Brenda Cooper

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.

To really see the future....

Let’s start with a look at the past

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

We will know we aren’t alone

We will be makers of life

Side note: We are already tinkerers – we alter plant life, for example, regularly through genetic engineering

We will be Makers

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

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

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

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.

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

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”

Questions?