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Brenda Cooper
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Linking Science Fiction and ScienceHard science fiction writers are really backyard
futurist scenario builders.Science fiction tends to simplify. For example, we
would generally not try to create a world as complex as our own.
We are not usually trying to predict but sometimes we do it anyway (cell phones, translators, bionic humans…). Most typically, we get our ideas from science. Sometimes science gets its ideas from us.
Sometimes we miss. There are no Martians likely to invade Earth.
A story can “seat” a thousand pages of scientific article.
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To really see the future....
Let’s start with a look at the past
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The past is a lens to the speed of change
The Berlin Wall stands between East and West Germany.
World population: 4.5 billion
There was no authorized use of commercial email on the budding internet
The communist bloc does not exist. The European Union does.
World population: 6.8 billion
The internet is worldwide
1980 201030 years
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EconomicsDriver has been information – think Google
Information will remain a driverNew economic drivers may emerge
Design – the age of design for life (biological and artificial), design for goods (copyright/patent on objects designed for 3D print)
Artificial Intelligence is likely to influence economics more by the end of the time horizon, and certainly ever more sophisticated computer models will do so.
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GovernanceThere must be some form of world
governance in order to solve certain problems like climate change, global energy supplies, and global food supplies.
That said, science fiction has warned about the dangers of too much power in any one place for years.
Some of our current social and geopolitical issues are at least partly about resistance to change. This could get worse.
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Society & CulturePrivacy is deadThere will be a lot of us and a lot of us will be
oldWe will know we aren’t aloneWe will be makers of lifeWe will be “Makers”We will be around a lot more robotsWe will be more like robots
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Privacy is deadThere are already sensors or satellites or
drones taking pictures of almost everythingWe ourselves are announcing where we are to
our car manufacturers (OnStar) and to our friends (Foursquare) and to public safety personnel (e911) all the time. Amazon.com and Safeway know what we buy. Our cell phones and our cars always know where we are.
The death of most privacy is necessary to our future
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There will be a lot of us and a lot of us will be old
At the end of this year, the baby boomers start turning 65
Decade World Population
Median Age (US)
% Pop over 65
Median age (World)
% Pop over 65
1980 4.45 Billion 30.1 11.2% 23 5.9%
2010 6.85 Billion 36.6 13% 26.6 7.6%
2030 8.25 Billion 37.9 16.1% 34.2 11.7%
Source: United Nations Population Division
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We will know we aren’t alone
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We will be makers of life
Side note: We are already tinkerers – we alter plant life, for example, regularly through genetic engineering
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We will be Makers
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3D Print is already open source, affordable, and availableSo in twenty years, if this follows a growth curve even partly as fast as the internet, 3D printers will be small, fast, use multiple materials, and do things like the following:
Produce goods on-demand on the spot (hot zones in wars, halfway up Mt. Everest, in the middle of the desert)
Make custom almost-everything almost anywhere – clothes, art, processors, other assemblers, energy
Give just-in-time supply a new meaning
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We will be around a lot more robotsHow many of you see a robot on
most days? By 2030, when I ask that question, most of your hands will go up.
What’s converging?Better software – near AIWe’re learning about mobility in
robotsWe are getting better at
man/machine interaction
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We will be a lot more like robots
Today, we have better prosthetics for people who need them.By 2030, we may CHOOSE to have prosthetics instead of old originals
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Environment: Our world, mappedEverything is mapped, maybe even time (think
models – climate models, memes or belief vectors over time, etc.).
Fooling people about where we are will be difficult (spies, lovers, surprise-planners)
There is already a phenomenal amount of GIS data available, and we should have much more capacity to analyze and use this data in twenty years. We will, in other words, know more about cause, effect, and the future than we do today.
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Environment: Climate On climate change, we’re past the tipping
point unless something major scares us into real change. We don’t know what that means yet.
Heat? Cold? Simply change? Catastrophic change?
It is likely to result in rearranged resources, migration of people, shortage, and economic shocks. Maybe resource wars.
This may be the biggest factor in the future 20 years form now: a combination of real and perceived threats
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Recommended readingGreg Bear – “Quantico,” “Mariposa,” “Vitals,” and
“Darwin’s Children.”David Brin – “The Transparent Society,” and his uplift
novelsCory Doctorow – “The Makers” and his blogVernor Vinge – “Rainbow’s End”Paolo Bagicalupi – “The Windup Girl” and “Pump Six
and Other Stories”Kim Stanley Robinson – Two trilogies – Mars and the
global warming trilogyFutures from Nature – a series of short stories that
have appeared in Nature MagazineMichio Kaku, “The Physics of the Impossible”
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Questions?