Bostrom, Corwin in BBC4’s Visions of the Future

Visions of the Future, the BBC special hosted by physicist Michio Kaku will air as a three-part series starting on 5 November, 2007.  Nick Bostrom and Anne Corwin from the IEET are part of the series, as are many other futurist luminaries such as Ray Kurzweil, Joel Garreau, Jaron Lanier, Paul Saffo and Rodney Brooks.

In this new three-part series, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the ‘Age of Discovery’ to the ‘Age of Mastery’, a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities.

Anne writes: I was interviewed for a portion of this special back in May—at this point I honestly don’t remember a whole lot about what I actually said, but I know I discussed life extension and (I think) the fact that technological innovation should lead to an increase in diversity, not a decrease.  I’ve no clue how the editing is going to make it sound, though—I guess the main thing I hope is that my enthusiasm for longevity medicine and for the proliferation of diversity comes through, and that my disapproval of “eugenics”, etc., also comes through.  (One question that seems to come up a lot is whether I think we’re going to end up with a “world of genetic haves and have-nots”, and the amount of inherent prejudice behind that question never ceases to astound me).

Seriousness aside for the moment, though: one funny thing (well, funny to me) that happened during the filming was that we all walked to a nearby park so that the camerapeople could get some footage of me sitting on a bench typing on a laptop.  I figure they just wanted the footage for visual variety, but I found it amusing because I’ve never in my life gone to that park to work on the computer.

Overall, the description of the “Visions of the Future” series reminds me a lot of all those “Gee Whiz, What If This Happened?” speculative science shows I loved to watch as a youngster.  That’s one reason I thought it was a neat thing to participate in—I remember watching an “invention” show called Beyond 2000 (lated renamed Beyond Tomorrow over a period of several years, and I’m a bit of a “retro-future” enthusiast in that I love mining the Web and old basement boxes for magazine articles purporting to predict the Amazing Developments Just Around The Corner. 

I’ve read and watched so much media of this sort that I’ve found it impossible to even consider getting “attached” to any particular vision of the future—even though flying cars, jet packs, and houses made entirely of plastic figured big in American 1950s “futurism”, there was still plenty of subtle and not-so-subtle variety in the overall future-speculative genre.  And I’ve also seen enough years even in my own less-than-30 of them to realize how ridiculous trying to pinpoint “exact arrival dates” for any given technology is.  “2000” has come and gone (remember when people used to append “2000” to everything, in an effort to make it sound cool and futuristic?) and a lot of things I imagine a lot of people were waiting for ended up becoming obsolete before they could be invented. 

So, in short, I do understand and appreciate superlativity critiques.  I think it’s important for everyone to realize that while a person might be able to say, “Okay, I can imagine X and what it would take to build X, and here’s when I think we’ll have X on that basis”, they can’t go much further beyond the very short term in that extrapolation.  One of the “retro-future” articles I recall reading a while back proposed a post-2000 world “entirely run by vaccuum tubes, with computers weighing no more than a few tons!”  There’s a huge element of uncertainty in science, and we don’t always know what’s going to be important, or what one given technology (along with the prevailing set of social conditions) is going to enable.

But—I also figure that some degree of sweeping, superlative near-pantomime is part and parcel of the popularization of science.  Some people might not end up giving the topics discussed on “future-speculative” programs a second thought, but others will undoubtedly be inspired to learn and study more.  I know that such programs were a huge inspiration for me as a child.  And most sensible people, I think, realize that utopia and apocalypse are equally unrealistic propositions—but projecting forward our present-day dreams, wishes, hopes, and deep anxieties can still be a useful (and, dare I say, enjoyable) exercise.  Just remember that there’s a lot we can do now to help improve things in the world—even in the absence of benevolent nanobot swarms.