One interesting book is coming this summer. The records of an SF Prototyping workshop conducted by Wired Sci-Fi Prototyping Lab in 2022 will be turned into a cute book.
The authors are Taiyo Fujii: me, Haneko Takayama: the Akutagawa Literature Award winner, Takashi Kurata: SF writer, Sansan Inc.: Japanese business communicating service company, and the Wired Sci-Fi Prototyping Institute, which organized the workshop. In addition to that, it includes comics by Minami Kitamura, lecture transcripts by Sayaka Ogawa, and artwork and interviews by Yasushi Tanabe from Sansan Inc. Although it might be challenging to convey through photos, the book is beautifully colored in a vibrant shade of pink, with the page edges also painted.
I contributed a piece titled “Two Thousand Versions of Us.” The story depicts a future where user agents autonomously engage in activities.
SF Prototyping might be a new idea for you; it is organizations such as companies and local governments reimagining their businesses through a science fiction mindset. It is said to be started by Intel, inc. in the 1980s. Instead of forward casting, simulating, or expecting from current detailed information, SF Prototyping sets the detailed completion image, tangible description, and how people initially feel about it, and backcasting thinking to today.
The easiest action is inviting SF writers to explain the business and envision the future of the company or industry in short fiction. Some companies publish them, and others don’t. More committing SF Prototyping is having a workshop, and companies let the employees or managers participate. In the SF Prototyping workshop, business people struggle to set the goal. At first, almost all goals set by business people are stereotypical ones. They should make it better and face the wall of narrative. Beginner writers set a perspective person and get a feel of primitive accountability in the reading time. And the SF writers lead their writing, reviewing. And finally, writers write a professional short story from the workshop experience as the conclusion.
These activities take various forms, and I have participated in around seven.
SF prototyping has become quite common among the SF community in Japan, but what sets apart the SF prototyping conducted by Wired Sci-Fi Prototyping Institute is its characteristic of being a long-term project that actively involves the organizations themselves.
The book includes records of the prototyping conducted by Sansan Inc. over the course of one year, as well as the workshop methodologies and the cards used during the workshops.
The book showcases the records of the year-long prototyping conducted in collaboration with Sansan Inc., including the workshop methodologies and the cards used in the workshop. The three short stories included in this book are also captivating to read, but it becomes a valuable resource as it provides insight into the conversations that took place behind these works, the realizations made by the top executives of participating IT companies, and how they harnessed storytelling skills to contribute to the narratives.
