Working Futures: The Future Of Work Is Likely To Be Complicated

from the but-it's-coming-either-way dept

Order your copy of Working Futures today »

On Wednesday we officially launched our Working Futures anthology, which is available at Amazon as both an ebook (for $2.99) or a paperback for ($9.99) or both together ($10.99). I really recommend the paperback, because it looks great. So far, we've been blow away with the support we've received and the excitement over the collection. The book has shot up the various best seller lists on Amazon, reaching in the teens for science fiction anthologies, and reaching #12 in the "new releases" category.

In the launch post earlier this week, I profiled the first three stories, so today I want to explore the next three -- which has some names that Techdirt readers will recognize... starting with me:

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The Nole Edge Economy: I've been talking a lot about protocols over platforms lately, and wanted to explore such a world in a fictional context -- and combined two other elements: the incredible wealth of DIY info found totally free online such as on YouTube (I was inspired to write this after learning how to rebuild a carboretor via YouTube videos) and also the odd dependencies created by shareable, reusable code. Also, there'a little nod towards SLAPP suits as well. In short, this is a story that hits on a lot of regular Techdirt points.

eMotion: by our very own Timothy Geigner. He kept telling me he was too busy to write something, and then at the last minute delivered this wonderful story exploring what the world might look like when artificial intelligence is granted its own rights -- and starts to require what probably can't be called "human" resources any more when dealing with job changes and transitions. But, in such a world, certainly the line begins to blur between who gets to make decisions for whom. And, I mean, how do you let a military artificial intelligence know that its services are no longer needed...

Genetic Changelings: by Keyan Bowes was one of the few stories we received that didn't focus on artificial intelligence, but rather started exploring a world where genetic engineering has taken off to fairly spectacular levels. It's a world that will seem quite familiar to today's... but with a few potentially startling differences. I mean, when a story starts out in its first line discussing a child's tail, you know it's going to be a bit different.

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We'll continue describing more stories next week, and we'll have some fun other stuff, including some of the authors on our podcast. I also wrote a short guest post at Boing Boing about the project, and wanted to highlight one point I made over there. These stories don't paint a dystopian or a utopian future -- but mostly somewhere in between. Indeed, some of the stories are being interpreted in very different ways, with one author letting me know that he thought his story was really optimistic, but someone who read it reacted the opposite way. As I wrote for Boing Boing:

Some stories are upbeat and optimistic. Some... not so much. Many are deeply, deeply, in between: stuck in a world where “it’s complicated” is a fair way to describe things. But all of them help paint possible pictures of what work might mean in the future.

And that's part of why I like this collection so much. I've said all along that I'm less impressed by the "it'll all turn out horrible" or "it'll all work itself out" viewpoints, because they don't tell us anything useful, and the reality is almost always somewhere in the middle. But that's a big spectrum, and it often includes elements of good things... and elements of bad. Mixed together. It's complicated. Just like real life.

Filed Under: future of work, scenario planning, working futures

Welcome To Working Futures: 14 Speculative Fiction Stories About The Future Of Work

from the get-to-work dept

Order your copy of Working Futures today »

Last week, I gave you a heads up and a preview of our latest project from our think tank, the Copia Institute: our brand new anthology of speculative fiction about the future of work, called Working Futures. The book is now available in both ebook and paperback format at Amazon (initially, we'll be publishing it exclusively through Amazon, though we plan to offer other options down the road). You can purchase the ebook for $2.99, the paperpack for $9.99, or both combined for $10.99 (or, if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you can read it for free). The book has 14 wonderful stories and comes in at over 200 pages. You can also purchase the special custom deck of cards we used to help us create the scenarios that were given to the authors as "prompts" to inspire the various stories. And you can download the PDF of the prompts as well, if you'd like to see them.

Last week, I wrote about the process by which this project came together -- how we built the custom deck of cards, what we did with them, and how we got sci-fi writers to make use of them. This week, with the actual launch of the book, I wanted to zoom in a bit on the actual stories in the book. Over the next few days, I'll talk a bit about some of the stories in the book, and what made them stand out when we were choosing the stories for the book:

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The Machine Starts by Liam Hogan is a quick fun story that envisions the role of humans in a world in which computer AI is pretty much all pervasive, and an entity known as "The Machine", whose powers are so great that it resulted in the demise of the today's generation of internet giants. But with something so powerful and all knowing, why would it need to hire people? Well, as this story demonstrates, there are always situations in which human perception will be able to do things that artificial intelligence cannot.

The Chaperone by Andrew Dana Hudson is, in some ways, a flipside to the story by Hogan that precedes it. In that story we learn about how a human can assist an AI, whereas in the Chaperone, we learn about how AI's might assist humans. For better and for worse. Hudson described his story in a pretty straightforward tweet: "My #solarpunk novellete, "The Chaperone," is for everyone who watched Her (2013) and thought, "cool future, but this doesn't seem like *our* future—where's the late stage capitalism, political upheaval and climate change??"

The Funeral Company by Katharine Dow might conceivably take place in a similar world to the one in Hudson's novellette above, though on the other side of the country. It describes a very different kind of job that might crop up in a world of pervasive information and data about everyone -- and also how some people might respond to not wanting to live in such a world.

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That's it for today. I'll have more later in the week about some of the other stories in the book. If any of the three snippets above intrigue you, or you can't wait to hear about the other stories... feel free to go ahead and pick up the book.

Filed Under: ai, bioengineering, future of work, genetic engineering, jobs, speculative fiction, working futures

Working Futures, An Anthology Of Speculative Fiction About The Future Of Work

from the coming-next-week dept

I'm excited to announce that next week we'll be releasing a project that we've been working on for almost two years, since its original conception: Working Futures, an anthology of speculative fiction about the future of work. A year and a half ago, we asked folks here to help out and participate in a survey that would help us in working through a longer process to get people to better think about what the future of work might look like. As we noted then, there are plenty of reasonable concerns about the future of jobs and employment and, to date, there have mainly been two responses from people, neither of which has been particularly satisfying. There are those who've insisted that the future will be terrible and all the jobs will be automated away and we'll have a vast hellscape remaining, and those who insist that these things generally work themselves out... but who never seem to provide any specifics.

We wanted to see what would happen if we tried to bridge that gap, by combining the expertise of people who have spent lots of time thinking about the implications of technology and work, with that of science and speculative fiction writers who specialize in crafting narratives about these kinds of future issues. To do this, we went through a long but fun process to generate interesting near-future speculative fiction over this question. The end result of this is the book to be released next week, Working Futures.

Rather than just tossing it out to science fiction writers, we wanted to involve a variety of different experts in the process to keep things within a reasonable sphere. The process was as follows:

1. We started with an online survey, to get a sense of both what driving forces people thought would be the most likely to impact the future of work, and which ones would also have the most impact. We got over 1,000 responses to our survey, which allowed us to create a scenario planning "game" out of a special deck of cards.
2. We invited about 50 people to an event in San Francisco, with a diverse range of interests, expertise and backgrounds -- including technologists, labor activists, investors, philanthropists, journalists, entrepreneurs, writers, designers and more, and we used our card deck to do a modified version of traditional scenario planning, to look at a bunch of potential futures.
3. Out of this day-long event, we generated 10 futuristic possible scenarios. It's important to note that none of these are predictions. Scenario planning is not in the business of predicting the future, but merely figuring out what possible futures are plausible, so that people can begin to think through the consequences of them, as well as understand what leading indicators there might be that we're heading in one direction or another. Most scenario planning exercises generate between 3 and 5 scenarios. We ended up with 10, because the focus of this project was a bit more broad than in traditional scenario planning.
4. We then took our packet of 10 scenarios and handed them off to a bunch of science fiction authors, with a call to submit speculative fiction short stories inspired by the scenarios. To be clear, we told them they could take loose inspiration from the scenarios, rather than having to follow any of them exactly, and left it open to them to pick and choose what they wanted from the scenarios.
5. Out of all that, we ended up commissioning and agreeing to publish 14 total stories (to be fair, two of them are my own stories), all of which, in some way or another, touch on the future of work. The book (in both ebook and paperback format) will be available starting next week, at which point, we'll make the special scenario planning card deck we created available as well, so you can create your own scenarios too.

We've been working on this project for a very long time and are excited to finally get the result into people's hands -- and to give you a taste, below this post, we've got a portion of one of the stories in the book, Ross Pruden's A Quiet Lie. If you want to see what happens, you'll have to get the whole book...

Filed Under: ai, future of work, labor, scenario planning, science fiction, speculative fiction, work, working futures

SXSW Panel Pitch: Science Fiction Dreams Of Electric Jobs

from the help-us-go-to-sxsw dept

As you may recall, we've been working on a big fun project called Working Futures that mixes scenario planning and science fiction to start thinking about what the future of work might really look like. We've had a lot going on behind the scenes on that project, so expect more in the future. But, for now, we're also pitching a panel at SXSW next year on this topic entitled: Science Fiction Dreams of Electric Jobs, in which myself and Berit Anderson from the sci-fi/scenario planning company Scout.ai would be joined by two incredible science fiction writers, who have both worked in tech for years, and who are brilliant and insightful, Nicky Drayden and Ramez Naam, to discuss this topic and maybe do a little live scenario planning as well.

But the way SXSW works (if you don't know) is that part of determining if your panel is accepted is that all the panels that make it past the first level of review then are put up on SXSW's "Panel Picker" platform for people to vote on over the next couple of weeks (voting closes on August 30th). The voting doesn't fully determine what makes it (I believe it only accounts for about 30% of the decision), but obviously it does help. So if you think this would be a good panel at SXSW, please head over and vote (and... if you think it would be an awful panel, you should go vote for some of the other stuff, much of which looks pretty awesome as well).

Filed Under: berit anderson, future of work, nicky drayden, ramez naam, scenario planning, science fiction, sxsw, working futures

Reminder: Fill Out Your Working Futures Survey And Help Define The Future Of Work

from the future-of-work dept

As a reminder, our Working Futures scenario planning game around the future of work question is in full swing. If you haven't yet filled out our survey, please do so soon. There have been some great, thoughtful and insightful ideas provided so far, and it's already shaped some of how we'll be proceeding. We've been hard at work designing the specifics of how the "game" part of this will work, with our first workshop to be held next week. While that event is invite only, we still have a few open seats -- so if you'll be in San Francisco next week and think you have something you can add to this discussion, feel free to request an invite via the website. The event itself will be an interactive, guided game for developing a bunch of scenarios. Once we've had a chance to go through the results, we'll begin sharing some of the details -- but the overall results will only get better if you participate as well -- so go fill out the survey.

Filed Under: future of work, working futures

Reminder: Take Our Survey On What Forces Will Impact The Future Of Work

from the don't-miss-out dept

Earlier this week, we announced our latest project from our think tank wing, the Copia Institute, called Working Futures. This is a project to really take an deep look at what the future of work might really look like in the next ten to fifteen years. As the first part of this project, we're asking people to take a quick survey, to help figure out which driving forces are going to play the most important role in what work looks like going forward. So far, the feedback and insights we've received have been fantastic, provocative and quite thoughtful. However, the more insight we get, the better the overall project will turn out, so if you haven't yet had a chance to do so, please head on over and take the survey. The future of work depends on you...

Filed Under: future of work, working futures

Working Futures: The Nature Of Work Is Changing - Let's Help Get It Right

from the working-futures dept

For the past few years, there have been plenty of discussions about "the future of work," but they tend to fall into one of two camps. You have the pessimists, who insist that the coming changes wrought by automation and artificial intelligence will lead to fewer and fewer jobs, as all of the jobs of today are automated out of existence. Then, there are the optimists who point to basically every single past similar prediction of doom and gloom due to innovation, which have always turned out to be incorrect. People in this camp point out that technology is more likely to augment than replace human-based work, and vaguely insist that "the jobs will come." Whether you fall into one of those two camps -- or somewhere in between or somewhere else entirely -- one thing I'd hope most people can agree on is that the future of work will be... different.

Separately, we're also living in an age where it is increasingly clear that those in and around the technology industry must take more responsibility in thinking through the possible consequences of the innovations they're bringing to life, and exploring ways to minimize the harmful results (and hopefully maximizing the beneficial ones).

That brings us to the project we're announcing today, Working Futures, which is an attempt to explore what the future of work might really look like in the next ten to fifteen years. We're doing this project in partnership with two organizations that we've worked with multiples times in the past: Scout.ai and R Street.

The key point of this project: rather than just worry about the bad stuff or hand-wave around the idea of good stuff magically appearing, we want to really dig in -- figure out what new jobs may actually appear, look into what benefits may accrue as well as what harms may be dished out -- and see if there are ways to minimize the negative consequences, while pushing the world towards the beneficial consequences.

To do that, we're kicking off a variation on the classic concept of scenario planning, bringing together a wide variety of individuals with different backgrounds, perspectives and ideas to run through a fun and creative exercise to imagine the future, while staying based in reality. We're adding in some fun game-like mechanisms to push people to think about where the future might head. We're also updating the output side of traditional scenario planning by involving science fiction authors, who obviously have a long history of thinking up the future, and who will participate in this process and help to craft short stories out of the scenarios we build, making them entertaining, readable and perhaps a little less "wonky" than the output of more traditional scenario plans.

As the first step in this process, we're asking for input and thoughts on the kinds of "driving forces" that will have the most impact on the future of work in ten to fifteen years. If you go over to WorkingFutur.es right now, you can provide your input on which forces will be the most important and impactful, and help us in thinking through what the future might look like. In late April, we'll also be hosting an event in San Francisco, where we'll be using the results of this online process to help us begin to build the frameworks of multiple future scenarios to explore. Please check out the survey and give us your thoughts.

Filed Under: future of work, scenario planning, science fiction, working futures