A brief history of us
The Creative Science Foundation is a non-profit organization, established on 4 November 2011 in London, England, that advocates a synergetic relationship between creative arts (e.g. writing, films, art, dance etc.) and sciences (e.g. engineering, business, socio-political etc.) as a means to fostering innovation.
The roots of Sci-Fi stories as a tool for technological innovation
September 2004
Victor Callaghan presents the paper ‘Some Socio-Technical Aspects Of Intelligent Buildings and Pervasive Computing Research’ at the UN forum ‘The Role of Cities in an Information Age’, as a result of his work on the ‘eGadgets’ project at Essex University. The ‘eGadgets’ project investigated the role of embedding intelligence into network-enabled gadgets. Since most of the audience is not of a technical disposition, Victor devises to include in this paper a set of six short science fiction stories (vignettes), in this way setting the beginning of using science fiction stories as a tool to facilitate conversations about technological innovation between people with different backgrounds.
Sci-Fi stories as a formal tool to advance science and engineering
September 2007
On September 24th, 2007, over a few glasses of weißbier in Ulm, Germany, Brian David Johnson (then of Intel), Victor Callaghan (Essex University) and Michael Gardner (then of BT) share their independent threads and ideas about Science Fiction Stories as a formal tool to advance science and engineering.
Scenario-driven research in Artificial Intelligence
July 2008
Simon Egerton presents the paper ‘Using Multiple Personas in Service Robots to Improve Exploration Strategies when Mapping New Environments‘, at the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Environments in Seattle, USA, which describes multiple personas and irrational thinking for humanoid robots.
The name Science Fiction Prototype is proposed
July 2009
In response to the challenges concerning disruptive innovations that Intel had at the time, Brian David Johnson expands a scenario-driven product innovation framework that Intel was using, to include ‘SciFi Prototype Usage Scenarios’, proposing the name Science Fiction Prototypes in his invited talk ‘Science Fiction Prototypes or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying about the Future and Love Science Fiction’ at the 5th International Conference on Intelligent Environments in Barcelona, Spain.
The first Science Fiction Prototype
July 2009
Brian David Johnson writes ‘Nebulous Mechanisms’ the first Science Fiction Prototype inspired by Egerton’s 2008 paper ‘Using Multiple Personas in Service Robots to Improve Exploration Strategies When Mapping New Environments’. ‘Nebulous Mechanisms’, went on to become a series of stories that eventually morphed into Intel’s 21st Century Robot project and the Creative Robotix ‘RobEE’ project.
1st International Workshop for Science Fiction Prototyping takes place
July 2010
The 1st International Workshop on Creative Science takes place in Kuala Lumpur, conveyed as a vehicle to discuss how these different threads of ideas could be combined into a new discipline for product innovation, threat-casting and facilitating society-wide discussion on science and engineering. In this event, Brian David Johnson presents the paper ‘Science Fiction for Scientists: An Introduction to SF Prototypes and Brain Machines’.
The first Science Fiction Prototype to be commercialised
January 2011
The science-fiction prototype ‘Tales From a Pod’, presented by Victor Callaghan at the 1st International Workshop on Creative Science became the first Science Fiction Prototype to be commercialised by Immersive Displays Ltd as the ImmersaVU.
The Creative Science Foundation (CSf) is inaugurated
November 2011
The nature of SciFi is that it looks at future worlds (no less than 10 years out). This principle fits companies particularly well because their product innovation cycle usually takes between 7-10 years from conceptualization to production. Therefore, Brian David Johnson, Victor Callaghan and Simon Egerton lead to seed-funding from Intel Corporation to form the Creative Science Foundation, inaugurated on November 4th, 2011 in London but operating internationally.
Read a more detailed and personal ‘History of CSf’ from Vic Callaghan, one of the founding members of CSf.
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owever it started, the Creative Science Foundation would be nothing without its members who have made it what it is today, so the real story belongs to all of you, especially those who have attended our events, written SFPs and helped run the organisation through the years.