Prototypes from Science Fiction

Look familiar?

Here are some fascinating thoughts about science fiction as prototype.

"Diegetic [narrative] prototypes have a major rhetorical advantage over true prototypes; in the diegesis these technologies exist as 'real' objects that function properly and which people actually use."

Science fiction can do things that science fact cannot, he says, and it's better at circulating knowledge than science fact ever is. There are no barriers between disciplines, no obscure knowledge-sharing rituals and it talks to the public (whereas 5,000 experts in a subject usually end up talking to each other).