Imagination with all its wildest possibilities
yearn to be released from the human mind into actual reality. The expression of
grammar of imagination might be story, visual, movie, art, audio, novel or oral
conversation. The outcome however remains the same: far reaching, wild, perhaps
bizarre, perhaps practically unimagined set of things that human might ever
create and use.
The outcome, to its progenitor
might appear most marvelous, irrespective whether the public at lare perceive it
to be crap or otherwise. Yet few might escape the crap trap and generate into
hard core imagination underpinned science fiction expressed through visual,
written or audio means. Science fiction is
best expressed as an output generated with infinite degrees of freedom for
imagination.
Science fiction is not a mere
work of fantasy. Adventures and challenges endear to humans thus the foundation
for visualizing a universe with those infinite challenges. Invariably, there exists
a hero who conquers in the midst of extreme adversity. In fact, the story of
human is celebrating those conquests of adversity. A perfectly ordered world a
la Huxley’s brave new world, might be boring. Even in Huxleyian universe there
existed the rebel unable to come to terms to the prevailing order.
Human desires remain unfulfilled given
the current state of technology and environment. Humans might desire wings to
fly but currently it is not possible. Science fiction precisely addresses the same
by imagining the universe where humans could fly. It remains in the realm of
fiction, nevertheless it seeks to show a window, however narrow it might seem
to a way of fulfillment of human desires. The emergence of virtual reality,
augmented reality, virtual worlds on the net like Second Life, are outlets for the expression of fulfillment
of fantasy.
While imagination might travel
into unconquered frontiers, there is nonetheless a realm of actual which is
point in the journey of achieving the imagined possibility. Therefore there is
something possible and something actual. Actual in incremental steps or quantum
leap lead to the creation of the possible.
Sci-fi hence is a shadow of very distant future. It manifests
itself as a 'kangaroo jump' from present to future without the barriers the
current day science imposes. Post Renaissance, the West in its era of
scientific temper, sought to boost human imagination to all possible degrees
leading to mushrooming of strong genre of sci-fi. This genre has existed more
than century& half (literature, theatre). India perhaps could never
replicate of the same despite Bollywood’s unashamed imitation of Hollywood.
Notwithstanding Spielberg plagiarising Ray, hardly any domestic sci-fi has
emerged that could be trendsetter to real life creations. Tragic is India lies
far behind in sci-fi perhaps on the distant periphery.
Sci-fi irrespective of the
quality of content, has numerous spill overs. Innovation is essentially, a
product of tapping latent demand through circumvention of price underpinned
access barriers. Yet price barrier might itself be a product of tech barrier
that impedes the creation of goods and services. Normally innovations move in
incrementally. In the frontier between actual and possible lies something
called adjacent possible. The concept of adjacent possible shows the steps
through which a series of incremental innovations, the actual can traverse in
becoming the possible.
However, there needs to be
imagined a possible. Sci-fi facilitates the same. Therefore it becomes a lead
indicator for tech underpinned entrepreneurship. Any businessman seeks
to fulfil certain latent demand. In absence of such demand too, entrepreneurship
by offering supply of certain possible, allow the creation of demand.
From 3D printing to cyber space
to submarines to mobile phones all were first imagined in science fiction. They
were perhaps the ‘impossibles’ of yesteryears. Yet with passing time, they
became the reality. The risk taking entrepreneurs for fulfilling certain
customer requirements innovate bringing to reality the realm of fiction. The
first submarine was invented in an inspiration derived from Jules Verne’s
Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath the Sea.
Sci fi whether fiction or movie
or theatre or gaming presents to the audience the ‘possibles’ without having to
factor in the degrees of freedom. It sets the motion of thinking among several
people few of whom might desire to see the possible translated into actual. It
is this small niche that begins working on the translation. There would be more
than willing set of eccentrics who would bet on these ideas translated into
practice and thus willing to finance them. The path to the translation into
actual would be fraught with uncertainties and there is more than decent chance
of failure. Yet failures are viewed as a necessary learning curve into the
evolution of the actual. Further, the step is not to convert the possible into
actual but a series of incremental steps in identifying the adjacent possible
and converting the set of adjacent possible into actual. The distant possible
slowly converts itself into near possible thus paving the way for the actual.
As the possible nears the actual, further distant possibles are visualized and
the journey gets a new dimension and destination. The destination is perhaps
never reached and is a continuum. The continuum is not merely new products
themselves but improvements in the existing goods and services.
A sine qua non for progress into
distant and near distant possible is imagination of the possible and thus
science fiction irrespective of the grammar of expression serve as lead
indicators or testing ground for ideas. In Stan Shih’s Smiley curve, the ideas
account for highest value add and these ideas more often than not are moored in
sci-fi.
Coming back to India’s failure in
building a sci-fi ecosystem, it needs a story to be told, perhaps for another
day.
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