Review Of Working Futures

from the thinking-positively-about-the-future dept

It's been over six months since we released Working Futures, our collection of speculative fiction about the future of work, but it's nice to see a great review of the collection by James Pethokoukis, talking about how it's a helpful way to think about the future of work and jobs beyond the traditional "the robots will take all the jobs."

Some possible answers — or at least new ways of thinking about that question — might be found in “Working Futures” from late 2019. It’s an intriguing anthology of 14 speculative stories about the intersection of jobs and advancing automation. The pieces emerged from a 2018 scenario-planning exercise in San Francisco involving some 50 techies, entrepreneurs, investors, lawyers, and others. The resulting 10 “future worlds” were then sent to science fiction writers to be used as launching pads for their imaginations. In the book’s introduction, editor Michael Masnick writes that each story “contributes something to our thinking on the future of innovation and work, and what the world might soon look like—in both good and bad ways.”

Pethokoukis highlights a few of the stories that he liked best (click through to his review to find out which ones!) along with how the stories show both negative and positive elements of technology changing the nature of work -- and suggests that these kinds of approaches are going to be quite useful for thinking about how the world will change post-pandemic:

Among the other future jobs explored: a third-party human resources officers for AI workers getting hired, fired, or transferred; preschool teachers for genetically modified kiddies; a “life services broker” to help consumers navigate among the megacompanies supplying all their subscription-based services, from housing to healthcare to education; and a virtual reality therapist who lets CGI “prints” handle the easier stuff, although the patient may not know it.

These aren’t really dystopian stories, although some depict worlds with big problems. Technology might help create a better society in some ways, but not a perfect one. And while technology might totally automate some jobs, in others it allows humans to do more....

[....]

We need more speculative efforts like these, especially post-pandemic when there are sure to be some significant labor market and workplace changes in addition to the ones generated by new tech. We need stories about how things might work out, even if they’re not all positive.

Glad to see that people are still enjoying the anthology, and indeed, we've been having some discussions about whether or not we should do a follow up collection.

Filed Under: future of work, science fiction, speculative fiction, working futures

Working Futures: The Future Of Work May Be Beautiful

from the you-never-know dept

Order your copy of Working Futures today »

We're off today for the long weekend, but I wanted to use the opportunity to publish the last of our posts about the stories in our Working Futures science fiction anthology about the future of work. If you haven't read the earlier ones, they're here:

1. Welcome to Working Futures
2. The future of work is likely to be complicated
3. The future of work will have unexpected consequences
4. The future of work will blur the line between humans and machines

The post will cover the final two stories in the book, which both really stood out when we went through the selection process.

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Generation Gap, by Holly Schofield. This is Holly's second story in our collection and among the many things we loved about it was how it really painted a picture of a potentially very different world -- which held the possibility of being beautiful, but also possibly terrifying. Or perhaps something in between. And it raises questions about how our future world will connect with the past.

A Brief History of Algorithmic Life: Introduction, by Christopher Alex Hooton, is the final piece in the book for a reason. It's such a lovely story, purporting to be the introduction of a long textbook about the history of "algorithmic life." As Chris explained on our recent podcast, his goal with the story was to get away from the science part of science fiction and see if he could write just a "beautiful story." And he succeeded, writing a touching story about an incredibly unexpected friendship between a human and an "algorithmic" life.

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I'm happy we're closing out with both of these stories, because they're probably the two most literary of the entire anthology. As with most of the other stories, the world they present has things that will frighten some people -- and intrigue other people. Aspects of both utopia and dystopia show up in both, but what stands out about both of these stories is the relationships they portray, and the way in which both stories build an incredibly visual world in the future that comes alive via the stories.

So now we've summarized all 14 stories in the book -- we hope you've been inspired to check out the collection. We'll still have some more posts about the project coming in the future, but first we wanted to put the focus on what matters most: the stories the anthology includes.

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

This Week In... Working Futures

from the history-of-tomorrow dept

Order your copy of Working Futures today »

Techdirt is taking a break for the long weekend — and while we've still got the comments post coming tomorrow, today instead of the usual history post we're looking forwards, with our new Working Futures anthology.

For those who don't know or who haven't had time to check it out yet, Working Futures is a collection of fourteen speculative short stories by science fiction authors, exploring the question of what work will be like in the future as artificial intelligence and other technologies continue to transform our world. If you want a taste, you can check out the first half of one of the stories, A Quiet Lie in our pre-launch teaser post. Since then, Mike has been sharing summaries and thoughts about other entries in the book: about how AI and humans could keep each other in check, and how private services and social credit could define our lives, and how the lines between human and machine could blur in fascinating and challenging ways, among many other topics.

This week, we also had a special episode of the Techdirt Podcast in which Mike was joined by three of the authors: Katharine Dow, whose story The Funeral Company portrays a society divided by its reactions to both climate change and ubiquitous surveillance; James Yu, whose story The Mummer gives us eerily real characters in a not-too-distant future running up against the darker side of our interaction with robots; and Christopher Hooton, whose story A Brief History Of Algorithmic Life: Introduction closes out the anthology with a moving, lyrical tale about about the first true human-AI friendship.

And of course, Working Futures also contains a pair of stories by Mike himself, who hadn't tried writing fiction in a long time, but hit the ground running with two engaging possible futures: one in which increasing centralization has put our lives in the hands of a few big companies that compete to offer the services and products for your entire life, and another in which the return to a truly decentralized online world has led to an energetic and anarchic knowledge economy. We've also got a story by our own Tim Geigner, who has been at this for a long time (his earlier sci-fi novels Digilife, Echelon, and Midwasteland are available as pay-what-you-want ebook downloads in our Insider Shop) and who went straight for the core of the "future of work" premise with a story about working in corporate human resources for not-so-human employees.

I hope some of that piques your curiosity. Techdirt will be off on Monday, so if you're looking for something to read, grab a copy of the Working Futures paperback or ebook to see you through! And if you do read some or all of the stories, we'd greatly appreciate a review on Amazon and anything else you can do to help spread the word.

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

Working Futures: The Future Of Work May Have Unexpected Consequences

from the but-it's-still-coming dept

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Over the last week or so, since releasing our Working Futures book of science fiction stories about "the future of work," we've been profiling each of the stories in the book. The first three stories were profiled here, and the second three were profiled here. Here are the next three stories in the book:

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Joan Henry vs The Algorithm by Randy Lubin is a modern retelling of the legend of John Henry vs The Machine, but where the machine is an algorithm and there are a few additional twists in the story.

Prime of Life. This is my own second story in the collection, and I talked a bit about it on yesterday's podcast. This was my attempt to look at how more and more services are coming with subscription models, and picturing a world (and new kinds of jobs) that might come about if we were to create subscription services for almost anything. But, that also raises questions, such as whether or not you'd want to turn your whole life over to one company. And then what happens if that company decides you should no longer keep that life. But... also what happens if there were real competition in the market to provide such services.

The Auditor & The Exorcist by N. R. M. Roshak which is a story that explores the future of work in a near-future world with AI-mediated social credit. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, software bugs are still a thing in the future. If you have nightmares about the lack of security on IOT (and also about the possibility of a social credit score), this one is for you.

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I like that these three stories are together in the collection, because despite all three being very different, all three present protagonists with jobs that clearly don't exist today... but which don't seem at all unlikely depending on how technology and society evolve over the next decade or so. All three also highlight how these futures we're discussing are neither dystopian nor utopian (or, arguably, they can be seen as both dystopian and utopian depending on whose perspective you're looking at. These are worlds where amazing things are possible, but those amazing things also have costs and consequences that should be considered. Thanks to everyone who has already purchased the book -- and for those who haven't yet, please check it out.

Filed Under: future of work, science fiction, speculative fiction, 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