The Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future

Andrew Maynard reads his book Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies

With the coronavirus lockdown, more and more people have found themselves turning to online content for entertainment, learning, and simply as a way to maintain their sanity in the face of social distancing.

Wanting to do something to help here, I decided — perhaps foolishly — to record myself reading my book Films from the Future, and to make the videos available on YouTube!

114 videos later, The Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future is finished! It was a mammoth effort (especially as, as I discovered, reading while videoing yourself is really hard!), but hopefully the videos below will be at least somewhat entertaining and informative.

And if nothing else, they provide a unique insight into how the book sounded in my head as I was writing it.

As you’ll see from the episode titles, this is a book about emerging trends in technology innovation, and the social and ethical challenges and opportunities that emerging technologies present — it just happens to be built around a framework of science fiction movies!

And a warning — there are spoilers here, so if you really don’t want to know the plot of one of these movies, you might want to avoid the overview episodes.

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 — IN THE BEGINNING

Episode 1: Beginnings
Episode 2: Welcome to the Future
Episode 3: Convergence
Episode 4: Transcendence
Episode 5: Responsible Innovation
Episode 6: Risk Innovation
Episode 7: Art and Socially Responsible Innovation

CHAPTER 2 — JURASSIC PARK

Episode 8: When Dinosaurs Ruled the World
Episode 9: Jurassic Park Overview
Episode 10: Bought Science
Episode 11: De-Extinction
Episode 12: Pleistocene Park
Episode 13: Could We, Should We?
Episode 14: Unintended Consequences
Episode 15: The Butterfly Effect
Episode 16: Visions of Power

CHAPTER 3 — NEVER LET ME GO

Episode 17: Sins of Futures Past
Episode 18: Never Let Me Go Overview
Episode 19: Cloning
Episode 20: Human Cloning
Episode 21: Yes to Human Cloning
Episode 22: Genuinely Human?
Episode 23: Personhood
Episode 24: Synthetic Human Genome
Episode 25: Too Valuable to Fail

CHAPTER 4 — MINORITY REPORT

Episode 26: Predicting Criminal Intent
Episode 27: Minority Report Overview
Episode 28: The “Science” of Predicting Bad behavior
Episode 29: Behavior Prediction Pseudoscience
Episode 30: Criminal Brain Scans
Episode 31: Predicting Intent using fMRI
Episode 32: Machine Learning-Based Precognition
Episode 33: Big Brother, Meet Big Data
Episode 34: AI-Based Predictive Policing

CHAPTER 5 — LIMITLESS

Episode 35: A Pill For Everything
Episode 36: Limitless Overview
Episode 37: The Seduction of Self-Enhancement
Episode 38: Performance Enhancing Supplements
Episode 39:Nootropics
Episode 40: Piracetam
Episode 41: Brain Doping
Episode 42: Privileged Technology
Episode 43: Our Obsession With Intelligence

CHAPTER 6 — ELYSIUM

Episode 44: The Poor Shall Inherit The Earth
Episode 45: Elysium Overview
Episode 46: Bioprinting our Future Bodies
Episode 47: The Disposable Workforce
Episode 48: Unsafe Techno-Workplaces
Episode 49: Unsafe Techno-Workplaces II
Episode 50: Living in an Automated Future
Episode 51: YouTube — A New Form of Learning

CHAPTER 7 — GHOST IN THE SHELL

Episode 52: Through A Glass Darkly
Episode 53: Ghost In The Shell Overview
Episode 54: Body Hacking
Episode 55: Transhumanist Movement
Episode 56: More Than “Human”
Episode 57: Post-Normal Human Augmentation
Episode 58: Plugged In, Hacked Out
Episode 59: Brain-Machine Interfaces
Episode 60: Brain-Hacking Vulnerabilities
Episode 61: Your Corporate Body
Episode 62: Implant/Augmentation Ethics
Episode 63: Implant Vulnerabilities

CHAPTER 8 — EX MACHINA

Episode 64: Plato’s Cave
Episode 65: Ex Machina Overview
Episode 66: Framing AI Risks
Episode 67: The Lure of Permissionless Innovation
Episode 68: Technologies of Hubris
Episode 69: NewSpace and Permissionless Innovation
Episode 70: Technological Humility
Episode 71: Superintelligence
Episode 72: Beneficial AI
Episode 73: Defining Artificial Intelligence
Episode 74: Artificial Manipulation

CHAPTER 9 — TRANSCENDENCE

Episode 75: Visions Of The Future
Episode 76: Transcendence Overview
Episode 77: Technological Convergence
Episode 78: “Base Code”
Episode 79: Enter The Neo Luddites
Episode 80: The Luddism Movement
Episode 81: Techno-Terrorism
Episode 82: Techno-Activism
Episode 83: Exponential Extrapolation
Episode 84: Make-Believe in the Age Of The Singularity

CHAPTER 10 — THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT

Episode 85: There’s Plenty Of Room At The Bottom
Episode 86: The Man In The White Suit Overview
Episode 87: Mastering The Material World
Episode 88: A Small History Of Nanotechnology
Episode 89: Myopically Benevolent Science
Episode 90: Never Underestimate The Status Quo
Episode 91: It’s Good To Talk

CHAPTER 11 — INFERNO

Episode 92: Decoding Make-Believe
Episode 93: Inferno Overview
Episode 94: Gain Of Function Research
Episode 95: Weaponizing The Genome
Episode 96: Immoral Logic
Episode 97: Balancing Inaction And Action
Episode 98: Science Advocacy
Episode 99: The Honest Broker
Episode 100: Dictating The Future

CHAPTER 12 — THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

Episode 101: Our Changing Climate
Episode 102: The Day After Tomorrow Overview
Episode 103: Fragile States
Episode 104: A Planetary “Microbiome”
Episode 105: The Rise Of The The Future
Episode 108: Technological Climate Fixes

CHAPTER 13 — CONTACT

Episode 109: An Awful Waste Of Space
Episode 110: More Than Science Alone
Episode 111: Occam’s Razor
Episode 112: What If We’re Not Alone?

CHAPTER 14 — ENDINGS

Episode 113: Looking To The Future
Episode 114: Don’t Panic