This is really inspiring. I always had those notebooks when I was a kid. My brother and I would spend hours and hours on my family's boat drawing huge monster machines because our Gameboys and Walkman weren't allowed. We had machines to kill monsters, to create monsters, but obstacle courses to escape and challenge and train the monsters. Intricate details like shredding the monsters into bits or puncturing them like swiss cheese with 90s video game inspired falling spikes. We placed those spikes on large iron plates and that would fall on the monsters. But the monsters were "too smart" so we had to set traps for them and trick them through a maze in order to get them into these traps. I think stories are the most important thing to our daily lives and the progression of our future. He is absolutely right when he says the technology isn't enough. It has to be shown off it a way that your audience knows exactly what they are looking at and why it matters. (sidenote: I think NASA would benefit greatly from a stellar marketing / storytelling plan) With the amount of information and technology we have access to on a daily basis, storytelling is only going to become a more important part of successfully marketing as well at the creation of the ideas. You see it a lot on Kickstarter - those projects that take you on a fantastic journey are the ones that raise the most funds. The products that take the creation of the product to the next level and show you how it would integrate into your daily life. This video even takes that to a whole new level. He uses storytelling to to not just compel consumers to fund or purchase the product. He is showing that fiction and art should be a key step in the creation and realization of the idea. It's not just inspiration. It's not just marketing. It's shaping the idea and using that process in tandem with technology to create something revolutionary. What makes designers such a great group of people to be tasked with creating the impossible? Because they aren't limited like technology or engineers by capabilities. They don't care about money or funds or sourcing or circuits. They imagine and then create the idea in their head and their only limited by speed in which they can think and imagine. The lack of limitations is key to coming up with and idea and working through a process to make that idea fully realized. The second people are limited or simultaneously worried about whether or not their idea can become a reality is the second the creative process is stifled and revolutionary ideas are just plain old ideas.
I absolutely agree about NASA. I think they forget that the explore the Universe on behalf of the human race. Their mission is curiosity incarnate, and should be fueled by that. NASA can change us by what they do. Every time they explore, they redefine us. Someone like Elon Musk inspires so many, because he obviously isn't just interested in making money. He wants to change the way the world is. Every time you create anything, you are changing the world. I think that's basically what Wong is getting at. When creativity is leveraged by technology, the effects can be huge.
I agree. I was surprised to hear that he went to Parsons and worked for Google. I think imagination is absolutely key to technological and economic success. Unfortunately, right now it really seems like imagination is taking root in some sectors, but not others. I also think it's a bummer that a whole generation was brought up being told to be imaginative and creative and then told that they'll have to invent jobs for themselves or reshape themselves to fit into slots created for old-model thinking. I'm with you on NASA. I think it's such a shame that something so iconic and in the spirit of the American ideal has been marginalized to bolster institutions that limit imagination. I like the monster machines thing. I did something similar where I would draw cars like the Batmobile but instead of "batmobile" it would be the _______mobile. I had a whole stack of them someplace. I guess I took a lot of ideas from Wacky Races but I tried to develop the ideas a bit further.
I agree that this was inspiring, and I agree that NASA could take a page out of this book. So much of science fiction is dominated by stories in space. Somehow NASA seems disconnected from that these days. When I was a child, I was part of the young astronauts club. Like you, I had notebooks that I would draw in. My stories involved space ships and aliens and on all of the spaceships was the American flag and the NASA symbol. I wonder if kids still do that these days? Who knows, perhaps these days the drawings have SpaceX written on them. Now that I am a father, my inventive storytelling through drawings and notebooks is reemerging. I draw stories and scenarios for my daughter who is 2 1/2 years old. Her imagination is quickly becoming more and more active. It makes me wonder, if there isn't a place for children in the development of technology. My guess is that companies making children's products already do this, but what about giving a 10-year-old Google-glass and asking them how they would like to use them? I bet you would get some pretty creative responses that might allude most adults.