Can Sci-Fi Writers Prepare Us for an Uncertain Future? | WIRED - 0 views
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shared by Ed Webb on 14 Jul 19
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a growing contingent of sci-fi writers being hired by think tanks, politicians, and corporations to imagine—and predict—the future
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Harvard Business Review made the corporate case for reading sci-fi years ago, and mega consulting firm Price Waterhouse Cooper published a guide on how to use sci-fi to “explore innovation.” The New Yorker has touted “better business through sci-fi.” As writer Brian Merchant put it, “Welcome to the Sci-Fi industrial complex.”
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The use of sci-fi has bled into government and public policy spheres. The New America Foundation recently held an all-day event discussing “What Sci-Fi Futures Can (and Can't) Teach Us About AI Policy.” And Nesta, an organization that generates speculative fiction, has committed $24 million to grow “new models of public services” in collaboration with the UK government
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Some argue that there is power in narrative stories that can’t be found elsewhere. Others assert that in our quest for imagination and prediction, we’re deluding ourselves into thinking that we can predict what’s coming
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The World Future Society and the Association of Professional Futurists represent a small but growing group of professionals, many of whom have decades of experience thinking about long-term strategy and “scenario planning”—a method used by organizations to try and prepare for possible futures.
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Are those who write epic space operas (no matter how good those space operas might be) really the right people to ask about the future of work or water policy or human rights?
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true Futurism is often pretty unsexy. It involves sifting through a lot of data and research and models and spreadsheets. Nobody is going to write a profile of your company or your government project based on a dry series of models outlining carefully caveated possibilities. On the other hand, worldbuilding—the process of imagining a universe in which your fictional stories can exist—is fun. People want stories, and science fiction writers can provide them.
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critics worry that writers are so good at spinning stories that they might even convince you those stories are true. In actuality, history shows us that predictions are nearly impossible to make and that humans are catastrophically bad at guessing what the future will hold
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it's important to distinguish between prediction and impact. Did Star Trek anticipate the cell phone, or were the inventors of the cell phone inspired by Star Trek? Listicles of “all the things sci-fi has predicted” are largely exercises in cherry picking—they never include the things that sci-fi got wrong
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In this line of work, specifics matter. It’s one thing to write a book about a refugee crisis, but quite another to predict exactly how the Syrian refugee crisis unfolded
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It’s tempting to turn to storytelling in times of crisis—and it’s hard to argue that we’re not in a time of crisis now. Within dystopian pieces of fiction there are heroes and survivors, characters we can identify with who come out the other side and make it out OK. Companies and governments and individuals all want to believe that they will be among those lucky few, the heroes of the story. And science fiction writers can deliver that, for a fee.