Category: technology

• Oliver Morton on science journalism and humanity’s fascination with the moon

  I interviewed Oliver Morton about science writing, the relationship between science and science fiction, and the creative process behind his latest book, The Moon: In World War II, two of the signature technologies of science fiction came about in real life, in part because of people who were science fiction fans: the superweapon and the…

• Why companies are hiring sci-fi writers to imagine the future

  Katie Underwood interviewed me for a Pivot Magazine feature on how business leaders are commissioning science fiction that challenges them to think differently about the future: In recent years, major multi-national companies like Nike, Google, Apple, Ford and Visa, and governmental bodies like NATO and the French army, have all enlisted the services of sci-fi…

• How Reading Books Instead Of News Made Me A Better Citizen

  In this new essay for Techdirt, I share an “attention experiment” I conducted during the 2016 election that was life-changing—and ultimately inspired the Analog Series. The lessons I learned from it feel uncomfortably relevant today. Here’s a taste: Reading was no longer an exercise in rubbernecking and literature armed me to face the challenges of…

• How CEOs are using sci-fi to imagine the future

  Susan Lahey wrote up a wonderful feature for Zendesk Relate on a SXSW panel I participated in last year alongside Malka Older, Kevin Bankston, and Tim Fernholz: In the 2002 movie Minority Report, the main character walks through a store where artificial intelligence customer service devices greet him by name, ask how he liked recent…

• William Gibson on tracking reality’s Fuckedness Quotient

  I interviewed William Gibson about tracking reality’s Fuckedness Quotient, how to avoid terminal shortsightedness, and the creative process behind his new novel, Agency: I think I’ve learned that we need, individually, to find those areas in our lives where we do possess agency, and attempt to use it appropriately. And it seems to me that’s…

• My interview with Nick Harkaway was longlisted for the BSFA Award

  My interview with Nick Harkaway about writing Gnomon was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award. It came as a complete surprise but probably shouldn’t have because Nick is a brilliant writer and you should all read Gnomon. If you already have, the BSFA longlist is full of mind-bending science fiction, as are my reading recommendations.…

• What sci-fi can tell us about the future

  Tom Standage wrote a thought-provoking article about the feedback loop between science fiction and real world tech for The Economist. He happened to quote from an essay I wrote a few years back: “Writing in Harvard Business Review in 2017, Eliot Peper, a novelist, argued that science fiction is valuable ‘because it reframes our perspective…

• In Praise of Sci-Fi Determinism

  Maize Magazine interviewed me for a feature on futurism and science fiction: Now that technology is changing our world at an unprecedented pace, science fiction is building a mythology of the 21st century—a mythology shaped by technology and climate change. Complement with imagining new institutions for the internet age, using science fiction to understand the…

• Government is a technology, so fix it like one

  The Roman Empire, the Iroquois Confederacy, and the United States of America are human inventions as surely as airplanes, computers, and contraception are. Technology is how we do things, and political institutions are how we collaborate at scale. Government is an immensely powerful innovation through which we take collective action. Just like any other technology,…

• Kevin Kelly on how technology creates opportunity

  “Long before Beethoven sat before a piano, someone with twice his musical talents was born into a world that lacked keyboards or orchestras. We’ll never hear his music because technology and knowledge had not yet uncovered those opportunities. Centuries later the fulfilled opportunity of musical technology gave Beethoven the opportunity to be great. How fortunate…