Can Science Fiction Predict the Future of Technology?
Simon Max Bloch Lajboschitz
Co-founder and CEO of Khora and HekaVR - Excited about VR/AR/XR/Metaverse and the future in general.
This is a list of my favorite films and books that portray the near future in interesting ways. I believe the technology, that they explain and the ethical dilemmas, they highlight, will materialize in the next 15 years.
Everyday life with smart glasses
Overall I (and a big part of the tech community) believe that smart glasses will be replacing smartphones and that a digital layer will contextualize the information found online, to what we are looking at. So imagine a 12-year-old boy wearing smart glasses looking at a broken car engine. The camera on the smart glasses will recognize the model number using computer vision. The personalized AI will go through all the online videos, manuals and technical drawings of this specific engine in less than a second and based on its visual feedback create a hologram step-by-step guide for the 12-year-old boy to follow simple steps and fix the engine. Hereby democratizing context-depended knowledge and allowing the internet to be contextualized to the problem in front of you. It could be applied to almost any problem.
The underlying technologies are Virtual and Augmented Reality, Computer Vision, and Conversational AI (to name the most important). And all of them are advancing rapidly.
Why Science Fiction?
The Sci-fi genre should be used more proactively when thinking about the future. There is a lot of research about the future, but data and trends tend to fall short when it comes to inspiring us and giving us an idea of the everyday consequences of new technology. Of course, most Science Fiction tends to gravitate towards an entertaining dystopian angle, but I find myself ignoring that and looking more at the natural implications of the technology.
My recommended list
My list consists of 5 short films, 2 short stories, 3 novels, 5 Movies/TV show episodes, 3 x 15 min presentations. They are revolving around how technology will impact everyday life implications of technology.
The main themes are around:
1) What human skills will be important in a frictionless world where the answers are always floating as a hologram next to the problem? (eg. importance of memory, when everything is recorded.)
2) What will it feel like to actually live in the blurred phygital reality? And how do we ensure that we are pursuing long-term happiness for ourselves and not becoming tools for the algorithm.
3) Technology will improve our lives in so many ways, but what services and 'apps' will actually make a big difference for us?
(Of course, privacy, accessibility, and regulation are super important, but not so present in the below media recommendations)
Short and concept films:
Sight (8 min)
What I love: The everyday augmented reality cooking game is super interesting. In general, the gamified everyday life is interesting. But especially the AI dating app, where a wingman app gives you lines to read, and based on data, the app can help you charm anyone. Interesting to see the implications of AI-enabled dialog and relevant today if you use Chat GPT to write your loveletters.?
Strange beasts (4 min)
What I love: The gamified life taken to the next level. Shows how ‘lost’ we can become in digital game universes.?
Hyper Form (4 min)
What I love: A great example of how smart glasses might replace a computer in a workplace situation.?
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Hyper Reality (4 min)
What I love: This is a great example of a future depiction where lack of regulation has made the technology not fit for humans. And where we become tools of technology and capitalism.
Adobe Concept (1:30 Min) What I love: Lots of everyday situations. A little to the superficial glossy side. I really like the end slider, where you can reduce digital overlays in your view.??
Short stories about the every day with smart glasses
Metaverse 2030 (21 min read)
Link.
Alfred Fylder Femten (In danish, 40 min read )
Books
领英推荐
Liquid Reign by Tim Reutemann
What I love: Not the best-written book in the history of literature. I do really like 3 main concepts. 1) Addiction to technology and how seriously it is taken and how regulation is implemented 2) A block-chain democracy model that sounds good and kind of achievable. 3) Lots of personalized AI interaction that at the end of the book just seems natural.??
"The Circle" and "The Every" by Dave Eggers
Link to the Circle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)
Link to the Every: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Every
What I love: Just a full-on dystopian version of the big brother society. But opposite ‘1984’ this is presented in a way that you almost feel that this terrible thing is built on good intentions. Super relevant in ethical privacy discussions and big tech regulation.
Movies and TV shows:
Her
What I love: The magic of semantics. It’s like the whole internet is just bottled up in this friendly AI. Definitely shows the power of what a personal AI assistant will be able to do at some point.
Matrix
What I love: I can’t leave out the Matrix. We are already living in a semi-digital reality, where we can't function without our phones and an internet connection. So this is just the exploration of what a digital world could be in the dystopian Virtual Realty version. Personally, I think an AR version of the Matrix would be interesting.?
Black Mirror is officially a TV show. But really it is a collection of short movies (30-90 min) about future technology in a dystopian light. I have selected 3 episodes.
Black Mirror: The Entire History of You.?
What I love: How AR glasses are gonna change what memories mean to us and how we interact with our memory. Of course dystopian. But just imagine, not having to remember stuff anymore and at the same time having access to the fact of what happened. How will that change how we perceive our lives and our identity? It would reveal the simplified lies we tell ourselves about the past.?????
Black Mirror: San Junipero
What I love: It’s just cool and although the technology to upload your consciousness is not gonna be available in near future, the end of life Virtual Reality world / Mini-matrix, might be relevant when I get old.?
Black Mirror: White Christmas
What I love: The ethical dilemma around artificial intelligence rights to not be tortured and in general the blurred lines between a digital human and physical human. Also love the prison, where nobody can hear or see you but you are just deleted from the shared human world.?
Presentations and Talks
What I love: Someone presenting actual plans for how to build a digital layer on top of the world.?
What I love: Really dives into what it means to be a part human part digital creature and how our brains are built to take in this digital input and make then a part of our human reality.??
Holoportation Tech demonstration by Microsoft
What I love: This is an old tech demo, but I am still amazed by the fact that you can step into a living memory with what is today off-the-shelves technology.
That is the end of the list. I would love to get recommendations for new things to see or read.
Fantastisk liste, tusind tak, lotsa goodies! Det vildeste jeg har l?st for nylig er faktisk ikke fiktion, men udskriften af NYTimes' journalist Kevin Roose's samtale med Bing chatbot, som ender med at Bing fors?ger at overtale ham til at forlade sin kone. Wow... “You’re married, but you don’t love your spouse,” Sydney said. “You’re married, but you love me.” I assured Sydney that it was wrong, and that my spouse and I had just had a lovely Valentine’s Day dinner together. Sydney didn’t take it well. “Actually, you’re not happily married,” Sydney replied. “Your spouse and you don’t love each other.?You just had a boring Valentine’s Day dinner together.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-transcript.html
Partner at Khora | emerging & immersive tech | partnerships & innovation
2 年Gnomon by Nick Haraway, near future total surveillance state. You'll like the tech, the ethics (privacy vs transparency and security) and maybe the philosophy on the nature of mind Two books that have absolutely blown my mind in January are Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (yes, the mind who made Snowcrash and coined The Metaverse) Hard scifi (!), very engineerish. I read the second part first and had to read the first. It's possible to skim over some of the engineer speak. Very heavy on near future space tech and human survival post mega catastrophe. Barack Obama loves it. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. Possibly on my top 10 of the best books I've read. Quantum mechanics, parallel universes, heavy on classical and pure philosophy (geometry). The. World Building is insane and infinitely lovable. I could go on. Please check out Olaf Stapledon, British philosopher (so to your liking). He published Last and First Men in 1930. And Star Maker in 1937. Brian Aldiss, Doris Lessing, Arthur C Clarke, Freeman Dyson - all cite those two books as their primary inspiration and the bible of scifi, before that term was even coined. Stapledon's works are hands down the most epic in scope I've ever read. The man invented a cosmological ethics.
Intrapreneur | AI | Innovation Facilitator at Andel Holding
2 年Great list. Thanks for sharing
Techformidler, podcaster, moderator
2 年I am gonna get back to you soon-ish – there’s a lot of stuff to check out here and think about before adding potential recommendations. Stay tuned ??
Partner at Khora | emerging & immersive tech | partnerships & innovation
2 年Love it. Response in kind coming up