Films from the Future

by Andrew Maynard

  This is, of course, all highly speculative. Assuming that we are not alone, the sheer vastness of the universe does make it unlikely that a signal from another intelligence will reach us before we’ve blown ourselves up or suffered some equally gruesome fate. But, at the same time, the question of how we might react to discovering we’re not the only life around is a profoundly important one, not necessarily because of the possibility of life existing beyond Earth, but because we’re edging closer to creating our own “aliens” here on Earth. Whether through genetic engineering, AI, or advanced human augmentation, it’s quite possible that we’ll one day be faced with something that has not evolved in the conventional way, and yet is, in every way, alive.

  The question is, when we do reach this technological breakthrough—and we’re well on the way to achieving this—how will we respond to these home-grown “aliens”?

  My fear is that these will be yet another passing wonder. If so, this would be a problem, for two reasons. First, while we may be ambivalent toward claims that someone’s created an artificial cell/plant/animal, or that they’ve developed a smarter/more intelligent computer, these will change our lives. And the less the majority of us care about this, the more we give those that do care the opportunity to do what they like, even if it ends up harming us. It’s all well and good hoping that scientists and technologists act responsibly. But responsibility here also means that we collectively need to give a damn about the future we’re creating, and whether it’s the future we want for ourselves and for generations to come.

  This is important—it’s partly why I wrote this book. But there is a second problem. This is the risk of us slipping into complacency, and not reveling in the awe and wonder of the world we’re building. Because, make no mistake, our scientists, engineers, and technologists are catching up with the wild imaginations of science fiction movie writers and directors awfully fast. If you open your eyes and really look at what we are achieving, it’s truly mind-blowing!

  Contact—and every other movie in this book—is a reminder that science and technology are more than a little dangerous if not approached carefully, and that a “meh” response probably isn’t the best strategy for handling them. But it’s also a reminder of the awesomeness of science and technology, and what we can achieve if we get things right. And it’s an exhortation to never let go of our dreams, and to embrace the wonder that comes from exploring the universe we find ourselves in.

  Chapter Fourteen

  LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

  “Don’t panic.”

  —The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

  As I’m writing this, I’m looking out over the Firth of Clyde, from the Scottish island of Arran. I first came here nearly thirty-four years ago, in 1984, and it’s been an occasional getaway for me ever since. Over this time, there have been changes, but the island still has that comfortable feel of a place largely untouched by the frenetic pace of modern innovation. As if to remind me of this, I’ve been traveling along crumbling roads over the past few days, in a rental car that modern automotive technologies seem to have completely bypassed, while grappling with patchy Wi-Fi and even patchier cell-phone coverage. It all feels a long way from the cutting-edge technologies that have threaded through the previous chapters.

  As an outsider, Arran still feels to me as if it belongs to a previous age. Take away the intermittent internet and cellular phone system, and to my off-islander eyes, I could still be in 1984. Yet I find this strangely comforting. Despite sitting here wrapping up a book on the profound changes that emerging technologies are likely to bring about, it gives me hope that there’s life outside the frenzied technological pace at which we sometimes seem to be living our collective lives. And it affirms my belief that happiness lies not in the latest technology, but in the more basic things of life, like food, shelter, warmth, and good company.

  Yet there’s a part of me that knows that these dreams of a slower, more pleasant past are a sentimental illusion. Much as I enjoyed my few days of potholed roads, rickety transportation, and intermittent internet connections, I suspect that there are plenty of permanent residents on Arran who have very different opinions about how things are there. Despite the siren-call of nostalgia for a simpler, less technologically complex time, the reality is that emerging technologies, when developed and used responsibly, can and do improve lives in quite powerful ways. There are far too many people in today’s world who are living disadvantaged lives because they don’t have access to technologies that could make them better, and I worry that, if we’re tempted to start renouncing technologies from a position of privilege, we risk denying too many people without the same privileges the chance to make their own decisions. I would go so far as to say that we have an obligation to explore new ways of using science and technology to improve the world we’re living in and the lives people lead.

  This is an obligation, though, that comes with some tremendous responsibilities. These include working hard to ensure the technologies we develop benefit people without harming them. But they also include learning how to live responsibly in a world that, through our own drive to invent and to innovate, is constantly changing.

  These are tough challenges, and they’re ones that it’s all too easy to leave to “experts” to grapple with. Yet I fear that this is, in itself, an abdication of responsibility. Some of the technological challenges we are facing are so profound, so life-changing, that the questions they raise are ones that we cannot afford to leave solely to people like scientists, innovators, and politicians to answer. The reality is that, if we want to thrive in the technology-driven future we’re creating, and we want to equip our children, and our children’s children, to do the same, we all need to be able to wrap our collective heads around what’s coming our way and how it might affect us. This is no mean feat, though. It’s one that will require a journey of discovery that uncovers the often-hidden links between ourselves and our technologies, and how we can nudge them toward the future we want, rather than one that someone else decides for us.

  Through this book, I’ve set out to show how science fiction movies can help point the way along this journey, flawed as they are. As I’ve been researching and writing it, I’ve developed a deeper appreciation of how the movies here can expand our appreciation of the complex relationship between technology and society, not because they are accurate or prescient, but precisely because they are not tethered to scientific accuracy or to realistic predictions of the future. It’s their creativity, and dare I say it, their entertainment value, that helps open our eyes to seeing the world in new ways which, when seasoned with feet-on-the-ground thinking, can help us better understand what innovating responsibly means.

  Yet, for all their usefulness, there are dangers in getting too wrapped up in science fiction movies as we think about the future. Moviemakers draw on what we can imagine now, based on what we already know; they cannot invent what’s yet to be discovered. And in most movies, science and technology are simply devices that are used to keep a human-centric plot moving along. This is precisely why they excel at revealing insights into our relationship with technology. But at the same time, it makes them a poor guide to the technology itself, unless, like here, they’re used as a stepping-off point for exploring new and emerging developments. There is another danger, though, and this is that, without a good dose of scientific facts and social realism, science fiction movies can leave us with a misplaced impression that we’re careering toward a hopelessly dystopian technological future, and there’s not a lot we can do about it.

  In 1978, the British Broadcasting Corporation first broadcast Douglas Adams’ original radio series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Hitchhiker’s Guide quickly gained a cult following and introduced millions of listeners to the fictional guide of the title. In 2005—four years after Adams’ death—The Hitchhiker’s Guide was given the Hollywood treatment. It wasn’t the best movie ever made, truth be told. But with its irreverent look at life in a com
plex galaxy, and an even more complex society, it does provide a fitting book-end for this particular journey.

  I am, I must confess, a great admirer of the skill with which Adams creatively melded together odds and ends of ideas from very different places to create new ones in his work. He was, of course, well known for his often-absurd humor. But beyond the humor (especially in the book and radio series), The Hitchhiker’s Guide provides a remarkably astute commentary on our relationship with technology. More importantly, though, the fictional “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,” on which the series/book/film is based, has the words “DON’T PANIC” inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

  In today’s socially and technologically complex world, this is sage advice. Of course, we shouldn’t be complacent—far from it. Without a doubt, there are deep pitfalls on the road before us as we build our technological future. As we’ve seen in the preceding chapters, there are a multitude of ways in which we can well and truly make a mess of things if we don’t think about what we’re doing. And yet, I’m optimistic enough to believe that we have the collective ability to develop new technologies in ways that work for us, not against us. And here, “Don’t Panic” is as good a piece of advice as any.

  There are, of course, many problems that we cannot solve with science and technology on their own. Just like you can’t buy love and happiness with money alone, you can’t simply “science” your way to them either. But if we’re smart about it, we can use science and technology to make love and happiness—and the many other things that are important to us—that much easier to achieve. If we can keep a clear head about us, and don’t fall prey to panic, or become so enamored by the tech itself that we become blind to its potential downsides, we have a decent chance of building a better future together by developing and using emerging technologies in ways that do more good than harm.

  Because of this, I feel the words “Don’t Panic” are particularly apt here. There is, though, another passing resemblance between this book and Adams’ fictional Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and this is the way that neither claims to be a comprehensive, infallible, all-encompassing guide.

  Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—a sort of Lonely Planet guide for galactic travelers who are looking for a great time on a low budget—doesn’t even pretend that it can reveal and explain the vast complexity of the galaxy to its readers. Instead, it focuses on what galactic hitchhikers really need to know, like how to get from A to B while having a good time, how to avoid getting killed, and where to get the best drinks. This, of course, is a long way removed from this book. Yet, when I started to write it, two things quickly became very clear. The first was that, for most people, what they really want when looking for a guide to the future is something that helps them get from A to B while having a good time, how to avoiding getting killed, and where to get the best drinks. The second thing was that no one ever reads an overlong, overweight, and utterly incomprehensible guide.

  Sadly, this book fails miserably on the “where to get the best drinks” front. But I’d like to think that the preceding chapters, and the movies they’re based on, have taken you on an interesting journey, and one that provides at least a glimpse of how we can work toward creating a technologically sophisticated future, while not creating more problems than we solve on the way.

  That said, much like its galactic counterpart, the book is a very incomplete guide. Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of being one of the contributors to the annual list of Top Ten Emerging Technologies published by the World Economic Forum, and I can safely say that, out of the seventy emerging technologies we’ve highlighted to date, there are only a handful that appear here. There are no self-driving cars in this book, and no advanced nuclear reactors. There’s no precision medicine, or hydrogen-powered vehicles, or quantum computing. And there’s absolutely no mention of blockchain. The reason, of course, is that the world of technological innovation is so vast, so complex, and so fast-moving that any guide that attempted to explain everything would end up achieving nothing.

  Rather, I set out to focus on how we think about technological innovation, society, and the future, while exploring some intriguing, but by no means comprehensive, developments on the way. And by drawing on the imagination and creativity of science fiction movies, I hope this book achieves this. It may not teach you how “deep learning” works, or the intricacies of CRISPR-cas9 gene editing. But the journey it covers, starting with Jurassic Park and de-extinction, and ending with Contact and the search for extraterrestrial life, has hopefully left you with a new appreciation for how science and technology intersect and intertwine with society, and how, working together, we can help use this to build a future that everyone benefits from.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of talking and working with many amazing people whose ideas and insights have informed and inspired me, and helped guide this book. Sadly, they are too numerous to list, but I am deeply indebted to them, as I am to the script writers, directors, actors and producers of the movies featured here, and who provided the creative inspiration for Films from the Future. Without them, this book would not exist. In addition to these founts of knowledge and inspiration, this book wouldn’t have become what it did without an army of friends and colleagues who graciously allowed me to ply them with early drafts, and equally graciously provided critical feedback that reduced my chances of making a fool of myself: Michael Bennett, Diana Bowman, Michael Burnam-Fink, Ariel Conn, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Joey Eschrich, Jane Flegal, Elizabeth Garbee, Sarah Geren, Jess Givens, Darshan Karwat, Lauren Keeler, Eric Kennedy, Jon Klane, Sean McAllistair, Nicole Mayberry, Philip Maynard, Stephen Maynard, Becca Monteleone, Anna Muldoon, Hilary Sutcliffe, Lucy Tournas, and Jamie Winterton. Of course, having offered their services this time round, they’re going to find it hard to escape being drafted in to do the same with the sequel to Films from the Future. I also want to gratefully acknowledge the wonderful encouragement, guidance, and support, of my editor Hugo Villabona and the whole team at Mango—without whom this book would probably still be no more of a reality that some of the sci-fi futures it explores. And of course, none of this would have been possible without the support and encouragement of my family, and especially my wife, Clare.

  Thank you.

  * * *

  1 An open letter from JANA partners and CALSTRS to Apple, Inc., January 6, 2018. Accessible at https://thinkdifferentlyaboutkids.com/

  2 For a good working definition of responsible research and innovation, I’d recommend a 2013 paper by Jack Stilgoe, Richard Owen, and Phil Macnaghten. “Developing a framework for responsible innovation.” Research Policy 42(9): 1568-1580. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.05.008

  3 For more on risk innovation, I’d recommend reading this 2015 article. “Why we need risk innovation.” Nature Nanotechnology 10: 730–731. http://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.196

  4 In 1993, the British artist Damien Hirst produced an exhibit with the title “Mother and Child (Divided).” It consisted of a cow and calf, each sliced in half, pickled in formaldehyde, and mounted in a display cabinet. http://damienhirst.com/mother-and-child-divided-1

  5 A 2013 study tried to extract DNA from copal, an ancient form of resin that precedes full fossilization into amber. The scientists failed, and as a result claimed that it’s exceedingly unlikely that DNA could be extracted from amber, which is millions of years older than copal. Jurassic Park has a great scientific premise. Sadly, it’s not a realistic one. Penney D, et al. (2013). “Absence of Ancient DNA in Sub-Fossil Insect Inclusions Preserved in ‘Anthropocene’ Colombian Copal.” PLoS One 8(9). http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073150

  6 There is just a passing mention of the Jurassic Park dinosaurs’ dependence on lysine in the movie. In the original book, though, lysine dependence plays a substantial role in the ensuing story.

  7 During filming, there was an actual hurricane that hit the site. Some of the storm foot
age is real.

  8 You can read more about the quest to increase environmental resilience by resurrecting the woolly mammoth in Ben Mezrich’s book “Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History’s Most Iconic Extinct Creature” (2017, Atira Books).

  9 This is a real project, with a real website. You can discover more at http://www.pleistocenepark.ru/en/

  10 The Tauros Program is a Dutch initiative to create what they call a “true replacement” for the currently-extinct aurochs. You can find out more at http://taurosprogramme.com/

  11 In 2009, a team of scientists synthesized an artificial form of DNA with six nucleotide building blocks, rather than the four found in naturally-occurring DNA (Georgiadis, M. M., et al. (2015). “Structural Basis for a Six-Nucleotide Genetic Alphabet.” Journal of the American Chemical Society 137(21): 6947-6955. http://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5b03482). More recently, scientists reported in the journal Nature that they had created a semi-synthetic organism that used artificial six-letter DNA to store and retrieve information (Zhang, Y., et al. (2017). “A semi-synthetic organism that stores and retrieves increased genetic information.” Nature 551: 644. http://doi.org/10.1038/nature24659).