Core77

Allan Chochinov, Core 77's editor in chief, has quietly published a long and thoughtful article on Adobe's Think Tank where he analyses the importance of fictional products, i.e. ideas for products that will not ever be manufactured, which he argues is a different kind of prototyping.

"When we consider the near-future of on-demand printing, rapid prototyping machines, and home fabbers, the distinction between "prototyping tools" and "production tools" breaks down almost entirely. And for much of what designers produce, there may be no mandate to mass-produce their work at all. If the "ideas of design" are just as effective at communicating thoughts around experience, behavior, culture, and enterprise as the injection-molded kind, there's really no necessity for these virtual artifacts to ever leave the virtual realm. It may indeed be best to leave them in the sphere of idea -- consuming them through pixels and sharing them across networks and communities -- rather than hauling them around in shipping containers and disposing of them as soon as we're bored."