Technology has for millennia shaped human society, but the rate of change is leaving many people feeling uncertain about their future. The Arts and Crafts Movement emerged in response to nineteenth century industrialisation, but might help us to find solutions for some twenty-first century issues.
Does free will exist? Are events predetermined? Can machines become self-aware? Are emotions essential for decision making? How does biology shape behaviour? What will be the impact of AI on human society? Issues raised by such questions are central to what it means to be human at a time when artificial intelligence and robotics are becoming increasingly powerful.
Predicting the future with mathematics. Learning the world is a simulation. The themes found in science fiction exist in various forms within stories passed on across the centuries. This article looks at some of the stories exploring the future of our world and how we might live during the decades and centuries ahead.
The promise of the open web to individuals and businesses was that by creating good content and attracting traffic they could earn a living online. The rise of AI search is changing this, by harvesting content and keeping the traffic. However, fewer humans motivated to create could lead to less original content.
From the preserve of scientists and engineers, or themes found in science fiction stories, artificial intelligence has taken centre stage across the world. In sectors ranging from education, business, arts, media and politics, to the environment, AI is portrayed in both utopian and dystopian terms. This article looks at the nature of the technology and its possible implications.
Nobody can know for certain what the world will look like decades from now. However, most of us have speculated what the future might bring. Individuals, business owners and governments often base their decision making upon such speculation. Futurology isn't fortune-telling, but a discipline in which relevant data is used to calculate the probability of future events.
Science-fiction movies can both entertain and push the limits of understanding, free from many of the constraints that are applied to contemporary or historical movies. They have portrayed fictional worlds set in our possible future, some utopian, but many dystopian. The characters, situations, science and technology depicted in movies has inspired and been inspired by real people, events, discoveries and inventions.
Within fictional worlds, science fiction authors have explored many of the issues that concern us today. Free from constraints of everyday life, they have described possible futures, both utopian and dystopian. Their stories have helped people to escape from reality, better comprehend the rapid change taking place around them, and even inspired development the futuristic technologies the authors imagined.
Long before writing, our ancestors wove what they learned about the world into stories, which often featured gods, heroes and monsters within heroes journeys. We might think modern civilisation has moved beyond such primitive stories, but themes they explore often appear within our book, movies and television shows. The myths are still with us, shaping the texture of our world.
Beginning in Britain during the eighteenth century and developing through the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution led millions of former agricultural workers to seek employment in rapidly growing industrial cities. Parallels have been drawn with widespread concerns today regarding the impact on society of AI and robotics, leading some to ask what we can learn from the experiences of people who lived though that period.
