Our culture has long looked to the creators of science fiction to blast us through the stasis of thinking-as-usual. Scratch the surface of many professionals who are charged by their day jobs with thinking conceptually, creatively, technically . . . . and you're sure to find there beats the heart of a Trekkie, Dune fanatic, Steam punker or clandestine gamer. From H.G. Wells' Captain Nemo to Gene Rodenberry's Captain Kirk, the artists and writers who create science fiction have tickled the minds of inventors, strategists, technologists and innovators for eons. Want an example? Take a look at my fellow legal conceptualist, Rick Klau, in this month's issue of WIRED. He's commenting on Leinad Zeraus' self-published Daemon, the story of a terminally ill game designer who "unleashes a diabolical, self-replicating Web entity that enlists disaffected Netizens in its mission to destroy civilization."
From Jean-Luc Picard's assimilation by the wiki-like Borg to William Gibson's Neuromancer introduction to the cyberhabitats we've learned to love as social networks, we are schooled by their prompted imagining to try on ordinarily frightening ideas in the relative safety of our (their?) imagination. And by trying them on, grow accustomed to. . . .even addicted to. . . .thinking and doing differently. Even Shakespeare used the device of directed imagination to prompt more open thinking. The Tempest introduced many a tattered resident of the Globe Theatre's "gods" to the possibility of cultures and worlds who thought and worked differently than their own.
This week at the Science Museum in London a new exhibit opens. The focus is Dan Dare: Pilot to the Future a 1950s cartoon hero who inspired a wave of scientific innovations immediately following World War II. For those of us who sometimes stop mid-Blackberry to muse sentimentally on our cereal-box Dick Tracey wrist-radios, it will feel very much like home.
So what am I thinking? I'm wondering where we must look now to find the "science fiction" that will guide the practice of law through this stage of internecine resistance to an evolved future profession that serves to resolve conflict, protect property, preserve agreement and defend the rights of individuals . . . but in a new way that serves all who are involved. Isn't it time someone started drawing pictures of what could be. . . . . .instead of whining about what has "always been?"
Just a thought.
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Posted by: Zoran | March 02, 2009 at 12:00 PM