A convincing diegetic artefact does not come from nowhere — it comes from a world. World-building is the process of constructing that world: its rules, values, tensions, internal logic. Without world-building, a future object is just a "futuristic" gadget. With world-building, it becomes a window onto a possible world.
Rigorous world-building starts from four fundamental questions. Who holds power in this world? What laws and institutions exist? What values dominate the culture? How does material infrastructure work — energy, transport, communications, food? Each answer opens implications that must be coherent with each other.
Let us take a concrete example. Imagine a future where the climate crisis has made repairing every electronic object mandatory. Who holds power? Probably repair cooperatives, public bodies certifying skills, large companies required to supply spare parts. What laws? Mandatory repairability, ban on planned obsolescence, taxes on electronic waste. What values? Sustainability, autonomy, community. Infrastructure? Widespread repair labs, component exchange networks, decentralised energy.
Internal coherence is the golden rule. If community value dominates in this world, a centralised and surveilled ID badge makes no sense — unless that is precisely the scenario's tension point. If energy is decentralised, a service requiring enormous data centres must be explained or removed. Every incoherence breaks credibility.
Stuart Candy speaks of "scenario logic" — the internal logic that makes a scenario not just plausible but inhabitable. When you build a world, ask yourself: could a real person live in it? What would they eat, how would they move, what would worry them? If you cannot answer, the world is still too thin.
World-building is not about predicting the future — it is about exploring possibilities with rigour. A well-built world makes diegetic artefacts more powerful and discussions deeper. It is the difference between "here is a strange object" and "here is what our life could be like".