LAUSR

ilms from the Future is an ambitious collection of well-organized reflections that attempts to explore the technology and morality of twelve science fiction movies. It is intriguing that author Andrew Maynard has chosen to take away significant positive learnings from cult classics such as Minority Report that would otherwise be considered as backdrops for a dystopian future. I was once told by Brian Cantrell of the World Building Media Lab at USC that “dystopia was easy and utopia was really hard” [1]. Cantrell’s lab director is Minority Report’s Production Designer, Alex McDowell [2] who has given many a talk about how stories can shape the future [3]. So I questioned from the outset how Maynard’s book might well make us stop and think and ask questions like: “how can we learn from science fiction scenarios, and how can we do better without making the same mistakes in the real world”? In essence, what is the takeaway message for society from dystopian stories? To an extent, some of the visions presented by films like Minority Report have come true, despite that the movie completely missed the role that smartphones and social media would play. In “Can we predict when and where a crime will take place?” BBC reporter Mark Smith, takes us on a brief introduction of the capabilities of software like PredPol, Palantir, and CrimeScan [4] but cautions we are not there yet in terms of AI-based predictive policing. But we can already contrast this retrospective hot spot analysis capability with new forms of facial recognition software detecting persons in mass crowds, as has been demonstrated in China [5], and even the hope to create a crime time machine [6]. Maynard’s book, which is written in a very accessible manner, in almost a conversational tone one might say, comes with excellent sources, providing evidence to content that would otherwise be challenged by some who would claim that they are distant futures. Maynard uses peer-reviewed papers to support assertions as one would expect from an academic and former columnist for Nature Nanotechnology, but un ashamedly intermingles this with references to mainstream media. There is something to be said about this methodology by an expert communicator of science in general. The further one gets into the book, the more one trusts the insights of this author implicitly asking the same questions preemptively: “where is all this leading us, as a global conscious community?” What all of the science fiction movies that Maynard has purposely hand-picked for us to engage with have in common is conflict. It is not only that these movies are couched in suspense, and are thrillers, but that their contents challenge our personal values: plainly, what is important to every one of us. They take us out of our comfort zone and somehow reinforce all that is healthy about our world, and help us to see more clearly those things that are unhealthy. In the endless possibility of technological and scientific trajectories, the reader knows instinctively which are destructive. Death is the ultimate harm, the ultimate toll