking in terms of extreme users can lead to insights. Similarly, extreme-case insights gleamed from fiction can make us question our assumptions or imagine radically innovative futures.

So even if they didn’t lead to an innovation or a practical application directly, they can lead to it through inspiration..

People are inspired by ideals more than they are inspired by the real world. Ideals exist primarily in our minds, and they are simply images. This is why Sci-Fi and Fantasy can be very inspiring: The worlds and creatures can depict specific ideals that many people will identify with, and reflect themselves on.

Practical & Inspiring : Extreme Imagination and Innovation

Incidentally, someone asked me to name one example of a practical application that was reached because of science fiction… A quick search online revealed dozens, not one.

Here are just some examples of technological products that appeared first in science fiction then in reality.

  • The Mobile Phone (Star Trek)
  • The Hover board (Back to Future)
  • The iPad (2001: A Space Odyssey)
  • 3D Holograms (Star Wars)
  • Digital Billboards (Blade Runner)

For more, you can see this, this, and this.

Remember though, that technology is abstract, but technological products are embodiments and physical manifestations of concepts. It makes sense then that culture (extreme fiction is a part of which) will shape technological artifacts… and it does.

You might argue that people would have gotten those tech anyway, but that’s beside the point. The specific shape, design, and ecosystem of a tech innovation matters a lot.

This is where art, science, and engineering meet.

Imagery, Symbols, and Parallel Processing

Being liberated from the bounds of reality means that an author can condense and simplify. Specific variables can be shown in a clearer light, allowing for their symbolism to be purely expressed. The creator gets more freedom in ‘drawing’ a complex image, gaining an ability to sharpen their expression.

The ‘image’ or the symbol is very important in literature and the arts in general, because it can encapsulate many ideas and words in a compressed format. A symbol also can be interpreted by different people in different ways. The freedom gained by relaxing the bounds of realism can be used in crafting rich images and exquisite details in symbolism.

* Note that the beauty and depth i’m arguing for here isn’t always the case, and 90% of Sci-Fi and Fantasy is crud (or cra* or sH!7) [as is 90% of everything else] as Sturgeon would say.

Subjective Experiences : Fantasy, Symbols, and the Ineffable

I’ve personally found it very important to write stories that happen in ‘less realistic’ universes for some of these reasons.

Going after poetic and imaginative expressions makes it easier to use Approximate Thinking to Reach Further. In ‘Fuzzy on the Dark Side’, I discuss how ‘Approximate Thinking‘ is partly how we expand our knowledge. Understanding itself is a process of mental extension, where the receiver’s existing knowledge is connected – imperfectly – to new knowledge.

By giving the reader more freedom, and by allowing expressions to exist as a set of possibilities (rather than as one thing), communication can become both more informing and more relevant.

The boundaries of logic limit factual writing. Imaginative expression – in addition to being enjoyable – allows for leaps of expression into areas that many are interested in, without drowning in seas of words and jargon.

Needless to say that there is a significant subjective component here. Not everyone will understand or enjoy this, and this will work as a kind of self-filtering device. Also not everyone will see and appreciate the elegance contained in bending the rules of the world according to the whims of the psyche.

These kinds of filters are not bad. They save people the trouble of going through something they’ll eventually hate. I’m always baffled by people who force themselves to read something they hate, only to later be nasty about expressing their inability to understand.

Applications, Interpretation, and Examples

In my ‘Master Plan‘, I argue that some big questions need to be approached indirectly and imaginatively. This is because the answers, in addition to being vast in scope, are more like other questions. They open doors and point in directions.

So much needs to be said sometimes, and so many people need to be filtered along the way, that symbolic and imaginative expression become inevitable: I can explain to someone what multiplication is if they understand the concept of addition, but how can I explain identity if they don’t understand the concept of culture and expression?

Here are a few examples from previous works:

  • In Passing Clouds : A number of topics discussed by a number of authors, philosophers, and in Ancient Mythology, spanning language, choice, culture, and creativity are distilled and remixed, but in different contexts, allowing people to creatively make their own conclusions as they develop their own symbol and image preferences. As this happens people become more familiar with a certain ‘intellectual toolset’ related to these topics.
  • In “The Mask is The World“, Different cultural symbols are used in each story, bringing their own baggage of excess meanings and links to other stories, allowing for short and (relatively) simple stories to carry different layers of meaning and numerous fertile connections.
  • In “Fuzzy on the Dark Side” The story of Zif encapsulates a wide array of historical characters, events, and works, that are practically impossible to include in a simplified popular science book. The use of symbolism and imagery, instead, allows some people who are not familiar with them to appreciate the general flow and intent, while giving others, who are more experienced, the ability to make more connections and relate more ideas.

Leave a Reply