The CCRU (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit) was a peculiar collective situated at the University of Warwick in the 1990s. Amongst very many other things, the CCRU popularized the term ‘hyperstition’ to describe the phenomenon where fictional ideas or narratives can influence reality by being believed and acted upon.
Consider this a kind of precursor to Design Fiction in that the concept suggests that certain ideas, when circulated and embraced, can manifest in the real world, effectively making fiction real through its impact on culture and society. In this context, Design Fiction is like the operationalization — the deliberate deployment of ideas in a particularly grounded fashion,
but doing so not through the medium of prose-based storytelling but through designed artifacts, experiences, and scenarios that exist very much as if.. — that feeling that this thing (the artifact) is extant and real..just from a slightly near future or ‘adjacent now’
Here's the way the CCRU put it:
“Hyperstition: [An] Element of effective culture that makes fiction in itself real, through fictional quantities such as as time-travelling potentials. Hyperstition operates as a coincidence intensifier, effecting a call to the Old ones.” -
Abstract Culture Digital Hyperstition 1999
Hyperstition is a combination of “hyper” (as in ‘above’, ‘beyond’, ‘over’, but I also wonder about “hype” as in ‘exaggerated’) and “superstition”, referring to ideas or narratives that, through their circulation and belief, bring about their own reality. It suggests that certain beliefs or stories can influence the future by shaping perceptions and actions in the present.
Hyperstition is often discussed in the context of speculative fiction, philosophy, and cultural theory, where it explores how fictional concepts can manifest in real-world outcomes.
This reflection was prompted by Episode 006: The Rumour That Cost
Thirty-Five Billion Dollars and Created A Data Center Radar from Radha and Tobias' “Futurish” podcast which gets into hyperstition in the context of a real-world rumor. Give it a listen!
Oh, and parenthetically, if you want a weird “Wayne's World”-like podcast on Mark Fisher you might be interested in these guys who are like Brick and Brack arm chair interpreters of Fisher's work:
Lost Futures: A Mark Fisher Podcast. These guys are as infuriating as they are entertaining, perhaps without knowing they are either.
“Popularized” might be overstating things a bit as the CCRU was always a bit of an obscure, anonymous and underground affair. More punk that trad academic, I would say. But the idea of hyperstition has since been taken up by various thinkers and writers interested in the
intersections of culture, technology, and speculative fiction. It's relevant to the kinds of discussions we have here and a pathway to connecting material reality to fiction — or how to begin becoming future.
For those who are
Fisherarians, as in Mark Fisher-arian, the late cultural theorist and writer who explored themes of capitalism, culture, and ideology, hyperstition is a concept that resonates with his work. Fisher often discussed how certain cultural phenomena and narratives could shape societal beliefs and behaviors, aligning with the idea of hyperstition as a force that can influence reality through its circulation and acceptance.
I was certainly influenced by Fisher's writing and lectures, introduced to him indiretly during my studies at UCSC in the early 1990s where and when I was trying to develop some kind of scaffolding that could be erected such as to contain the kinds of cultural objects I was boyishly fascinated with — computers, software, games, etc. — and their meaning beyond “whoa..cool!”. An engineer encountering the often in my mind
abstract cultural theories of Deleuze and Guattari, Zizek, Haraway, Jameson and others, this seemed a fun and challenging way to ground them to popular discourse. Fisher's exploration of how culture and ideology intersected with capitalism and technology provided a framework for understanding the dynamics of contemporary society, and undergirded a batch of work I did on the video games SimCity™
and Daryl Gates' Police Quest IV: Open Season
The structure of this combination of hype and superstition is a useful way to think about how certain ideas or narratives can gain traction and influence reality. It suggests that when a
concept is widely circulated and believed, it can create a feedback loop that reinforces its own existence and impact. This can be seen in various cultural phenomena, such as conspiracy theories, urban legends, or even technological trends, where the belief in the idea itself contributes to its manifestation in the real world.
Understanding the
pheneonmon of hyperstition can provide insights into how cultural narratives shape our perceptions of reality and influence our actions. It highlights the power of belief and storytelling in shaping the world around us, and the ways in which fiction can become intertwined with reality through collective acceptance and action.
Beyond understanding
the pheneomenon, we might want to operationalize the principles, right? I mean — if this is a kind of lever or monkey wrench how might we use it to our advantage? How can you tell stories about worlds you want to inhabit, or engage in, or debate and discuss? And how can you do that if your primary gifts and medium are not prose-based story telling? Can you do this through design, through objects, through events, through experiences?
These are questions that the Near Future Laboratory has been exploring for decades now through design fiction, speculative design, and other practices that seek to create tangible representations of possible futures.
This goes beyond abstraction
speculation because I actually prototype in material. Not just ideas but things that can be held, used, experienced, and that form the basis for product design, concept development, and strategic foresight.
By crafting artifacts, scenarios, and experiences that embody speculative ideas, we can help ourselves and our organizations see the unseen
opportunities and test new concepts in a way that is more engaging and impactful than traditional methods of ideation or brainstorming.
Want to discover more about how this approach to design fictional prototyping can help your team and organization gain a bit of future sight? Get in touch and let's have a conversation about how we can work together to explore the futures you want to create.
