If disciplined science-fictional thinking – synthesizing foresight and hindsight into a strategic telemetry positioned for the unevenly distributed future before it arrives – is essential to sound policymaking in an aggressively technological era, then we need to understand the deep dynamics of science-fictional thought. How do we know we are practicing it well? How can we tell if our enemies and adversaries are doing the same – and if they are doing it, how?
Looking back through the history of technological thought, a remarkably clear pattern directs us toward answers to these questions. From postmodern theory to classical philosophy, evidence arises that the best archetypal analogy to science-fictional thinking is the work of the detective – solving not just specifically human (as distinct from divine) mysteries, but, quite particularly, crimes.
There is little more science-fictional in spirit than the concept of the “pre-crime” detective epitomized in “The Minority Report,” Philip K. Dick’s hugely influential 1956 short story. In Steven Spielberg’s Hollywood treatment, the mentally mutated human pre-cogs (whose perpetual visions of violent misdeeds are the secret sauce upon which the cyborg crime prevention system depends) are sleek waifs, one of which Tom Cruise ably springs free from her holding tank. But in Dick’s original, more penetrating science-fictional thinking is on display:
In the gloomy half-darkness the three idiots sat babbling. Every incoherent utterance, every random syllable, was analyzed, compared, reassembled in the form of visual symbols, transcribed on conventional punchcards, and ejected into various coded slots. All day long the idiots babbled, imprisoned in their special high-backed chairs, held in one rigid position by metal bands, and bundles of wiring, clamps. Their physical needs were taken care of automatically. They had no spiritual needs. Vegetable-like, they muttered and dozed and existed. Their minds were dull, confused, lost in shadows. But not the shadows of today. The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. The analytical machinery was recording prophecies, and as the three precog idiots talked, the machinery carefully listened.
