My guest contributor for the Black Panther reviews is Dr. Lonny J. Avi Brooks.

Dr. Brooks is an Associate Professor in the department of communication at California State University, East Bay, where he has piloted the integration of futures thinking into the communication curriculum for the last fifteen years. Emerging in recent years as a leading voice of Afrofuturism 2.0, Brooks contributes prolifically to journals, conferences and anthologies on the subject, as well as serving as executive producer and co-creator, with Ahmed Best, of The Afrofuturist Podcast. e is the lead co-editor for a special issue of the Journal of Futures Studies: “When is Wakanda? Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity.”

He is lead organizer in Oakland and advisory board member for the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), co-founded by Reynaldo Anderson, a national and global movement dedicated to celebrating the Black imagination and design. Dr. Brooks serves as Creative Director for BSAM Futures, which aims to promote, publish, and teach forecasting with Afrocentric perspectives in mind, using gaming and facilitation for imaginative, action-oriented thinking.

He also volunteers as a core member for outreach at Dynamicland.org, a pioneering non-profit dedicated to creating a more collaborative and dynamic computational medium for the long term. He has a passion for creating games to envision social justice futures including black and queer liberation from Afro-Rithms From The Future to United Queerdom, and Futurescope, he and his co-game designer Eli Kosminsky are committed to articulating emerging new future visions for traditionally underrepresented voices.

He is currently writing Imagining Queer Futures with  Afrofuturism@Futureland: Circulating Afro-Queer futuretypes of Work, Culture and Racial Identity.

“As a forecaster and Afrofuturist who imagines alternative futures from a Black Diaspora perspective, I think about long-term signals that will shape the next 10 to 100 years.”

Dr. Lonny J Avi Brooks

Welcome, Dr. Brooks!

Hi there. Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your name, where are you from, how do you spend your time?

I’m Hugh Fisher (or Hugo if you’re French, Spanish, or Italian and rightly appalled by English spelling and pronunciation). I’ve lived most of my life in Canberra, Australia. I’ve been playing around with computer graphics for one purpose or another since the days of the Apple 2, and occasionally manage to get paid for doing so. Outside of that I draw, read a lot, and play tabletop roleplaying games. When I want to be a bit more active, I’m doing casual jogging, archery, or ultimate frisbee.

What are some of your favorite sci-fi interfaces (Other than in Johnny Mnemonic)? (And why?)

I’m a sucker for old school monochrome text and wireframes, so Alien and Aliens, Star Wars: A New Hope, and classic Battlestar Galactica. And not just the graphics, but also the physical keys, sliders, and joysticks—none of your shiny smooth glass. For color and animation, the BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Strangely, I’m also fond of the very modern full body gestural interfaces seen in Iron Man and Ender’s Game.

Why did you decide to review Johnny Mnemonic in particular?

Because I’m a William Gibson fan and interested in virtual reality. It’s a terrible film, but I’ve always liked the presentation of a futuristic VR Internet. More about this when we get into the film…

What was your biggest surprise when doing the review?

The number of different interfaces and devices was one—I had no idea how much work I’d inadvertently signed up for. I was also surprised to realise that an awful lot of the film makes no sense at all if you haven’t read everything by William Gibson.

What else are you working on?

I’m building up a toolkit of Python code for 3D graphics and the Microsoft Kinect for a couple of artistic/fun interactive projects. I’m also drawing science fictional sheep, and learning about the new edition of the Paranoia RPG.

Hi there. Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your name, where are you from, how do you spend your time?

Hi. I’m Aleatha Singleton, hailing from Houston, Texas. I’ve been a UX Designer for over 15 years. I enjoy solving problems and making things that are easy and fun to use whether they’re digital or analog.

When I’m not at work, I like to read, study the Japanese culture, and teach myself new things such as designing and building furniture or making udon noodles from scratch.

I’ve always been a big fan of sci-fi interfaces and technology, especially when the concepts become reality. It’s always fun and exciting to see how ideas that seemed so impossible only a couple of decades ago are being prototyped and developed in labs around the world, such as holodecks, 3D volumetric interfaces, neural scanners, etc., etc.

In the future, I would like to be a part of cutting edge innovation and ideation—thinking about how technology could improve lives—and then build it and make it real.

What are some of your favorite sci-fi interfaces (Other than in Oblivion)? (And, of course, why?)

Continue reading →