2020 Science Archives

Here you’ll find all the currently existing posts on 2020 Science, in reverse date order. Feel free to browse through them, or if you’re looking for something specific, use the search box below.

Sci-fi movies are the secret weapon that could help Silicon Valley grow up

If there’s one line that stands the test of time in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic “Jurassic Park,” it’s probably Jeff Goldblum’s exclamation, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they...

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Even “bad” sci-fi movies can teach us something about emerging technologies!

The film Transcendence, is not a great movie. Yet this futuristic thriller, which stars Johnny Depp as a genius scientist who mind-melds with a supercomputer, provides surprising and sometimes startling insights into how future technologies are unfolding, and the moral and ethical challenges they potentially raise.

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Films from the Future: The Last Chapter

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.

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Enter the Neo-Luddites: Transcendence, The Singularity, and Technological Resistance

On January 15, 1813, fourteen men were hanged outside York Castle in England for crimes associated with technological activism. It was the largest number of people ever hanged in a single day at the castle. These hangings were a decisive move against an uprising protesting the impacts of increased mechanization, one that became known as the Luddite movement after its alleged leader, Ned Ludd.

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Superintelligence: From Chapter Eight of Films from the Future

In January 2017, a group of experts from around the world got together to hash out guidelines for beneficial artificial intelligence research and development. The meeting was held at the Asilomar Conference Center in California, the same venue where, in 1975, a group of scientists famously established safety guidelines for recombinant DNA research. This time, though, the focus was on ensuring that research on increasingly powerful AI systems led to technologies that benefited society without creating undue risks.

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Social inequity in an age of technological extremes (from chapter six of Films from the Future)

On September 17, 2011, a small group of social activists occupied Zuccotti Park in New York City. The occupation became the spearhead for the global “Occupy” movement, protesting a growing disparity between “haves” and “have-nots” within society. Two years later, the movie Elysium built on this movement as it sought to reveal the potential injustices of a technologically sophisticated future where a small group of elites live in decadent luxury at the expense of the poor.

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Minority Report: Predicting Criminal Intent (From chapter four of Films from the Future)

There’s something quite enticing about the idea of predicting how people will behave in a given situation. It’s what lies beneath personality profiling and theories of preferred team roles. But it also extends to trying to predict when people will behave badly, and taking steps to prevent this…

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Never Let Me Go: A Cautionary Tale of Human Cloning (from chapter three of Films from the Future)

In 2002, the birth of the first human clone was announced. Baby Eve was born on December 26, 2002, and weighed seven pounds. Or so it was claimed. The announcement attracted media attention from around the world, and spawned story after story of the birth. Since then, no proof has emerged that baby Eve was anything other than a publicity stunt. But the furor at the time demonstrated how contentious the very idea of creating living copies of people can be.

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Jurassic Park: The Rise of Resurrection Biology (from chapter two of Films from the Future)

I was a newly minted Ph.D. when I first saw Jurassic Park. It was June 1993, and my wife and I were beginning to enjoy our new-found freedom, after years of too much study and too little money. I must confess that we weren’t dinosaur geeks. But there was something about the hype surrounding the movie that hooked us. Plus, we fancied a night out.

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Book update: New title, Amazon Listing, Publication Date, Contents, and more …

After a hectic summer of writing and editing, I'm pleased (if a little frazzled) to report that the book formerly known as "The Moviegoer's Guide to the Future" is on schedule to be published mid-November of this year. Just to whet your appetite,...

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