Dove sono le auto volanti ? : Analisi del ruolo della fantascienza nella costruzione di futuri esperienziali

The following paper examines the role of science fiction in shaping future scenarios that can be concretely realized. Building upon the concept of design fiction, it will seek to define what a forecast is and how it actively influences the construction of the future. The apparent prophetic nature of science fiction can be explained by the fact that every time we use language or other symbols to refer to objects in the world around us, we are actively participating in the process of constructing those objects. Consequently, the prediction itself can be considered a social construction. Through the act of narrating and imaginative activity, we intervene in the world and actively contribute to its construction (Von Stackelberg e McDowell, 2015). This constructivist perspective is closely related to symbolic interactionism and the sociology of action, both of which suggest that each of us actively contributes to the creation of social structures through daily actions (Fuller e Loogma, 2009). When we apply these principles to future studies, we can see social reality as a shared construction, where each member of a group participates in developing a worldview through the encoding of available information. The concept of design fiction explores various configurations of possible futures and seeks to elicit a response in society. It's crucial to note that fictional narratives don't strictly aim to predict the future but simulate potential futures. These scenarios function as exploration tools and decision-making instruments, shaping our ideas about the future and leading us to anticipate the construction and use of once seemingly impossible artifacts and devices. The example of flying cars in science fiction illustrates a fundamental distinction between a narrative about the future and the actual practice of world-building. This practice involves creating geographically, socially, and culturally coherent fictional worlds. Integral to this process is Alex McDowell's Mandala of World-building, a tool and a method for narrative buildings process. This method, that is the focus of this paper, integrates knowledge from various disciplines, altering the filmmaking process and blurring boundaries between physical and virtual environments. McDowell's world-building model demonstrates the potential of using narrative to communicate visions of science and technology, sparking reflections and discussions about the future. McDowell's approach offers a new way to blend design and speculative narration, elevating fictional worlds to a new level projecting them into the future. This operation, evident in much science fiction, becomes a specialized and interdisciplinary laboratory for constructing future worlds. The proposal of an integrated world-building practice suggests an opportunity to expand the concept of fictional possible worlds towards new horizons of broad interest for narratological discipline and semiotics. We are facing, indeed, worlds constructed to engage in direct dialogue with the reality of the physical world, and which sit on a borderline between fictional enunciation and mental experimentation on the future