From Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies by Andrew Maynard
“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
—HAL
I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey on a small blackand-white TV, tucked into a corner of my parents’ living room. It was
January 1, 1982, and I was sixteen years old.
I wasn’t a great moviegoer as a teenager. In fact, at that point, I
could probably count the number of times I’d been to the cinema on
one hand. But I was an avid science fiction reader, and having read
Arthur C. Clarke’s short story The Sentinel, I was desperate to see
the movie Kubrick and Clarke had crafted from it—so much so, that
every ounce of my teenage brattishness was on full display.
My parents had friends around for dinner that evening, and, as
usual, the drill was that I was either polite or invisible. But there
was a problem. The only TV in the house was in the living room,
which was precisely where, at 7:35 that evening, everyone else
would be.
I must have been especially awkward that day, because my parents
agreed to let me put on my headphones and watch the TV while
they entertained. And so, I snuggled into a corner of the sofa, pulled
the black-and-white portable up, and became selfishly absorbed in
Kubrick’s world of the future.
Goodness knows what our guests were thinking!
2001: A Space Odyssey is a movie that’s rich with metaphors that
explore our relationship with technology. So much so that, if I
could reach back and talk to my sixteen-year-old self, I’d say, “Take
note—this is important.” I’d also add, “Don’t be such a jerk” for good
measure. However, despite being awed by the opening sequence,
with its primitive apes and inscrutable black monolith, enthralled
by the realistic space scenes, and shocked by the computer HAL’s
Back in 1982, I was entranced by 2001: A Space Odyssey because
it exposed me to new ideas and new ways of imagining the future.
Like many fans, I suspect, I ended up with quotes from the movie
branded into my brain, like, “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” along
with HAL’s response, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Without my realizing it, Kubrick’s movie made me think about
a future where smart computers might decide that their selfpreservation was more important than the humans who created
them. Fast-forward to the present, and—as we grapple with living
in an increasingly complex world—I’m more convinced than ever
that, for all their flaws, science fiction movies are a powerful way
of exploring the technological futures we face and how to navigate
them. Of course, it can be irritating when scriptwriters and directors
play fast and loose with scientific and engineering reality for the
sake of telling a good story. But getting too wrapped up in the
minutiae of how accurate a science fiction movie is misses the
point—these are stories about our relationship with the future,
and, like all good storytelling, they sometimes play around with
reality to reveal deeper truths. As it turns out, this creative freedom
can be surprisingly powerful when it comes to thinking about the
social benefits and consequences of new technologies and how
we can steer technology innovation toward more beneficial and
equitable outcomes.
It’s this human dimension of science fiction movies that I’m
particularly interested in. What these movies do rather well is
provide us with a glimpse around the corner of our collective near
future, to help us see what might be coming down the pike and start
thinking how we might respond to it. And they manage to do this
because their scriptwriters and directors aren’t encumbered by the
need to stick to today’s reality. Viewed in the right way—and with
a good dose of critical thinking—science fiction movies can help us
think about and prepare for the social consequences of technologies
we don’t yet have, but that are coming faster than we imagine.
This is precisely what this book sets out to do. Using the twelve
movies it’s built around, the book provides glimpses into the
technological capabilities we’re building now, and how we might
start to think about their beneficial and responsible development
instinct for self-preservation, it would be another thirty years before
I began to realize how powerful the medium of film is, especially
when thinking about the future of science and technology in a
complex human society.
and use. Naturally, it only scratches the surface of the vast array of
technologies that are beginning to emerge, and the opportunities
and challenges they present. But through the lens of these movies,
the book sets out on a journey to explore what can go wrong with
new technologies, and how we can all help nudge them toward
a future that looks better than the present we’re currently in. And
it continues that personal journey I started in 1982 with that first,
barely conscious glimpse into how science fiction movies can reveal
hidden connections between who we are, the society we live in, and
the technologies we create.
Welcome to the Future
Google “top science fiction movies,” and you’ll probably be
overwhelmed by a deluge of “top 100” lists, “best ever” compilations,
and page upon page of the last word (supposedly) on must-watch
movies. People are passionate about their science fiction movies,
and they have strong opinions about what should be on everyone’s
watch list, and what should not. Some of the movies in this book
appear regularly on these lists, Jurassic Park (chapter two) and
Minority Report (chapter four), for instance. Some are hidden gems
that only the most dedicated fans cherish, including films like The
Man in the White Suit (chapter ten), and the anime movie Ghost in
the Shell (chapter seven). Others are likely to raise eyebrows, and I
suspect there’ll be a few movie buffs wondering why the collection
includes films like Transcendence (chapter nine) and Inferno
(chapter eleven).
This is a fair question. After all, why write a book about science
fiction movies that aren’t listed as being amongst the best there are?
The answer is that this is not a book about great science fiction
movies, but a book about how science fiction movies can inspire
us to see the world around us and in front of us differently. Each of
the movies here has been selected because it provides a jumping-off
point for exploring new and intriguing technological capabilities,
and the challenges and opportunities these raise. Some of the
resulting stories are life-affirming and heart-warming, while others
are deeply disturbing. Individually, they provide fascinating accounts
of the sometimes-weird and complex landscape around emerging
technologies. Together, though, they paint a much broader picture of
how our technological world is changing, and what this might mean
to us and the generations that come after us.
In pulling these movies together and writing the book, I wanted
to explore the often complex relationship we have with emerging
technologies. But I also wanted to highlight some of the amazing
advances we see beginning to emerge in science and technology. We
truly do live in incredible times. Scientists are learning how to write
and rewrite genetic code with increasing precision and efficiency.
Nanotechnologists are designing and engineering materials that
far exceed the properties of anything that occurs in nature. We
are already creating artificial intelligence systems that can operate
faster and smarter than any human. There are self-driving cars on
our roads, with autonomous people-carrying drones just around
the corner. Researchers are working on brain-computer interfaces
and mapping the human brain down to its individual neurons. And
we may well see people walking on the surface of Mars within
the next decade. Until recently, these and many more scientific
and technological marvels were the stuff of science fiction, yet the
frenetic pace of innovation is rapidly catching up with some of our
wildest imaginings.
This is heady stuff to the physicist in me—at heart, I must confess,
I’m still a technology geek. And yet this stupendous technological
power comes with a growing obligation to learn how to handle it
responsibly. Despite the speed with which we’re hurtling toward
our technological future, we are still grappling with how to do
this in ways that don’t end up causing more harm than good.
This isn’t because scientists and engineers don’t care about who
gets hurt—most of them care deeply—but because we’re charging
headlong into a future that’s so complex, it’s becoming increasingly
challenging to work out what could go wrong and how to avoid it.
The movies themselves were selected after many hours of watching
and soul-searching. There are some quite wonderful science
fiction movies that didn’t make the cut because they didn’t fit the
overarching narrative (Blade Runner and its sequel Blade Runner
2049, for instance, and the first of the Matrix trilogy). There are
also movies that bombed with the critics, but were included because
they ably fill a gap in the bigger story around emerging and
converging technologies. Ultimately, the movies that made the cut
were chosen because, together, they create an overarching narrative
around emerging trends in biotechnologies, cybertechnologies,
and materials-based technologies, and they illuminate a broader
landscape around our evolving relationship with science and
technology. And, to be honest, they are all movies that I get a kick
out of watching.
Navigating this future is going to require every ounce of insight
we can squeeze out of our collective brains. And because the
consequences of how we use new and emerging technologies will
end up affecting us all, we all have a role to play here, including
individuals who are all too easily overlooked by scientists and
engineers—in fact, especially these individuals.
Faced with this task, science fiction movies simultaneously remove
barriers to people talking together about the future, and reveal
possibilities that might otherwise remain hidden. Every one of the
movies here can be appreciated as much by someone who flunked
high school as by a Nobel Prize winner. Because of this, they are
tremendously powerful for getting people from very different
backgrounds and perspectives thinking and talking together. But
more than this, they have a way of slipping past our preconceived
ideas of the world and revealing things to us that we could so
easily miss.
It’s these unexpected insights that I’ve tried to draw out from each
of the movies, building on my own work and experiences, as well as
those of others. In doing so, I’ve been amazed at how powerful they
are at revealing connections and ideas that aren’t always obvious.
I’ve been surprised and delighted at how these reflections have
taken unexpected and serendipitous turns, opening up new ideas
around how to approach beneficial and responsible technology
innovation. But I’ve also been taken aback at times by the very real
harm we could cause if we get things wrong—not just to humanity
as a whole, but to communities that all too easily slip between the
cracks. And as I immersed myself in these movies, I’ve become
more certain than ever that, fascinating as the minutiae of individual
technologies can be, it’s when they begin to converge that the really
interesting stuff begins to happen.
In June 2007, the first generation of the Apple iPhone was released
to the public. From the perspective of today’s crowded smartphone
marketplace, it’s hard to realize how seismic an event this was at the
time. Yet, looking back, it started a trend in how we use and interact
with technology that continues to reverberate through society to
this day.
The iPhone stands as an iconic example of technological
convergence—what happens when different strands of innovation
Smartphones are a useful, but still rather crude, example of
technological convergence. Expanding on this, we’re now beginning
to see convergence between biotechnologies, materials science,
robotics, artificial intelligence, neurotechnologies, and other
areas that are rapidly catching up with what used to be limited
to deeply futuristic science fiction. This is seen across the movies
in this book, from the use of genetic engineering in Jurassic Park
(chapter two) to human augmentation in Ghost in the Shell (chapter
seven). The power of convergence between different technological
trends particularly stands out in the movie Transcendence (chapter
nine). Here, the technology we see on the screen is firmly rooted
in Hollywood fantasy. Despite this, the film captures the scale of
technological leaps that become possible when technical knowhow
from one area is used to solve problems and accelerate progress in
another.
Transcendence is, at heart, a movie about transcending our
biological and evolutionary heritage. Inspired by the ideas
of transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil, it imagines a future
where convergence between biotechnology, neurotechnology,
nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence leads to a profound
shift in capabilities—albeit one with sobering consequences.
There’s a scene relatively early on in the movie where artificialintelligence (AI) genius Will Caster (played by Johnny Depp) is
dying, and his only hope is for his consciousness to be uploaded
intertwine together (a topic we’ll come back to in chapter nine)—
and the social and technological transformations that can occur as
a result. These days, smartphones integrate hundreds of different
technologies: nanoscale-featured processors and memory chips,
advanced materials, cloud computing, image processing, video
communication, natural language processing, rudimentary artificial
intelligence, biometrics. They’ll even allow you to make phone
calls. They are a triumph of our ability to weave together separate
technologies to make devices that are not only more than the sum of
their parts, but are also transforming the ways we live our lives. But
as the capabilities of smartphones and other personal electronics
expand, there’s a growing fear of serious unintended consequences,
so much so that, in 2018, JANA Partners LLC and the California State
Teachers’ Retirement System—two investors in Apple—requested the
company actively address the potential impacts of iPhone use on
teenagers.[^1]
into a revolutionary new artificial-intelligence-powered computer.
But, to achieve this, his colleagues need to use equally cuttingedge neuroscience and sensor technology to record and store every
nuance of Caster’s brain. In true movie fashion, they succeed just
before he passes away, and Caster becomes a human-machine
chimera who transcends his biological roots.
The science and technology in Transcendence are fanciful. But
as you peel away the Hollywood hyperbole, the movie hints at
a coming level of technological convergence that could radically
change the world we live in. This is rooted in our growing ability
to blur the lines between physical technologies like materials,
machines, and electronics; biological technologies like gene editing
and biomanipulation; and cyber technologies like machine learning,
natural language processing, and massive-scale data collection
and manipulation. What unfolds in Transcendence is scientifically
impossible. But what is not impossible—and what scientists and
engineers are becoming increasingly adept at—is our growing ability
to merge together and integrate seemingly different technologies, to
transform the world we live in.
This is perhaps most apparent in emerging gene-editing
technologies, where scientists are developing the abilities to
rewrite the DNA-based code that underpins every living organism,
something that is only possible through converging technologies.
But we’re also seeing this convergence leading to massive advances
in areas like designer materials, artificial intelligence, humanmachine interfaces, and many others. For perhaps the first time,
we are getting close to being able to far outstrip nature in how we
design and engineer the world around us.
This is where the true transformative power of convergence lies,
and it’s also where some of the greatest potential pitfalls are.
Through converging technologies, we’re developing capabilities
that could radically improve lives by eradicating diseases, providing
cheap and plentiful renewable energy, and ensuring everyone
has access to nutritious food and clean water. At the same time,
there are tremendous risks. We don’t yet know how large-scale
automation will affect jobs in the future, for instance, or how access
to technologies may simply lead to the poor getting poorer and the
rich richer. We have little idea how to wield increasingly powerful
gene-editing technologies responsibly. And we’re not sure yet
whether the rapid development of artificial intelligence is going to
make the world a better place or lead to the end of humanity as we
This is a theme that runs deeply through this book, and it’s one that
gets to the heart of the morality and the ethics of the science and
the technologies we develop and use. If we’re going to navigate
the world of these converging technologies successfully, we’re
going to have to start thinking more creatively and innovatively
about where we’re going as a species, what could go wrong, and
what we need to do to make things go right. Of course, movies
are not the most reliable guide here, and I’d hate to give the
impression that surviving and thriving in the twenty-first century
is as easy as watching a few films. But they do provide a platform
for exploring some of the more intriguing and important emerging
and converging trends in technology innovation, and the tension
between developing them responsibly and ensuring they reach
their full potential. And here they touch on another common theme
that threads through the following chapters: the challenges and
opportunities of socially responsible innovation.
The movie The Man in the White Suit (chapter ten) is perhaps one of
the less well-known films in this book, but it is one that admirably
highlights this tension between impactful and often well-intentioned
innovation and unforeseen social consequences. In the movie,
Sidney Stratton is a scientist with a vision. And that vision is to
create the perfect fabric, one that’s incredibly strong, doesn’t wear
out, and never needs washing. There’s only one problem: He never
bothered to ask anyone else what they thought of his invention.
As a result, he finds himself attracting the ire of his co-workers,
the textile industry, the local union, and even his landlady. Stratton
made the classic mistake of thinking that, just because he could do
something, others would love it.
Even though the movie was made back in 1951, it eloquently
captures the idea of socially responsible innovation. This is another
theme that threads through this book, and it’s one that is deeply
intertwined with the opportunities and challenges presented by
converging technologies.
know it! The harsh reality is that, while convergence is massively
accelerating our technological capabilities, we still have little if any
idea what might go wrong, or what the unintended consequences
could be.
Responsible Innovation (sometimes referred to as Responsible
Research and Innovation) is a hot topic these days. There’s even
an academic journal devoted to it. The thinking behind responsible
innovation is that we don’t always have a second or third chance
to get things right when developing new technologies, and so it’s
better to think about the potential consequences as early as we can,
and take action to avoid the bad ones as early in the development
process as possible. There are plenty of formal definitions for
responsible innovation.[^2] But many of these boil down to ensuring
that anyone who is potentially impacted by technological innovation
has a say in how it’s developed and used, and taking steps to ensure
innovation that leads to a better future for as many people as
possible, without causing undue harm. This is easy to say, of course,
but fiendishly difficult to put into practice.
This idea of social responsibility comes up time and time again in
the movies here. In many cases, a film’s dramatic tension draws
directly on some person or organization not thinking about the
consequences of what they are doing, or being too arrogant to
see their blind spots (this is apparent straight out of the gate with
Jurassic Park in chapter two). This makes for compelling narratives,
but it also opens the way for surprisingly nuanced approaches to
exploring what might go wrong with emerging technologies if we
don’t think of who they will impact (and how), and how we can
steer them toward better outcomes. And it opens the door to delving
into something that is near and dear to my heart: grappling with the
risks of new and unusual technologies.
Most of my professional life has been involved with risk in one
way or another. Much of my early published scientific research was
aimed at reducing the health risks from inhaling airborne particles.
I’ve worked extensively on understanding and reducing the health
and environmental risks of nanotechnology and other emerging
technologies. I’ve taught risk assessment, I’ve written about risk,
and I’ve run academic centers that are all about risk. And if there’s
one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that I have less and less
patience for how many people tend to think about risk.
The problem is that, while established approaches to risk work
reasonably well when it comes to protecting people and the
This is the idea behind the concept of Risk Innovation, which is
where much of my current work lies.[^3] Over the past couple of
hundred years—pretty much since the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution—we’ve become quite adept at developing new ways
of causing harm. And over time we’ve become equally adept at
developing ways of assessing and managing the risks associated
with innovation, whether they arise from mining and manufacturing,
exposure to new chemicals and materials, or pollution. But these
approaches to risk belong to a different world than the one we’re
now creating. With emerging and converging technologies, it’s
becoming increasingly apparent that, in order to navigate a radically
shifting risk landscape, we need equally radical innovation in how
to think about and act on risk.
Perhaps not surprisingly, risk is at the core of all the movies here.
Each of these films has a risk-based narrative tension that keeps its
audience hooked. Yet it’s not always apparent that it’s risk that keeps
you glued to the screen, or holding your breath, or even reaching
for the tissues in places. Most of us are used to thinking about
risk in terms of someone’s life being put in danger, or perhaps the
environment and ecosystems being threatened, and there’s plenty of
this in the book. But these movies also explore other, subtler risks,
including threats to dignity, belonging, identity, belief, even what it
means to be human.
These are rather unconventional ways of thinking about risk,
and they get at what is so important to us that our lives are
diminished if it’s denied us, or taken from us. Because of this, they
make considerable sense as we begin to think about how new
technologies will potentially affect our lives and how to develop
and use them responsibly. This is a way of thinking about risk that
revolves around threats to what is important to us, whether it’s
environment from conventional technologies, they run out of steam
rather fast when we’re facing technologies that can achieve things
we never imagined. To coopt a Biblical metaphor, we’re in danger
of desperately trying to squeeze the new wine of technological
innovation into the old wineskins of conventional risk thinking,
and at some point, something’s going to give. If we’re to develop
new technologies in socially responsible ways, we need to realign
how we think about risk with the capabilities of the innovations
we’re creating.
something we have and can’t face losing, or something we aspire to
and cannot bear to lose sight of. This includes our health, our wellbeing, and the environment we live in, but it also extends to less
tangible but equally important things that we deeply value.
In each of the movies here, the characters we follow risk either
losing something of great importance to them, or being unable to
gain something that they aspire to. In many of the movies, the types
of risks these characters face aren’t always immediately obvious,
but they profoundly impact the consequences of the technologies
being developed and used, and it’s this insight that opens up
interesting and new ways of thinking about the social consequences
of technological innovation. And so we discover that, in Jurassic
Park (chapter two), John Hammond’s dream of creating the world’s
most amazing theme park is at risk. In the movie Never Let Me Go
(chapter three), it’s the threat to Tommy’s hope for the future that
brings us to tears. And in Ghost in the Shell (chapter seven), it’s
Major Kusanagi’s sense of who and what she is. There are also more
conventional risks in each of these movies. Yet, by revealing these
less obvious risks, these movies reveal new and often powerful
ways to think about developing new technologies without causing
unnecessary and unexpected harm.
In this way, the movies here provide what are often quite startling
insights into the social challenges and opportunities surrounding
emerging technologies. Watching them with an open mind and a
critical eye can reveal subtle connections between irresponsible
innovation and threats to what people value or aspire to, which
in turn have profound implications for society more broadly. And
this is where their creativity and imagination have the power to
lift us out of the rut of conventional thinking, and allow us to see
opportunities and dangers that extend beyond the world of makebelieve and into the technological future we are striving to create.
In other words, I’m a sucker for using the imagination in science
fiction movies to stimulate new ways of thinking about risk,
and in turn, new ways of thinking about socially responsive and
responsible innovation. But there’s another aspect to these movies
that also gets me excited, and that’s their ability to break down the
barriers between “experts” and “non-experts” and open the door
to everyone getting involved in talking about where technology
innovation is taking us, and what we want from it.
I was recently invited to a meeting convened by the World Economic
Forum, where I was asked to moderate a discussion about how
governments, businesses, and others can respond to the potential
risks presented by new technologies. Much of our discussion
was around regulations and policies, and what governments and
companies can do to nip problems in the bud without creating
unnecessary roadblocks. But one question kept recurring: How can
we ensure the safe and beneficial development of new technologies
in a world that is so deeply and divisively divided along ideological
lines?
To my surprise, one of the participants suggested something that
didn’t involve politics, regulations, or more effective education: art.
Naturally, we still need technical experts, laws, and policies if we’re
going to get new technologies right. But the question that was put
forward was an intriguing complement to these: Can we use art
(including all forms of creative expression) to pull people out of
their entrenched ideas and get them thinking and talking about how
they can work together to build the future they want? Obviously,
we’re never going to reach world peace and prosperity by insisting
everyone contemplate Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or one of Damien Hirst’s
pickled cows.[^4] Yet art provides a common point of focus that allows
people to express their ideas, thoughts, and opinions, while being
open to those of others. And it allows the possibility of being able
to do this without slipping into ideological ruts. Art, in all its forms,
is a medium that can mitigate our tendency to close down our
imagination (together with our humility and empathy), and it’s one
that opens us up to seeing the world in new and interesting ways. In
this context, science fiction movies are, without a doubt, a legitimate
form of art, and one that has the power to bring people together
in imagining how to collectively create a future that is good for
society, rather than a dystopian mess—as long as that imagination is
grounded in reality where it matters.
This isn’t to say that technical education and skills aren’t
important—they most certainly are. Developing technologies that
work and are safe demands incredible technical skills, and it would
be naïve and irresponsible to discount this. No matter how inclusive
we want to be, we can’t expect a random person plucked from the
street to have the skills necessary to genetically engineer organisms
safely, or to design aircraft that don’t fall out of the sky. That would
be crazy. But one thing we’re all qualified to do is think about what
the possible consequences of technology innovation might mean to
us and the people we care for. And here, pretty much everyone has
something to contribute to the socially responsible and responsive
development of new technologies.
This is something that I hope will become increasingly clear through
the remainder of this book. But before we dive into the movies
themselves, I do need to say something about spoilers.
This is a book that contains spoilers. You have been warned. It’s
not a book to read if you’re one of those people who can’t stand to
know what happens before you watch a movie. But I can guarantee
that if you read the book before seeing the movies, your experience
will be all the richer for it. Even if you’re familiar with the movies,
you’ll see them through new eyes after reading the book. And if you
decide not to watch the movies at all, that’s okay as well. Certainly,
the movies are engaging and entertaining, but at the end of the day,
it’s the technologies that are the stars here.
Each chapter starts with a brief overview of the movie it’s built
around. This is partly to orient you if you haven’t seen the movie,
or you aren’t particularly interested in watching it—although I’d
hope that, after reading the chapter, you head out to your preferred
streaming service to get the full effect. But it’s also to help set the
scene for what’s to come. If you know these movies well, you’ll
realize that the summaries are idiosyncratic, to say the least. They let
you know what I think is interesting and relevant about each film,
what grabs my attention when watching them and makes me think.
But they don’t give everything away. In fact, I’d hope that, watching
any of the movies after reading the book, you’d still be surprised
and delighted by unexpected plot twists and turns.
With that said, it’s time to start the journey, starting with genetic
engineering, resurrection biology, and the folly of entrepreneurial
arrogance that is so adeptly captured by Stephen Spielberg’s original
Jurassic Park. So buckle up, hang on, and enjoy the ride!
[^1]: An open letter from JANA partners and CALSTRS to Apple, Inc., January 6, 2018. Accessible at https://thinkdifferentlyaboutkids.com/
[^2]: For a good working definition of responsible research and innovation, I’d recommend a 2013 paper by Jack Stilgoe, Richard Owen, and Phil Macnaghten. “Developing a framework for responsible innovation.” Research Policy 42(9): 1568-1580. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.05.008
[^3]: For more on risk innovation, I’d recommend reading this 2015 article. “Why we need risk innovation.” Nature Nanotechnology 10: 730–731. http://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.196
[^4]: In 1993, the British artist Damien Hirst produced an exhibit with the title “Mother and Child (Divided).” It consisted of a cow and calf, each sliced in half, pickled in formaldehyde, and mounted in a display cabinet. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hirst-mother-and-child-divided-t12751