> TE Home
> About TE
> Contact Us
> Editorial Info
> E-Mail Update
> IEEE-USA

05.08

How Can You Become An Innovator? Look to the Stars for Answers

By John R. Platt

For more than a century, science-fiction (SF) authors have played a major role in helping to shape technology innovations. Some writers are scientists themselves, while others create stories that have inspired scientists to create their own inventions.

How do science fiction and innovations in science and technology relate to each other?

"There's a connection in terms of the Scientific Method," says award-winning writer and editor Paul Barnett (whose latest book, under the byline of John Grant, is Corrupted Science.). "Bacon's ideal was that a scientist gather together as much information as possible on a subject, form a hypothesis based on that information, then devise various means of testing the hypothesis. SF writers do something similar with off-the-wall rationales, although generally they're pretty selective rather than comprehensive about the information they gather, and of course the "testing" is most often entirely artificial (although it can, to recap, constitute a thought experiment)."

"A lot of science-fiction writers are working scientists or engineers," says Robert J. Sawyer (Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids), "so, yes, the speculative knack is the same: we look at things and ask why they are the way they are, how they could be better, and what can possibly go wrong."

With that in mind, what can we learn from writers of science fiction that will allow us to be more innovative in the real world?

Inspiring Innovation: Learn to Fantasize, Love Solving Problems

In both science and science fiction, learning to tap into your imagination and your ability to fantasize is critical to your success. "If you can't imagine change, you can't imagine improvement," says Lawrence Watt-Evans (managing editor of Helix, a quarterly speculative fiction webzine, and author of the "Ethshar" fantasy series).

"I think fantasizing is one of the most important functions — and symptoms — of intelligent existence," says Barnett. "We fantasize therefore we are. Much of what we humans do, both individually and collectively, is concerned with extending our influence beyond the ends of our fingers and toes."

Not limiting yourself to what is already "known" or "accepted" can also help. "Mankind is a race of lawbreakers," says Mike Resnick (award-winning author of the "Kirinyaga" series). "Tell a man he can't fly and he'll invent an airplane. Tell him he can't cure infection, and he'll develop antibiotics and penicillin. Tell him his life expectancy is 30, and he'll find a way to triple it."

Another important trait is the desire to solve problems through technology. For their novel, The Ice Limit, bestsellers Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child secretly worked with an engineer from a major corporation. "He didn't want his name used, nor did he want to be paid. Instead, he was so intrigued by the engineering problem we sketched out that he was willing to help us find ways to solve it. So we try, as much as possible, to make the science in our novels real, actual and existing."

Sawyer agrees that problem-solving is critical to success, and can take your ideas in very interesting directions. "As critic Barry Malzberg famously said, anyone could have predicted the automobile — but only a science-fiction writer could have predicted the traffic jam. Or, for that matter, anyone could have predicted the airplane — but it takes a special knack to predict frequent-flyer miles and airport security. Getting the next logical step in technology right is always nice, but nailing the societal implications — the human impact — is a real thrill when you get it right."

Starting Small

Not every innovation has to have world-shattering implications. You don't necessarily have to create a huge discovery in order to have an impact. Small speculations, and small changes, can prove to be equally important.

"Incremental progress is still progress, and contributing to it is valuable," says Sawyer.

"Small changes can make big differences," says Watt-Evans. "And they can accumulate and turn something familiar into something radically different; a switchboard operator from half a century ago could never have imagined an iPhone, because he wouldn't have seen the gradual, incremental steps that led to it.

"So one reason we don't know what's possible is that we haven't yet looked at all the combinations and little changes we do know, but haven't yet tested."

Barnett sees things slightly differently. "I don't know, to be honest, that there's any such thing as a 'small speculation.' I forget who it was who first made the point that there's no such thing as an insignificant ghost: you need proof of the existence of just a single ghost before you have to rewrite large slabs of current science. I think it's the same with speculations about the future: that tiny change you posit would almost certainly have a large — even devastating or catastrophic — effect once all the ramifications had been worked through."

And as for the nay-sayers (either the outsiders or the negative voice in your own head) that's telling you everything has already been created? "I think they're wrong," says Watt-Evans. "We don't know everything that's possible. Even if something has been done, though, that doesn't mean there's no reason to find a new way to do it, or a way to do it better."

Using Science Fiction to Inspire Yourself

If you're still not feeling ready to innovate, maybe one way to jump-start your thinking is to go ahead and immerse yourself in a few science fiction novels.

"Fictional technology offers, I think, a happy hunting ground for technologists in search of inspiration," says Barnett. "When you're operating in the field of Real Technology, there are all kinds of pressures on you — not least economic pressures — to keep your ideas within the realms of the plausible. Otherwise you run the very real risk of pouring vast sums of money into something that was completely harebrained from the outset. On the other hand, SF writers do all those pesky experiments for free – well, sort of – and they put the results out there in plain public view for all to see at the most modest of costs."

"Science fiction/science fantasy tends to show us the next series of obstacles that we 'can't' overcome," says Resnick, "and from the moon landing to the self-aware machine to the cell phone to the artificial heart to a thousand other things that were just imaginings when they first appeared in the literature, we've either broken still more laws or we're about to. The literature just signposts the direction for our next generation of lawbreakers."

Do you still think looking at science fiction is too trivial? Don't dismiss the genre's impact: "In the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey," says Sawyer, "HAL's birthday was said to be in 1997. And in that year, MIT Press published a book called HAL's Legacy, in which artificial-intelligence pioneers described how they'd been inspired by the portrayal of HAL in the 1968 movie: HAL could do face recognition and natural-language processing, he could read lips, and he could beat humans a chess — and a whole generation of scientists and engineers were inspired to try to make machines that could do all those things. Science fiction very much set the agenda for decades of scientific work."

Don't Be Afraid to Fail

Sometimes, our own fears hold us back from trying out new ideas. We're afraid that the ideas will fail, that our time will be wasted, and that keeps us from ever getting started.

"Ah, but "fail" is the wrong word!" says Sawyer. "Yes, sometimes SF has missed things: very, very few writers had any inkling there'd be anything like the World Wide Web, and no SF writers predicted that the first moon landing would be covered live on TV. But we learn from our mistakes and go on — just as good engineers do."

Also, make sure to give your ideas time to evolve and breathe. "An idea is like wine aging in a cask," says Preston. "Sometimes it improves with time, but sometimes when you tap the barrel all you find is vinegar."

And sometimes you end up with an innovation.

John Platt is a marketing consultant and journalist living in Maine. He can be found online at www.john-platt.com. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.

Opinions expressed are the author's.