The Future and Our Responsibility to it.
As a species, we are profoundly talented architects of our own future.
But to do the job well, we need to get a much better grip on where we’re heading, and how we ensure it’s a better place than the one we came from. This is a responsibility we all face. — Andrew Maynard
In this episode, Andrew Maynard joins us. He is a scientist, author, and one of the nation’s leading thinkers on socially responsible and ethical innovation.
His work involves exploring the socially responsible and responsive development of emerging and converging technologies, including synthetic biology and gene editing, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence.
As Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Lab, he is pushing the boundaries of how we think about risk and learn to succeed as we develop increasingly complex technologies. Andrew is also an active member of World Economic Forum’s Council on Nanotechnology.
Andrew’s popular science/technology book Films from the Future explores socially responsible and ethical approaches to innovation through the lens of twelve science fiction movies, while his latest book, Future Rising, takes readers on a unique journey through humanity’s relationship with the future, and our responsibility to it. You can pre-order it using this link, I’ve already pre-ordered mine.
This episode will air during one of the most uncertain times I have ever experienced. The world is facing a big challenge with the outbreak of COVID-19 and it seems to be stress-testing most of the complex systems our daily lives rely upon, such as the economy, healthcare, court systems, geopolitics, and so forth.
That being said, I am confident that we will excel in solving this challenge and, most importantly, that we will learn from this crisis and start to take a more humble approach to life, rather than just continue to do the things we do as if nothing happened.
This episode — and the books that Andrew has written — have taught me a lot about our relationship with the future and the responsibility to it. This conversation comes as a remainder that all of us are designers of the future, and we can create it as a “better place than the one we came from”.
Films From The Future
How incredible, we can all envision a future and for most of us it is something we take as guaranteed. What strikes me the most is that the future, rationally speaking, is fiction. There is no future, today. But at the same time, there is — in our collective mind.
In his book, Films From The Future, Andrew writes about the history of the future. That is, he takes us on a journey of what the future holds for humanity from a historical perspective. This journey is done through an analysis of twelve sci-fi movies, each one illustrating technologies that will shape our future, from artificial intelligence to gene sequencing.
One main question arises: if the future does not exist in the physical world, how impactful can our stories be, those that we create in present time, to shape the future? More specifically, can sci-fi movies influence the technologies we create in the future?
Even more specifically, how can a human, in this case, a director, extrapolate his/her mind into a fictional world where the technologies used in a movie do not exist yet and by portraying them it can have the power to create those same technologies in the future? This may sound very confusing — at least for me — so allow me to illustrate my thoughts with an example:
My father’s favorite sci-fi show is Star Trek. It is a renowned show that shows what humanity could become — an intergallactic species. What’s striking about this show is that it showed plenty of technologies the directors projected to come into fruition in the 23rd Century. Nontheless, many have realized into our reality right now, such as voice recognition (i.e. “Hello Siri”), tablet computers, portable memory, teleconferencing, and assistive technology among many others.
This is what strikes me about sci-fi movies. They have the power of capturing a possible future, one with technologies non-existent yet or still in development while filming the show or movie. Films From the Future captures this exact idea by exploring twelve movies that explore the future of society that is being built around technology. Movies analyzed in the book include: Ex Machina, Transcendence, Jurassic Park, Minority Report, Elysium, Inferno, and Limitless.
All of these movies shed a light in our current reality and the setting of our society for the future. Emerging trends in technologies, such as Geoengineering, Cloning, Artificial Intelligence, Crime Prevention, Surveillance, Performance Enhancing Drugs, and Nanotechnology promise to change society as a whole.
These technologies may result in a more equitable reality, but they can also exaggerate the inequity in society — as portrayed in Elysium. Moreover, if Crime Prevention Artificial Intelligence Machines do come into being, it is totally plausible that it has been modified to arrest certain people rather than real criminals. This is a current issue that the world is witnessing with what’s happening in China with the 2020 Social Credit System.
The biggest question that I take after reading the book Films From the Future is: given that these technologies promise to open an array of possibilities, many offering negative outcomes and plenty offering great outcomes, should we go ahead and create them just because we can? Andrew offers his answer in the book, and I won’t spoil it so you can read it by yourself. What a great book this is. Thanks, Andrew.
Future Rising
This book, which will be released later than expected due to COVID-19, catches the more philosophical aspect of the future and our responsibility to it. The chapters are divided by keywords, such as knowledge, reason; curiosity, possibility; fear, hope; deception, perception; meaning, responsibility.
This way of explaining the complexity of what the future could hold is mind blowing. Future Rising makes you wonder how far has humanity come and makes you question why has it achieved so much and seeks to accomplish even more. But, in order to keep achieving milestones, we must understand from where we came from and which future are we building.
What’s amazing is the fact that the future is not pre-determined. And this gives us a window of opportunity to decide the paths we can take as a collective body. Moreover, understanding the forces — like hubris, instinct and faith — that drive our obsession with the future can also make us more conscious of how we are swayed to create a variety of outcomes.
If you read Films From the Future and then read Future Rising, you’ll have your mind-blown as they connect so beautifully with each other. That is, you see how powerful some of the topics covered in the latter book are, such as delusion, like in Jurassic Park when they thought life wouldn’t find a way or that Dinosaurs would behave like house pets.
This book, I dare to say, is a lot more than just a journey to the future. For me, reading it was a humbling remainder that life is complex, that it will always throw us a curveball and it won’t stop amazing us with its might; that we have a responsibility to it and we must think before acting. Future Rising also serves as a wake up call for all of us to get a hold of ourselves, to understand one another and dive deep into what makes us, us.
If we do it, we can ensure that the future is one that brings joy to everyone and opens a realm of possibilities for all mankind to unravel as they should — exploring their potential and inner soul through what they love doing, like inventing, and art.
Future Rising is a must-read. I have already pre-ordered my copy and you can do it too using this link
