We spend an awful lot of time now thinking about what algorithms know about us: the ads we see online, the deep archive of our search history, the automated photo-tagging of our families. We don’t spend as much time asking what algorithms want.
Projects
Current Projects
Past Projects
Science Fiction TV Dinner: Starships from the 1970s
From Star Trek to Interstellar, starships have long held a special fascination for science fiction storytellers. The ships function as surrogate Earths, providing safety, sustenance, and a sense of home for people journeying among the stars. Starships contain whole communities, even entire societies, and often serve […]
Clockwork Conversation: Not Everything Could Be Half of Something
Corey S. Pressman
The Internet of Slow Things
Higher education is obsessed with 3-D printing. Makerspaces and fab labs are sprouting like extruded weeds on college campuses, and everyone from business school deans to librarians are asking how 3-D printing and fabrication can be implemented in teaching.
Contest challenges writers to imagine futures shaped by climate change
The Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative at Arizona State University invites writers to submit short stories that explore climate change, science and human futures for its first Climate Fiction Short Story Contest. The submission deadline is Jan. 15, 2016, and contest entry is free. The contest will be judged by science fiction legend Kim Stanley Robinson.
Science Fiction TV Dinner – Star Trek: The Original Series
Reception: 4:30 – 5:15pm / Doors Open: 5:15 / TV Dinner: 5:30 Star Trek’s original series remains perhaps our most influential and beloved vision of the future. It continues to animate our ambitions to explore space, exemplifies scientific ethics and the search for cross-cultural understanding, and […]
Short Fiction Contest: Ocean Trash Write-Away
Every sea on Earth is plagued by massive amounts of trash. Refuse in the ocean kills hundreds of thousands of birds and marine mammals per year, and hazardous heavy metals bind to plastic particles and enter our food chain. The Ocean Trash Write-Away contest challenges writers to imagine solutions to this global challenge and write an inspiring short story set in a future where we’ve turned the tide on ocean trash.
September 17: Paolo Bacigalupi to imagine Southwest water futures at ASU
In Paolo Bacigalupi’s most recent science fiction novel, The Water Knife, Phoenix is dried up and California and Nevada are not too far behind. The millions of people who rely on the Colorado River to survive are not only thirsty, but fighting for their lives. It’s a compelling story that captures a not-so-distant future. Will Phoenix eventually collapse? Will the river dry up?
Science Fiction TV Dinner: Robots from the 1980s
Featuring TV’s Small Wonder, futurist Brian David Johnson, and digital humanities scholar Jacqueline Wernimont Small Wonder rewires the classic American sitcom with hilariously awkward circuitry, dropping an adorable humanoid robot, Vicki, into a wholesome suburban family. At this very special 1980s TV Dinner, we’ll revel in […]
Hieroglyph anthology earns futurist award
Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, an anthology of ambitious, technically-grounded science fiction visions of the near future curated by the center, has been honored with an award for Most Significant Futures Work by the Association of Professional Futurists.
Poetry by Robots for Robots
Corey S. Pressman
Margaret Atwood, ASU collaborators explore climate futures
What might a world without oil look like? How will human societies cope with massive changes in the Earth’s climate? How will we adapt to survive the future? And how can storytelling and art — alongside science and technology — help us confront the challenge of climate change?
Jonathon Keats, Thousand Year Photo
A short documentary by Nathan Broderick about experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, the Millennium Camera, installed at the ASU Art Museum, and the Deep Time Photo Lab, an interactive exhibit that debuted at ASU’s Emerge festival in March 2015.
Ed Finn and Project Hieroglyph on Arizona Horizon
On June 9, 2015, CSI director and Project Hieroglyph co-editor Ed Finn visited the Eight, Arizona PBS show Arizona Horizon to discuss Project Hieroglyph, science fiction, optimism for the future, and the trade paperback edition of Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future.
