Films from the Future - Andrew Maynard

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blind spots (this is apparent straight out of the gate with Jurassic Park in chapter two). This makes for compelling narratives, but it also opens the way for surprisingly nuanced approaches to exploring what might go wrong with emerging technologies if we don’t think of who they will impact (and how), and how we can steer them toward better outcomes. And it opens the door to delving into something that is near and dear to my heart: grappling with the risks of new and unusual technologies.

      Most of my professional life has been involved with risk in one way or another. Much of my early published scientific research was aimed at reducing the health risks from inhaling airborne particles. I’ve worked extensively on understanding and reducing the health and environmental risks of nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. I’ve taught risk assessment, I’ve written about risk, and I’ve run academic centers that are all about risk. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that I have less and less patience for how many people tend to think about risk.

      The problem is that, while established approaches to risk work reasonably well when it comes to protecting people and the environment from conventional technologies, they run out of steam rather fast when we’re facing technologies that can achieve things we never imagined. To coopt a Biblical metaphor, we’re in danger of desperately trying to squeeze the new wine of technological innovation into the old wineskins of conventional risk thinking, and at some point, something’s going to give. If we’re to develop new technologies in socially responsible ways, we need to realign how we think about risk with the capabilities of the innovations we’re creating.

      This is the idea behind the concept of Risk Innovation, which is where much of my current work lies.3 Over the past couple of hundred years—pretty much since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution—we’ve become quite adept at developing new ways of causing harm. And over time we’ve become equally adept at developing ways of assessing and managing the risks associated with innovation, whether they arise from mining and manufacturing, exposure to new chemicals and materials, or pollution. But these approaches to risk belong to a different world than the one we’re now creating. With emerging and converging technologies, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that, in order to navigate a radically shifting risk landscape, we need equally radical innovation in how to think about and act on risk.

      Perhaps not surprisingly, risk is at the core of all the movies here. Each of these films has a risk-based narrative tension that keeps its audience hooked. Yet it’s not always apparent that it’s risk that keeps you glued to the screen, or holding your breath, or even reaching for the tissues in places. Most of us are used to thinking about risk in terms of someone’s life being put in danger, or perhaps the environment and ecosystems being threatened, and there’s plenty of this in the book. But these movies also explore other, subtler risks, including threats to dignity, belonging, identity, belief, even what it means to be human.

      These are rather unconventional ways of thinking about risk, and they get at what is so important to us that our lives are diminished if it’s denied us, or taken from us. Because of this, they make considerable sense as we begin to think about how new technologies will potentially affect our lives and how to develop and use them responsibly. This is a way of thinking about risk that revolves around threats to what is important to us, whether it’s something we have and can’t face losing, or something we aspire to and cannot bear to lose sight of. This includes our health, our well-being, and the environment we live in, but it also extends to less tangible but equally important things that we deeply value.

      In each of the movies here, the characters we follow risk either losing something of great importance to them, or being unable to gain something that they aspire to. In many of the movies, the types of risks these characters face aren’t always immediately obvious, but they profoundly impact the consequences of the technologies being developed and used, and it’s this insight that opens up interesting and new ways of thinking about the social consequences of technological innovation. And so we discover that, in Jurassic Park (chapter two), John Hammond’s dream of creating the world’s most amazing theme park is at risk. In the movie Never Let Me Go (chapter three), it’s the threat to Tommy’s hope for the future that brings us to tears. And in Ghost in the Shell (chapter seven), it’s Major Kusanagi’s sense of who and what she is. There are also more conventional risks in each of these movies. Yet, by revealing these less obvious risks, these movies reveal new and often powerful ways to think about developing new technologies without causing unnecessary and unexpected harm.

      In this way, the movies here provide what are often quite startling insights into the social challenges and opportunities surrounding emerging technologies. Watching them with an open mind and a critical eye can reveal subtle connections between irresponsible innovation and threats to what people value or aspire to, which in turn have profound implications for society more broadly. And this is where their creativity and imagination have the power to lift us out of the rut of conventional thinking, and allow us to see opportunities and dangers that extend beyond the world of make-believe and into the technological future we are striving to create.

      In other words, I’m a sucker for using the imagination in science fiction movies to stimulate new ways of thinking about risk, and in turn, new ways of thinking about socially responsive and responsible innovation. But there’s another aspect to these movies that also gets me excited, and that’s their ability to break down the barriers between “experts” and “non-experts” and open the door to everyone getting involved in talking about where technology innovation is taking us, and what we want from it.

      I was recently invited to a meeting convened by the World Economic Forum, where I was asked to moderate a discussion about how governments, businesses, and others can respond to the potential risks presented by new technologies. Much of our discussion was around regulations and policies, and what governments and companies can do to nip problems in the bud without creating unnecessary roadblocks. But one question kept recurring: How can we ensure the safe and beneficial development of new technologies in a world that is so deeply and divisively divided along ideological lines?

      To my surprise, one of the participants suggested something that didn’t involve politics, regulations, or more effective education: art.

      Naturally, we still need technical experts, laws, and policies if we’re going to get new technologies right. But the question that was put forward was an intriguing complement to these: Can we use art (including all forms of creative expression) to pull people out of their entrenched ideas and get them thinking and talking about how they can work together to build the future they want? Obviously, we’re never going to reach world peace and prosperity by insisting everyone contemplate Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or one of Damien Hirst’s pickled cows.4 Yet art provides a common point of focus that allows people to express their ideas, thoughts, and opinions, while being open to those of others. And it allows the possibility of being able to do this without slipping into ideological ruts. Art, in all its forms, is a medium that can mitigate our tendency to close down our imagination (together with our humility and empathy), and it’s one that opens us up to seeing the world in new and interesting ways. In this context, science fiction movies are, without a doubt, a legitimate form of art, and one that has the power to bring people together in imagining how to collectively create a future that is good for society, rather than a dystopian mess—as long as that imagination is grounded in reality where it matters.

      This isn’t to say that technical education and skills aren’t important—they most certainly are. Developing technologies that work and are safe demands incredible technical skills, and it would be naïve and irresponsible to discount this. No matter how inclusive we want to be, we can’t expect a random person plucked from the street to have the skills necessary to genetically engineer organisms safely, or to design aircraft that don’t fall out of the sky. That would be crazy. But one thing we’re all qualified to do is think about what the possible consequences of technology innovation might mean to us and the people we care for. And here, pretty much everyone has something to contribute to the socially responsible and responsive development of new technologies.

      This is something that I hope will become increasingly clear through the remainder of this book. But before we dive into the

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