Stories of the future - science fiction, foresight and the future

In 1993, Vernor Vinge published a controversial paper that heralded a new and radical theory - ‘The Singularity’. The premise is that technological progress is accelerating so fast that eventually, this progress will result in machines with intelligence equal to humans. When these machines then create intelligence beyond their own, the human era, as we know it, will be altogether different.

‘The Singularity’ theory has divided audiences and readers ever since its presentation. If it sounds a little like the ‘Matrix’, that’s because it is. At a deeper level and, the most likely reason why this idea has currency and continues to fuel debate, is that it highlights the increasing role and dependency humans place upon technology.

If you’re after something to stretch your thinking, it’s worth a look - http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html

Can you imagine what it would be like if someone researched all of the major developments and trends of the last several hundred years and plotted these on one graph? Well, this is exactly what Peter von Stackelberg at FuturesWatch has done. The timeline includes everything from the development of steam engines through to the first flight of a commercial jet, and goes on to indicate predictions for this century. Mindboggling is an understatement!

To see the complete ‘Timeline of Trends and Events’ go to - http://www.futureswatch.org/Timeline.htm

In 1996 The Long Now Foundation was created to help expand people’s mindsets from short term thinking to long term planning for the future. One of the organisation’s projects, ‘The Clock of The Long Now’, is a clock based on a 10,000 year cycle! Now that’s planning for the future. The prototype of the clock is presently on display at The Science Museum (London).

To find out more info on the clock visit http://www.longnow.org/

Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in 2004 unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called “dark ages”, the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. The HUDF field contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies. Its worth considering that Earth is part of the Milky Way galaxy, which alone is thought to contain over 100 billion stars! What’s 10,000 x 100 billion?

To view the site and photograpgs go to http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/07/text/

Bill Gates predicts that the next hot field will be robotics and that it will spark a revolution in the home. “Some of the world’s best minds are trying to solve the toughest problems of robotics, such as visual recognition, navigation and machine learning. And they are succeeding,” says Gates.

View Scientific American - http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleid=9312A198-E7F2-99DF-31DA639D6C4BA567

Royal Dutch Shell is the pioneer of the Scenario Planning process. From their website:

Scenarios provide alternative views of the future. They identify some significant events, main actors and their motivations, and they convey how the world functions. Building and using scenarios can help us explore what the future might look like and the likely changes of living in it.

There is a natural cross over between Scenarios and Science Fiction. Both seek to create ‘future histories’ through narrative which allow us to explore future worlds and what they may hold for. IIt’s not uncommon for science fiction writers to be used to write the narratives for the scenario planning process.

For more info visit http://www.shell.com/scenario

To quote from the KurzweilAI.net website:

Wild Cards are low-probability, extremely high-impact events that are social and technological developments or natural phenomena sharing four characteristics. Wild Cards are:

* global in scope and directly effect the human condition;
* potentially disruptive (negatively and/or positively);
* intrinsically beyond the control of any single institution, group or individual; and
* rapidly moving.

Developing an understanding of such events (and trust me….there is lots of literature on the web about them. Everything from meteors hitting earth to global communication meltdowns) can help SF writers (and everyone else) explore the future.

Read more at http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0138.html?

This is a great example of using scenarios to explore possible futures. Epic 2015, developed by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson, uses multimedia to show us what the future of media might look like as offline and online journalism coverge. Check it out at www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic.