Working out details of a technology concept

The best way to explore the implications of any idea is to write about it. Write an origin story for your technology; then write about its first presentation to the public and the resulting upheaval. Do a character study of someone who hates the new technology, then another about the innovator who takes the basic idea but applied it in new ways which greatly increase its value to the world. Write about a tragic misuse of the technology and the legal consequences of that tragedy. Write a distant future story through the eyes of a historian, looking back at the pivotal age when the arrival of the new technology changed everything...

Then take all of that writing and drop it in a shoe box labelled "backstory". Those hard-won pages are not for public consumption. They will not be part of your final story. The only audience they'll ever have is you and their only purpose was to increase your mastery of the new technology and its implications.

Creative writing is not just a tool for telling stories; it is a method for exploring possibilities. Our carefully crafted sentences, pages and scenes are the soil in which ideas grow. Compost a few thousand words around the roots of your technological concept and you will be amazed at what springs up in time.