WEBVTT

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Would you like to know 
what's in our future?

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What's going to happen tomorrow,
next year, or even a millennium from now?

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Well, you're not alone.

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Everyone from governments to militaries
to industry leaders do, as well,

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and they all employ people
called futurists

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who attempt to forecast the future.

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Some are able to do this
with surprising accuracy.

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In the middle of the 20th century,

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a think tank known as
the RAND Corporation

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consulted dozens of scientists
and futurists

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who together forecast 
many of the technologies

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we take for granted today,

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including artificial organs,

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the use of birth control pills,

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and libraries able to look up
research material for the reader.

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One way futurists arrive
at their predictions

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is by analyzing movements and trends
in society,

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and charting the paths they are likely
to follow into the future

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with varying degrees of probability.

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Their work informs the decisions
of policymakers and world leaders,

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enabling them to weigh 
options for the future

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that otherwise could not have 
been imagined in such depth or detail.

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Of course, there are obvious limits to how
certain anyone can be about the future.

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There are always unimaginable 
discoveries that arise

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which would make no sense
to anyone in the present.

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Imagine, for example,

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transporting a physicist 
from the middle of the 19th century

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into the 21st.

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You explain to him that a strange material
exists, Uranium 235,

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that of its own accord can produce enough
energy to power an entire city,

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or destroy it one fell swoop.

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"How can such energy come from nowhere?"
he would demand to know.

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"That's not science, that's magic."

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And for all intents and purposes,
he would be right.

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His 19th century grasp of science

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includes no knowledge of radioactivity
or nuclear physics.

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In his day, no forecast of the future
could have predicted X-rays,

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or the atom bomb,

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let alone the theory of relativity

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or quantum mechanics.

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As Arthur C. Clarke has said,

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic."

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How can we prepare, then, for a future
that will be as magical to us

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as our present would appear to someone
from the 19th century?

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We may think our modern technology
and advanced data analysis techniques

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might allow us to predict the future
with much more accuracy

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than our 19th century counterpart,

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and rightly so.

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However, it's also true that our 
technological progress

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has brought with it new increasingly 
complex and unpredictable challenges.

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The stakes for future generations to
be able to imagine the unimaginable

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are higher than ever before.

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So the question remains:

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how do we do that?

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One promising answer has actually been
with us since the 19th century

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and the Industrial Revolution

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that laid the foundation 
for our modern world.

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During this time of explosive development
and invention,

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a new form of literature, science fiction,
also emerged.

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Inspired by the innovations of the day,
Jules Verne, H.G. Wells,

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and other prolific thinkers explored
fantastic scenarios,

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depicting new frontiers of human endeavor.

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And throughout the 20th century
and into the 21st,

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storytellers have continued to share their
visions of the future

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and correctly predicted many aspects
of the world we inhabit decades later.

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In "Brave New World,"

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Aldous Huxley foretold 
the use of antidepressants in 1932,

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long before such medication 
became popular.

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In 1953, Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451,"
forecast earbuds,

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"thimble radios," in his words.

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And in "2001: A Space Odyssey,"

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Arthur C. Clarke described a portable,
flat-screen news pad in 1968.

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In works that often combine entertainment
and social commentary,

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we are invited to suspend our disbelief
and consider the consequences

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of radical shifts in familiar 
and deeply engrained institutions.

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In this sense,

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the best science fiction fulfills 
the words of philosopher Michel Foucault,

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"I'm no prophet. My job is making windows
where there were once walls."

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Free from the constraints of the present
and our assumptions of what's impossible,

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science fiction serves as a useful tool
for thinking outside of the box.

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Many futurists recognize this,

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and some are beginning to employ
science fictions writers in their teams.

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Just recently, a project called iKnow
proposed scenarios

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that look much 
like science fiction stories.

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They include the discovery of
an alien civilization,

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development of a way for humans
and animals to communicate flawlessly,

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and radical life extension.

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So, what does the future hold?

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Of course, we can't know for certain,

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but science fiction 
shows us many possibilities.

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Ultimately, it is our responsibility

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to determine which 
we will work towards making a reality.