Tag Archives: Karl Schroeder

Canadian military & a 2nd military futures book from Karl Schroeder (2 of 2)

Part 1 of this two-part series featured some information about Schroeder’s first book, featuring nanotechnology written for the Canadian military, ‘Crisis in Zefra’ along with a lengthy excerpt from Schroeder’s second military scenario book, ‘Crisis in Urlia’. In searching for information about this second book, I found a guest editorial for THE CANADIAN ARMY JOURNAL 14.3 2012 by then Colonel R.N.H. Dickson, CD,

Beyond those activities, the CALWC [Canadian Army Land Warfare Centre] continues its foundational research and publication activities, including the ongoing serial publication of The Canadian Army Journal, the JADEX Papers, as well as other special studies on subjects such as the comprehensive approach to operations, cyber warfare, the future network, S&T trends, and Army operations in the Arctic. The upcoming publication of a novel entitled Crisis in Urlia, a design fiction tool examining alternate future operations, will assist the Army in probing new ideas creatively while highlighting the possible risks and opportunities in an ever-changing security environment. [emphasis mine]

Of course, the future of the Army does not exclusively belong to the capability development community, be that the CALWC, the extended virtual warfare centre, or our broader joint and allied partners. Rather, the future of the Army belongs to each of its members, and no one organization has a monopoly on innovative thought. I encourage you to learn more about the CALWC and the Army’s capability development initiatives, and then be prepared to contribute to the conversation. The Canadian Army Journal offers a great forum to do both.

You can download ‘Crisis in Urlia’ from this webpage for Government of Canada publications or you can try this PDF of the novel, which has a publication date of 2014. I gather the book took longer to write than was initially anticipated.

As for Karl Schroeder, his website homepage notes that he’s back from an Oct. 1, 2014 visit to the US White House,

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy invited some of the Hieroglyph authors to present on future possibilities on October 2, 2014.  There I am on the end of the line.  (More details soon.)

For anyone not familiar with the Hieroglyph project, here are a few details from my May 7, 2013 posting (scroll down about 75% of the way),

The item which moved me to publish today (May 7, 2013), Can Science Fiction Writers Inspire The World To Save Itself?, by Ariel Schwartz concerns the Hieroglyph project at Arizona State University,

Humanity’s lack of a positive vision for the future can be blamed in part on an engineering culture that’s more focused on incrementalism (and VC funding) than big ideas. But maybe science fiction writers should share some of the blame. That’s the idea that came out of a conversation in 2011 between science fiction author Neal Stephenson and Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University.

If science fiction inspires scientists and engineers to create new things–Stephenson believes it can–then more visionary, realistic sci-fi stories can help create a better future. Hence the Hieroglyph experiment, launched this month as a collaborative website for researchers and writers. Many of the stories created on the platform will go into a HarperCollins anthology of fiction and non-fiction, set to be published in 2014.

Here’s more about the Hieroglyph project from the About page,

Inspiration is a small but essential part of innovation, and science fiction stories have been a seminal source of inspiration for innovators over many decades. In his article entitled “Innovation Starvation,” Neal Stephenson calls for a return to inspiration in contemporary science fiction. That call resonated with so many and so deeply that Project Hieroglyph was born shortly thereafter.

The name of Project Hieroglyph comes from the notion that certain iconic inventions in science fiction stories serve as modern “hieroglyphs” – Arthur Clarke’s communications satellite, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ship that lands on its fins, Issac Asimov’s robot, and so on. Jim Karkanias of Microsoft Research described hieroglyphs as simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees.

The Hieroglyph project was mentioned here most recently in a Sept. 1, 2014 posting (scroll down about 25% of the way) on the occasion of its book publication and where Schroeder’s ‘Degrees of Freedom’ is listed in the table of contents.

The book is one of a series of projects and events organized by Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. You can find information about projects and videos of recent events on the homepage.

As for Karl Schroeder, there’s this from the About page on his kschroeder.com website,

I’m one of Canada’s most popular science fiction and fantasy authors. I divide my time between writing fiction and analyzing, conducting workshops and speaking on the future impact of science and technology on society.  As the author of nine novels I’ve been translated into French, German, Spanish, Russian and Japanese.  In addition to my more traditional fiction, I’ve pioneered a new mode of writing that blends fiction and rigorous futures research—my influential short novels Crisis in Zefra (2005) and Crisis in Urlia (2011) are innovative ‘scenario fictions’ commissioned by the Canadian army as study and research tools.  While doing all of this I’m also working to complete a Master’s degree in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD [Ontario College of Art and Design] University in Toronto.

I married Janice Beitel in April 2001–we tied the knot in a tropical bird sanctuary on the shore of the Indian Ocean, Kalbarri Western Australia.  Our daughter Paige was born in May 2003.  We live in East Toronto where I’m writing about the evolution of post-bureaucratic governance in the 2025-2035 period.

Happy Reading!

Canadian military & a 2nd military futures book from Karl Schroeder (1 of 2)

Karl Schroeder was last mentioned here regarding his first ’21st century military scenario’ book featuring nanotechnology and commissioned by the Canadian Army. The book was titled Crisis in Zefra. From the Feb. 16, 2009 posting,

It turns out that in 2005 the Canadian army commissioned a science fiction writer (Karl Schroeder) to write a book about a future military crisis. Schroeder has included some nanotechnology applications in his future war book, Crisis in Zefra, such as ‘smart dust’. I haven’t read the book yet. Apparently the army has run out of copies but you can get a PDF version from Schroeder’s website here. [ETA Nov. 4, 2014: Scroll down to the second link in the section on Zefra, as the first link no longer works.]   Do check out the website blog where he includes some science bits and pieces in his postings. According to the article here, Schroeder has been commissioned to write a sequel. I don’t usually think of the Canadian military as being particularly imaginative so I find this somewhat refreshing (although I may change my mind once I’ve read the book).

Here’s more about the latest scenario book, ‘Crisis in Urlia’, from Schroeder’s Scenario Writing for the Canadian Military webpage (Note: A link has been removed),

In 2010 I was hired to write a followup to Zefra entitled Crisis in Urlia, which was published in May, 2014. Urlia deals with a drought-and-famine situation in a coastal city in the ‘Pakistani-Indian plurinational zone.’ This city, Urlia, has a population of more than a million but is less than ten years old, having sprung up using new money and Chinese kit-city technologies. A new disease breaks out while a Canadian rapid-response team is on the ground in Urlia, and as the situation threatens to spiral out of control, an increasingly intricate web of alliances, relationships and protocols comes to bear on the problem.

Urlia explores the concept of ‘wicked problems’ as well as the future of command-and-control in a networked and multi-stakeholder world. One principle whose ramifications are explored is Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety, which states that any control system must have at least as many internal degrees of freedom as the system it models; applied to a scenario where multiple problems intersect–(famine, drought, political instability, disease and corruption), where nobody can even agree on the definition of the problem, there are no single solutions or even any metric to decide when a solution has succeeded–in such chaos, can a traditional military/political machine cope without pursuing the ‘radical simplification’ of the situation implied by an imposition of martial law and military government? Urlia explores how JIMP policies (Joint, Interagency, Multinational and Public) coupled with new technologies of communication and coordination, might resolve such a difficult situation.

There was an excerpt, prior to publication, from the novel, Crisis in Urlia in a May 1, 2011 posting on Vanguardcanada.com (Note: Links have been removed),

Excerpt from a new book by the Directorate of Land Concepts and Design to be published in late summer/early fall 2011

“Where is that water? How can we be expected to be good hosts without fresh water?” Hazir Rumay stalked over to the door before remembering that he had his Augmented Reality glasses on. He tapped the arm of the glasses and looked through the floor to see where his eldest son was. The low-resolution image of the boy revealed that he was just coming up the stairs carrying something.

Hazir made a quick scan of the rest of the building. His employees were all at their stations, working dutifully despite the distant crackle of gunfire from what he hoped was only another riot. Uneasy, he moved to the window and adjusted the glasses’ display to show local traffic. The grey concrete towers, their windows shaded by dusty solar energy films, the streets crisscrossed with frayed cables, all faded slightly as cars, trucks, and jitneys leaped into stark relief. You could even see them through the buildings themselves,(1) an effect that had impressed him ten years ago but which he took for granted now. Several driverless taxis were nosing their way through the traffic and the few darting, white-masked people who’d dared the streets today, but otherwise the streets seemed empty. Suddenly, two military vehicles rounded a nearby corner. They’d been invisible in his Augmented Reality view of the street, which now that he thought about it made sense from a security perspective, but was still a bit disconcerting. These Canadians had some sort of power over the AR system. Something to ponder later.

“Ah!” He headed for the stairs as the vehicles pulled up in front of his building, his limp returning as it always did when he hurried. The exoskeleton he wore to ease the strain on his right leg gave an extra thump to his footsteps on the stairs; everybody in the factory knew when he was coming because of that thump. He reached the ground floor just as five foreigners were buzzed through the front door.

“Welcome, welcome!” He extended both arms to encompass them all while the facial recognition software in his glasses overlaid glowing names over their heads. “Lieutenant Colonel Desai, I’m so glad you came in person, it’s an honour to host the CHERT.”(2) He shook the colonel’s hand vigorously.

“You’re a very important man in Urlia, Dr. Rumay” said Vandna Desai with a warm smile, “and Canadian military doctrine is to coordinate our forces with other agencies and institutions, including businesses. We call it the Comprehensive Approach. I’m here to see how we can work together to help resolve your city’s crisis.”

Rumay returned her smile while trying to assess her. She had Hindustani features, but her accent was pure Canadian. He guessed she was in her mid-forties, but then, it was hard to judge anybody’s age these days, especially if they were from the Americas. “Well, to a tiger, a sheep is very important; but I’d prefer not to be important in quite that way.”

“That’s why we’re here, to take some of the pressure off people like yourself. Ah, let me introduce Carter Arkin, he’s a tropical disease specialist from Health Canada. We have him because his lab is affiliated with ours at DRDC.” Hazir had already read this from Arkin’s AR tag, but smiled politely as he shook the scientist’s hand. His software couldn’t identify the other three men, but from their size and the unobtrusive exoskeleton cuffs poking from under their collars and sleeves, he guessed they were soldiers. One of them was herding two cargo bots loaded with olive-green bags and boxes from the back of the second transport.

As they entered the warehouse behind the front foyer, Desai switched from English to Pashtun. “This is all your stock?”

“We don’t need much space for what we do.” The switch to one of the local languages made it possible for his employees to listen in on the conversation, which he supposed was why Desai had done it. Still, it was a bit annoying; he had few opportunities to converse in English these days, especially since every device he used automatically translated between the major languages.(3)

“Carter, I’ll be upstairs if you need anything,” said Desai to the scientist, and then she accompanied Hazir to the stairs. “I really do appreciate your accommodating us,” she said as they walked up to his office. “Your cooperation is going to open other doors for us.”

“Oh, I know that very well,” he said with a smile. “Your people are all over Urlianet talking about this ‘comprehensive approach’ to military operations. I have to admit I’m not sure what a ‘combination military and civilian agency’ looks like, much less what it is exactly that you do.”

“It looks like this,” said Desai, spreading her hands. “You and us working together.” She could obviously see from his expression that this wasn’t enough of an explanation, so she added, “It’s something called the ‘whole of government’ approach. CHERT wasn’t sent here by just one arm of the Canadian government, but Canada as a whole. From your perspective, what that means is that we have to pay attention to more than just primary effects — you know, drop off the water and leave. We have to plan for the secondary and tertiary effects of what we do here — like, for instance, the effect on local businesses of us setting up a new desalination plant. And we can bring in other departments, or our own business advisors, to help sort those things out. We’d like you to be one of them.”

Rumay nodded. “In that case, you won’t mind if we pose for a few photos before you go. I’d like to tag(4) our building — oh, why not the whole block? — with images and interviews from your visit, so everyone can see how we’ve been fully exonerated. Maybe the attacks will stop once people know we weren’t responsible for the outbreak.”

He didn’t have to tell the colonel that the building had become a fortress of sorts. He’d originally chosen it because the ground floor was windowless, thinking to avoid theft. In hindsight that had been a good decision. What Desai hopefully didn’t know was that he’d supplemented the usual building security software with nanowire(5) bomb-sniffers and cutting-edge commercial pattern matching software. If anybody so much as looked at the place the wrong way, his sensors would tell him.

The liaison was an interface to Pantheon, the commercial stakeholder management service(6) that Hazir used. Pantheon was as big as Google had once been, and hugely influential, supplying the liaison software and a back-end that provided virtual liaison services for nearly every company and organization in the world. When Rumay had heard that the CHERT team was coming to Urlia he’d downloaded the CHERT liaison. He hadn’t expected anything to come from it, but had given it some information about his own interests and concerns. To his surprise, it had contacted him this morning and asked whether he would like to meet with Desai.

“I’m glad you’re using Pantheon,” said the colonel. “Now that I’m here I can give you a secure liaison to replace this one. I’ve also got secure liaisons for our partners in this operation, if you’d like them.”

“Yes, please!”

Hazir noticed that Desai didn’t even move her hands to upload the new liaisons to his office. The Colonel wasn’t wearing augmented reality glasses like he was, but clearly she had some interface to the net — probably video contact lenses. No doubt she was also festooned with sensors; wasn’t everybody these days?

Partly to test this suspicion, Hazir said, “You can see our situation,” and gestured to the windows behind the liaison. To the naked eye the view showed only the facades and windows of the other buildings on the street, but even Hazir’s low-level data subscriptions fed him a wealth of information about what was going on locally: weather, pollution levels, the number of people in the street and how many were loitering. That number — the loitering index — had been going up for days. It was a bad sign; the index had shot up just before the recent attack.

Desai nodded gravely, then said, “You understand that I can ask certain questions off the record, but there are things we need to know. People are saying the sweating sickness was genetically engineered, and you’re one of the only local gene splicers.”

“You want to know whether I have customers besides the U.N. and the regional agricultural council,” he said. “I do — but not who you might think.”

Desai paused a moment, then said, “I understand what you have to do sometimes to get things done. There’s a fine line between the legal and the illegal, and” —

Hazir retrieved the container he’d earlier placed on the desk. He’d been right to bring this prop up from the warehouse; now he opened the case and displayed the little green eggs in it. “They’re called tick-stalkers. A kind of bird, I don’t know if they’re natural or were genetically engineered. Anyway, they’re a special order from the mud flats.”

Desai frowned minutely. “West of town, right? We’re aware that somebody’s doing biodiversity work there, but not who it is. Do you have a client?”

“Yes, but not a human one. That’s the point. The order for these came from the flats themselves.”

The colonel sat motionless for a moment. Hazir guessed she was interfacing with whatever resources she had at her disposal — online encyclopedias, people, even AIs that might be listening in and triangulating on everything they said — in short, the normal, expected systems any business person might carry around these days.

“So it’s true,” she said finally. “The flats are an autonomous legal entity.”(7) The flats were an engineered ecosystem, designed to function on their own after being initially seeded with new and traditionally local species. The whole idea was to create an area of biodiversity that could flourish without human intervention; Desai should not be surprised if part of that autonomy included legal and economic independence of a sort.

Hazir nodded. “The entire Urlia watershed is saturated with smart dust sensors. They’re the eyes and noses and ears of a botnet (8) AI that represents its environmental interests. These were seeded there by a radical ecological group — with the city’s blessing, of course. They then registered the watershed as an autonomous legal entity so that it could be self-sustaining. Effectively, it owns itself. And, since the watershed provides an ecosystem service — water purification — the city pays it. This is cheaper than building more water filtration plants. And the watershed — well, in this case, the mud flats — can use that money to buy things. For instance, tick-stalkers to fill an empty ecological niche.”

“So there’s an AI that thinks it is the mudflats.”(9)

He shrugged. “That’s putting it crudely, but yes. The City is trying to get the flats to process more of our grey water, but it refuses. Says it has to look out for its own health first. But it’s still interested in the business, so it’s paying me to upgrade the” –

But Desai wasn’t listening; she suddenly stood up, frowning.

PATTERN MATCH: POSSIBLE RPG.

The letters appeared suddenly in the top-left of Hazir’s field of vision – projected there by his glasses. He’d been half-turned toward one of the windows when it happened. “Excuse me,” he said and held up a hand while he focused on the letters with both eyes. “I need to check something.”

Across the street was a band of open windows. These were apartments that he’d long ago stopped noticing; but somewhere a camera, either the ones in his glasses or one of the ones mounted on the outside of the building, had spotted something.
There was an open window over there, and movement in it –

RPG CONFIRMED.

– And suddenly he felt Desai’s hand on his back and the colonel was shouting, “Down!” as she shoved Hazir towards the teak desk. He stumbled forward and Desai hauled him down just as glass shattered and then the room was tumbling around him. He’d heard nothing, just felt a shock over his entire body and then he was face down in broken plaster and spears of teak.

Miraculously, his glasses had stayed on. There was nothing to see but swirling dust an inch from his face, but their display was still working; so he was able to watch the local loitering index suddenly plummet from about two dozen, to zero. He could picture the scene: everybody on the street running pell-mell as the echoes of the rocket attack faded.

These modern conveniences, he thought in wonder. And then he passed out.

ENDNOTES
1. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18036-augmented-reality-system-lets-you-see-through-walls.html

2. In this scenario, the Comprehensive Humanitarian/Environmental Response Team (CHERT) is Canada’s successor to DART.

3. This technology is very old by 2040. Much of world commerce relies on it.

4. Location-dependent tags are a major component of augmented-reality systems. For an example current in 2010, see http://www.psfk.com/2009/08/mobile-augmented-reality-tagging.html.

5. http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/26327/page1/

6. Stakeholder management systems allow an organization to track the needs and act on the concerns of customers, business partners, etc. Stakeholder management is an important tool in this implementation of the Comprehensive Approach.

7. The 1992 Paraguayan constitution recognizes the rights of nature. This concept derives from Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca’s notion of buen vivir or “living well.” Buen vivir includes the notion that Nature should have rights. In Urlia the legal framework for natural rights is adapted from the American precedent of granting corporations rights as legal persons.

8. Botnets are a form of distributed computer system that are non-localized and hence do not have to be “hosted” by a human or organizational patron. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet. The mudflat AI is simply a resource-allocation botnet whose “herder” is an algorithm dedicated to maximizing the biodiversity within the mudflats.

9. Natural intelligences evolved to identify themselves as their physical bodies. There is, however, no reason why an artificial intelligence would have to identify itself with its actual systems. It could experience its “body” as anything its designer chose it to be, including distinct physical objects such as the mud flats.

Part 2 of this 2-part series includes a link where you can download Crisis in Urlia and a brief description of another project involving Karl Schroeder.

Science for your imagination

David Bruggeman over on his Pasco Phronesis has two postings which highlight different approaches to communicating about science. His Aug. 31, 2014 posting features audio plays (Note: Links have been removed),

L.A. Theatre Works makes a large number of their works available via audio. Its Relativity series (H/T Scirens) is a collection of (at this writing) 25 plays with science and technology either as themes and/or as forces driving the action of the play. You’re certainly familiar with War of the Worlds, and you may have heard of the plays Arcadia and Copenhagen. The science covered in these plays is from a number of different fields, and some works will try to engage the audience on the social implications of how science is conducted. The casts have many familiar faces as well. …

You can find the Relativity Series website here where the home page features these (amongst others),

COMPLETENESS

Jason Ritter and Mandy Siegfried star in a new play about love between gun-shy young scientists.

BREAKING THE CODE

The story of Alan Turing, an early pioneer in computer science, and his struggle to live authentically while serving his country.

THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA

A respected physician must choose between the lives of two terminally ill men in George Bernard Shaw’s sharp-tongued satire of the medical profession.

THE EXPLORERS CLUB

It’s London, 1879, and the members of the Explorers Club must confront their most lethal threat yet: the admission of a woman into their scientific ranks.

THE GREAT TENNESSEE MONKEY TRIAL

The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 comes to life as William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow square off over human evolution and the divide between faith and science.

PHOTOGRAPH 51

Miriam Margolyes stars as Rosalind Franklin, whose work led directly to the discovery of the DNA “double helix.”

DOCTOR CERBERUS

A teenage misfit is coming of age in the comforting glow of late-night horror movies. But when reality begins to intrude on his fantasy world, he realizes that hiding in the closet is no longer an option.

David’s Aug. 26, 2014 posting features Hieroglyph, a project from Arizona State University’s (ASU) Center for Science and the Imagination (Note: A link has been removed),

Next month [Sept. 2014] William Morrow will release Hieroglyph, a collection of science fiction short stories edited by the Director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University.  The name of the collection is taken from a theory advanced by science fiction writer Neil [Neal] Stephenson, and a larger writing project of which this book is a part.  The Hieroglyph Theory describes the kind of science fiction that can motivate scientists and engineers to create a future.  A Hieroglyph story provides a complete picture of the future, with a compelling innovation as part of that future.  An example would be the Asimov model of robotics.

Heiroglyph was first mentioned here in a May 7, 2013 posting,

The item which moved me to publish today (May 7, 2013), Can Science Fiction Writers Inspire The World To Save Itself?, by Ariel Schwartz concerns the Hieroglyph project at Arizona State University,

Humanity’s lack of a positive vision for the future can be blamed in part on an engineering culture that’s more focused on incrementalism (and VC funding) than big ideas. But maybe science fiction writers should share some of the blame. That’s the idea that came out of a conversation in 2011 between science fiction author Neal Stephenson and Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University.

If science fiction inspires scientists and engineers to create new things–Stephenson believes it can–then more visionary, realistic sci-fi stories can help create a better future. Hence the Hieroglyph experiment, launched this month as a collaborative website for researchers and writers. Many of the stories created on the platform will go into a HarperCollins anthology of fiction and non-fiction, set to be published in 2014.

As it turns out, William Morrow Books is a a HarperCollins imprint. You can read a bit more about the book and preview some of the contents from the Scribd.com Hieroglyph webpage which includes this table of contents (much better looking in the Scribd version),

CONTENTS
FOREWORD—
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS vii
PREFACE: INNOVATION STARVATION—NEAL STEPHENSON xiii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxi
INTRODUCTION: A BLUEPRINT FOR BETTER DREAMS—ED FINN AND KATHRYN CRAMER xxiii
ATMOSPHÆRA INCOGNITA—NEAL STEPHENSON 1
GIRL IN WAVE : WAVE IN GIRL—KATHLEEN ANN GOONAN 38
BY THE TIME WE GET TO ARIZONA—MADELINE ASHBY 74
THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON—CORY DOCTOROW 98
JOHNNY APPLEDRONE VS. THE FAA—LEE KONSTANTINOU 182
DEGREES OF FREEDOM—KARL SCHROEDER 206
TWO SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE OF SOLAR ENERGY—ANNALEE NEWITZ 243
A HOTEL IN ANTARCTICA—GEOFFREY A. LANDIS 254
PERIAPSIS—JAMES L. CAMBIAS 283
THE MAN WHO SOLD THE STARS—GREGORY BENFORD 307
ENTANGLEMENT—VANDANA SINGH 352
ELEPHANT ANGELS—BRENDA COOPER 398
COVENANT—ELIZABETH BEAR 421
QUANTUM TELEPATHY—RUDY RUCKER 436
TRANSITION GENERATION—DAVID BRIN 466
THE DAY IT ALL ENDED—CHARLIE JANE ANDERS 477
TALL TOWER—BRUCE STERLING 489
SCIENCE AND SCIENCE FICTION: AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL DAVIES 515
ABOUT THE EDITORS 526
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 527

Good on the organizers for being able to follow through on their promise to have something published by HarperCollins in 2014.

This book is not ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination’s only activity. In November 2014, Margaret Atwood, an internationally known Canadian novelist, will visit the center (from the center’s home page),

Internationally renowned novelist and environmental activist Margaret Atwood will visit Arizona State University this November to discuss the relationship between art and science, and the importance of creative writing and imagination for addressing social and environmental challenges.

Atwood’s visit will mark the launch of the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative, a new collaborative venture at ASU among the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, the Center for Science and the Imagination and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Atwood, author of the MaddAddam trilogy of novels that have become central to the emerging literary genre of climate fiction, or “CliFi,” will offer the inaugural lecture for the initiative on Nov. 5.

“We are proud to welcome Margaret Atwood, one of the world’s most celebrated living writers, to ASU and engage her in these discussions around climate, science and creative writing,” said Jewell Parker Rhodes, founding artistic director for the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the Piper Endowed Chair at Arizona State University. “A poet, novelist, literary critic and essayist, Ms. Atwood epitomizes the creative and professional excellence our students aspire to achieve.”

Focusing in particular on CliFi, the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative will explore how imaginative skills can be harnessed to create solutions to climate challenges, and question whether and how creative writing can affect political decisions and behavior by influencing our social, political and scientific imagination.

“ASU is a leader in exploring how creativity and the imagination drive the arts, sciences, engineering and humanities,” said Ed Finn, director of the Center for Science and the Imagination. “The Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative will use the thriving CliFi genre to ask the hard questions about our cultural relationship to climate change and offer compelling visions for sustainable futures.”

The multidisciplinary Initiative will bring together researchers, artists, writers, decision-makers and the public to engage in research projects, teaching activities and events at ASU and beyond. The three ASU programs behind the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative have a track record for academic and public engagement around innovative programs, including the Sustainability Solutions Festival; Emerge; and the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference.

“Imagining how the future could unfold in a climatically changing world is key to making good policy and governance decisions today,” said Manjana Milkoreit, a postdoctoral fellow with the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives. “We need to know more about the nature of imagination, its relationship to scientific knowledge and the effect of cultural phenomena such as CliFi on our imaginative capabilities and, ultimately, our collective ability to create a safe and prosperous future.”

Kind of odd they don’t mention Atwood’s Canadian, eh?

There’s lots more on the page which features news bits and articles, as well as, event information. Coincidentally, another Canuck (assuming he retains his citizenship after several years in the US) visited the center on June 7, 2014 to participate in an event billed as ‘An evening with Nathan Fillion and friends;; serenity [Joss Whedon’s tv series and movie], softwire, and science of science fiction’. A June 21, 2014 piece (on the center home page) by Joey Eschrich describes the night in some detail,

Nathan Fillion may very well be the friendliest, most unpretentious spaceship captain, mystery-solving author and science fiction heartthrob in the known universe. The “ruggedly handsome” star of TV’s “Castle” was the delight of fans as he headlined a fundraiser on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe, June 7 [2014].

The “Serenity, Softwire, and the Science of Science Fiction” event, benefiting the ASU Department of English and advertised as an “intimate evening for a small group of 50 people,” included considerable face-time with Fillion, who in-person proved surprisingly similar to the witty, charming and compassionate characters he plays on television and in film.

Starring with Fillion in the ASU evening’s festivities were science fiction author PJ Haarsma (a close friend of Fillion’s) along with ASU professors Ed Finn, director of the Center for Science and the Imagination; Peter Goggin, a literacy expert in the Department of English and senior scholar with the Global Institute of Sustainability; and School of Earth and Space Exploration faculty Jim Bell, an astronomer, and Sara Imari Walker, an astrobiologist. In addition to the Department of English, sponsors included ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Center for Science and the Imagination.

The event began with each panelist explaining how he or she arrived at his or her respective careers, and whether science or science fiction played a role in that journey. All panelists pointed to reading and imagining as formational to their senses of themselves and their places in life.

A number of big questions were posed to the panelists: “What is the likelihood of life on other planets?” and “What is the physical practicality of traveling to other planets?” ASU scientists Bell and Walker deftly fielded these complex planetary inquiries, while Goggin and Finn explained how the intersection of science and humanities – embodied in science fiction books and film – encouraged children and scholars alike to think creatively about the future. Attendees reported that they found the conversation “intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking as well as fun and entertaining.”

During the ensuing discussion, Haarsma and Fillion bantered back and forth comically, as we are told they often do in real life, at one point raising the group’s awareness of the mission they have shared for many years: promoting reading in the lives of young people. The two founded the Kids Need to Read Foundation, which provides books to underserved schools and libraries. Fillion, the son of retired English teachers, attended Concordia University of Alberta*, where he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Society, an organization that emphasizes literature and debate. His brother, Jeff, is a highly respected school principal. Fillion’s story about the importance of books and reading in his childhood home was a rare moment of seriousness for the actor.

The most delightful aspect of the evening, according to guests, was the good nature of Fillion himself, who arrived with Haarsma earlier than expected and stayed later than scheduled. Fillion spent several minutes with each individual or group of friends, laughing with them, using their phone cameras to snap group “selfies” and showing a genuine interest in getting to know them.

Audience members each received copies of science fiction books: Haarsma’s teen novel, “Softwire: Virus on Orbis I,” and the Tomorrow Project science fiction anthology “Cautions, Dreams & Curiosities,” which was co-produced by the Center for Science and the Imagination with Intel and the Society for Science & the Public. Guests presented their new books and assorted other items to Fillion and Haarsma for autographing and a bit more conversation before the evening came to a close. It was then time for Fillion to head back downtown to his hotel, but not before one cadre of friends “asked him to take one last group shot of us at the end of the night, to which he replied with a smile, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’”

*Corrected on February 4, 2020: I originally stated that “Concordia University is in the province of Québec not Alberta which is home to the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta.” That is not entirely correct. There is a Concordia University in Alberta as well as in Québec. However, the Concordia in Alberta is properly referred to as Concordia University of Edmonton (its Wikipedia entry proudly lists Nathan Filion as one of its notable alumni).*

The evening with Nathan Fillion and friends was a fundraiser, participants were charged $250 each for one of 50 seats at the event, which means they raised $12,500 minus any expenses incurred. Good for them!

For anyone unfamiliar with P.J. Haarsma’s oeuvre, there’s this Wikipedia entry for The Softwire.

Intel’s Tomorrow Project

Seeing into the future and making prognostications is an ancient human pastime dating from before the oracle at De;phi*. Brief tangent: for anyone needing a refresher on Delphi and the oracle (from the Wikipedia essay),

Delphi is perhaps best known for the oracle at the sanctuary that was dedicated to Apollo during the classical period. According to Aeschylus in the prologue of the Eumenides, it had origins in prehistoric times and the worship of Gaia. In the last quarter of the 8th century BC there is a steady increase in artifacts found at the settlement site in Delphi, which was a new, post-Mycenaean settlement of the late 9th century.

Not everyone wants to rely on supernatural means or the movement of the planets (astrology) to predict the future. Intel for example has developed something called, The Tomorrow Project (from the project home page),

What kind of future do you want to live in?  What are you excited about and what concerns you? What is your request of the future?  Brian David Johnson Intel’s Futurist asks these questions and more with The Tomorrow Project, a fascinating initiative to investigate not only the future of computing but the broader implications on our lives and planet.
This is a unique time in history. Science and technology has progressed to the point where what we build is only constrained by the limits of our own imaginations. The future is not a fixed point in front of us that we are all hurdling helplessly towards. The future is built everyday by the actions of people. It’s up to all of us to be active participants in the future and these conversations can do just that.
The Tomorrow Project engages in ongoing discussions with superstars, science fiction authors and scientists to get their visions for the world that’s coming and the world they’d like to build. [emphasis mine]

Here’s a video of Brian David Johnson, Intel’s futurist, talking about The Tomorrow Project (watch for the title on the screen at the beginning),

Did you spot the typo? I laugh and groan in sympathy as I’ve had similar things happen. For some reason, this type of mistake is always in the most obvious spot. BTW, the Intel website features the video with a corrected title.

BBC News online featured an August 19,2011 news item about one of the project’s outputs,

Chip maker Intel has commissioned leading science fiction authors to pen short stories that imagine future uses for the firm’s technology.

The collection, called “The Tomorrow Project”, aims to capture the public’s imagination regarding the company’s current research.

The project features work from UK sci-fi author Ray Hammond, who took research in development at Intel’s labs and used it as the basis for “The Mercy Dash” – the story of a couple battling futuristic traffic technology in a race to save a mother’s life.

“I was more nervous approaching this than I have been with any of my full-length novels. I’ve never written short stories, so the form was new to me,” Mr Hammond told BBC News.

The author’s work has been made freely available for download from Intel’s site and Mr Hammond has been delighted by the reaction.

You can go here to download the full anthology or select one or more of the stories. The other three authors included in this anthology are Douglas Rushkoff, Markus Heitz, and Scarlett Thomas.

Johnson doesn’t explain clearly enough (for me) what makes his futurecasting unique. The Canadian Army hired a novelist (Karl Schroeder) in 2005 to write a futuristic book about nanotechnology as I noted in my February 16, 2009 posting, which also mentions that they had commissioned another such novel (I haven’t come across any news about it since).

Jamais Cascio seems to do something similar to Johnson’s futurecasting (from the Bio page on Cascio’s website),

Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of their Top 100 Global Thinkers, Jamais Cascio writes about the intersection of emerging technologies, environmental dilemmas, and cultural transformation, specializing in the design and creation of plausible scenarios of the future. [emphasis mine] His work focuses on the importance of long-term, systemic thinking, emphasizing the power of openness, transparency and flexibility as catalysts for building a more resilient society.

I look forward to hearing more about The Tomorrow Project as it unfolds. Perhaps they’ll expand their conversation past “superstars, science fiction authors and scientists” and engage some of the rest of us.

Can governments keep pace with science and technology?

Later this week (Feb. 3 & 4, 2011), an imaginative discussion about society, emerging technologies, and the role of government, Here Be Dragons: Governing a Technologically Uncertain Future, will take place at Google’s Washington, DC, headquarters.  The event (one of a series dubbed ‘Future Tense’) is the result of a partnership between Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate magazine. Not surprisingly Slate has an article about the event but it’s written by Robert J. Sawyer, a Canadian science fiction novelist and it’s not about the event per se. From the Slate article, The Purpose of Science Fiction; How it teaches governments—and citizens—how to understand the future of technology,

… science-fiction writers explore these issues in ways that working scientists simply can’t. Some years ago, for a documentary for Discovery Channel Canada, I interviewed neurobiologist Joe Tsien, who had created superintelligent mice in his lab at Princeton—something he freely spoke about when the cameras were off. But as soon as we started rolling, and I asked him about the creation of smarter mice, he made a “cut” gesture. “We can talk about the mice having better memories but not about them being smarter. The public will be all over me if they think we’re making animals more intelligent.”

But science-fiction writers do get to talk about the real meaning of research. We’re not beholden to skittish funding bodies and so are free to speculate about the full range of impacts that new technologies might have—not just the upsides but the downsides, too. And we always look at the human impact rather than couching research in vague, nonthreatening terms.

That bit about ‘smarter mice’ is related to the issue I was discussing in regard to PBS’s Nova Series: Making Stuff and their approach to transgenic goats (my Jan. 21, 2011 posting). Many people are distressed by this notion of crossing boundaries and ‘playing God’ to the point where discussion is rendered difficult if not impossible.The ‘smarter mice’ issue points to a related problem in that people find some boundaries more acceptable to cross than others.

Sawyer’s point about science fiction being a means of holding the discussion is well taken. He will be presenting at this week’s ‘Dragons’ event. Here’s more about it,

Maps in the old days often included depictions of sea dragons or lions to connote unknown or dangerous terrain. Unfortunately, when it comes to a future that will be altered in unimaginable ways by emerging technologies, society and government cannot simply lay down a “Here Be Dragons” marker with a fanciful illustration to signal that most of us have no clue.

How does a democratic society both nurture and regulate — and find the right balance between those two imperatives — fast-evolving technologies poised to radically alter life?

Synthetic biology, with its potential to engineer and manipulate living organisms, and the Internet, which continues to alter how we live and relate to each other, offer two compelling cases in point.

Future Tense is convening at Google DC a number of leading scientists, Internet thinkers, governance experts and science fiction writers to grapple with the challenge of governing an unchartered future.

Related but tangential: The Canadian Army has shown an interest in science fiction as they have commissioned at least two novels by Karl Schroeder as I noted in my Feb. 16, 2009 posting.

One last thought, I am curious about the fact that the ‘Dragons’ event is being held at a Google headquarters yet Google is not a sponsor, a host, or a partner.

Nano and the Canadian army and AAAS annual meeting

It turns out that in 2005 the Canadian army commissioned a science fiction writer (Karl Schroeder) to write a book about a future military crisis. Schroeder has included some nanotechnology applications in his future war book, Crisis in Zefra, such as ‘smart dust’. I haven’t read the book yet. Apparently the army has run out of copies but you can get a PDF version from Schroeder’s website here. [ETA Nov. 4, 2014: Scroll down to the second link in the section on Zefra, as the first link no longer works.] Do check out the website blog where he includes some science bits and pieces in his postings. According to the article here, Schroeder has been commissioned to write a sequel. I don’t usually think of the Canadian military as being particularly imaginative so I find this somewhat refreshing (although I may change my mind once I’ve read the book).

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting (in Chicago this year) has started. There aren’t a huge number of nanotechnology presentations but one which has attracted a great deal of attention is one that focuses on nanotechnology and food. The subject for the panel pretty much guarantees attention will be paid and when you add this title (From Donuts to Drugs: Nano-Biotechnology Evolution or Revolution) you’ve given the media a ready-made title for their pieces. it’s good to see the topic being discussed. If you’re generally interested in this stuff, you can check out a report about it from the Friends of the Earth. The summary (news release) is here and the report is here at the bottom of the page. They are a little bit strident but the material itself is interesting and seems to be well researched. One final comment, the report was released in November 2008 so it’s a little dated.