Visionary Histories

When someone says they want to know the future of something, what they are really saying is they want to know what the state or behavior—especially the emergent behaviors—of some complex adaptive system is going to be at point n in the future. Visionary Histories makes the case for the disciplined study of the future via the historical method, that historians are methodologically well-positioned to anticipate the possible future behaviors of a wide variety of  complex systems.  

Center for Science and the Imagination Annual Report 2021-22 PDF Annual Report 2021-22 EPUB

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Mawasi, A., Ahmed, I., Walker, E., Wang, S., Marasli, Z., Whitehurst, A., & Wylie, R.
International Conference on the Learning Sciences. 

Areej Mawasi, Arizona State University Earl Aguilera, Frenso State University Ruth Wylie, Arizona State University Elisabeth Gee, Arizona State University

 Peter Nagy,  Ruth Wylie, Joey Eschrich, Ed Finn Science and Engineering Ethics

Ahmed, I., Girotto, V., Mawasi, A., Whitehurst, A., Wylie, R., & Walker, E.
International Conference on the Learning Sciences

Ahmed, I., Mawasi, A., Wang, S., Wylie, R., Bergner, Y., Whitehurst, A., & Walker, E
International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education

This biography of a dawn traces one particular sunrise through poetry, photography, and lived experience as it played out from four different vantage points on the San Francisco Peaks. This collection is inspired by James Turrell’s land art project at Roden Crater in Northern Arizona.

A collection of short stories by an international group of authors, drawn from our 2018 Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest, plus a foreword by our lead judge, Kim Stanley Robinson.

Bioethical Inquiry
Peter Nagy, Ruth Wylie, Joey Eschrich and Ed Finn

A science-based comic book for 5th through 8th grade students. Created by award-winning comics authors and advised by ASU sustainability scholar Dr. Paul Hirt, this original story envisions the near future of Arizona’s energy systems.

Ed Finn and David H. Guston The Wall Street Journal

By Joey Eschrich and Ed Finn
Future Tense – Slate

Michael Bennett
Education Week

Why should we go to space? Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities takes on the challenge of imagining new stories at the intersection of public and private—narratives that use the economic and social history of exploration, as well as current technical and scientific research, to inform scenarios for the future of the “new space” era.

A collection of essays by scholars, journalists, scientists, and policy experts, taking the bicentenary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as an occasion to explore issues of scientific creativity and responsibility.

Ed Finn
Aeon

A collection of science fiction, art, and speculative timelines exploring the near future of the stratosphere. From Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Martian, great science fiction stories have shaped how we think about voyages into deep space—but what gripping confrontations and adventures might unfold in near space, above the clouds?

Ulises I is an art mission to space by the Colectivo Espacial Mexicano. This is a personal journal, photographic record, and collection of essays documenting the mission, by Juan José Díaz Infante and other collaborators. Note: This is a beta version of the Ulises I book.

Erin Walker, Ruth Wylie, Andreea Danielescu, James P. Rodriguez III, Ed Finn End-User Considerations in Educational Technology Design, IGI Global

This edition of Frankenstein pairs the original 1818 version of the manuscript with annotations and essays by leading scholars exploring the social and ethical aspects of scientific creativity raised by this remarkable story. The result is a unique and accessible edition of one of the most thought-provoking and influential novels ever written.

In this book, Ed Finn considers how the algorithm—in practical terms, “a method for solving a problem”—has its roots not only in mathematical logic but also in cybernetics, philosophy, and magical thinking.

Peter Nagy, Ruth Wylie, Joey Eschrich, Ed Finn Science and Engineering Ethics Download article

Gina Neff and Peter Nagy International Journal Of Communication Download article

By D.M. Bowman et al. Forward by Bennett, M., Bowman, D., Dijkstra, A.

Features short stories from our 2016 Climate Fiction Short Story Contest along with a foreword by science fiction legend and contest judge Kim Stanley Robinson, and an interview with renowned climate fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi.

SSP 2016 Conference, Vancouver

Ido Roll and Ruth Wylie
International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education

By Ed Finn, CNN Opinion

By Megan K. Halpern, Jathan Sadowski, Joey Eschrich, Ed Finn, and David H. Guston Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society

By Michael G. Bennett, IEEE Computer

A collection of research-based “fiction with footnotes” short stories about environmental futures, created by students in Dr. Michele Speitz’s course “Slow Catastrophes, Speculative Futures, Science & Imagintion” at Furman University in South Carolina.

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.

By Ed Finn, Computer, IEEE Computer Society 48

Download and read our Annual Report for 2014-2015

By Michael G. Bennett and Libbie Richards, Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

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.

Whether we’re crossing oceans, blasting off into space, migrating to distant unknown lands, or pursuing voyages of discovery within our own minds, we learn about who we are and who we want to become by traversing time, space and the imagination. In this volume, eleven young authors explore human futures shaped by excursions through space and time, and into the labyrinthine caverns of the human mind.

Shang Wang, Erin Walker, Rishabh Chaudhry, and Ruth Wylie Artificial Intelligence in Education

An interview with Neal Stephenson about his new novel, Seveneves, humanity’s resilience, and more.

Our science fiction visions of the future often obsess over the mechanical and the digital—from rockets and space stations to holodecks and cyberspace. In this volume, 11 young authors use science fiction storytelling to explore a diverse range of possible futures shaped by biological and environmental challenges and solutions.

An experimental philosopher’s project to document 100 or even 1,000 years of change with a single photograph.
Joey Eschrich
Slate – Future Tense

Climate fiction, or “cli fi,” can be a dreary genre. Storytellers like to make a grim business of climate change, populating their narratives with a humorless onslaught of death, destruction, drowned monuments, and starving children. Margaret Atwood is the conspicuous exception, somehow managing to tackle the subject, including these familiar elements, with deadpan wit and an irreverent playfulness, making it both more interesting and believable. The flood is coming, her MaddAddam trilogy promises, but there is hope.

A short comic book about the challenge of human trafficking, and how we might address this crisis. Created in collaboration with the World Bank’s Evoke project.

You just don’t see many illuminated manuscripts these days. There’s a good reason why: They take a long time to make. I learned this recently when I set out to commission a thoroughly modern illuminated manuscript: not a religious text, but an interview with theoretical physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, a professor at Arizona State University and the author of books like How to Build a Time Machine.

One person’s utopia is another’s dystopia, but both perspectives have one thing in common—hope for humanity is taken away when all the questions are answered for us. This collection of science fiction stories takes us into dark futures so that we can have a conversation about how to avoid them.

Edited by Joel Garreau and Ed Finn
Emerge 2014 Ethics Report

Michelene T. H. Chi & Ruth Wylie
Educational Psychologist

Humankind has lots of great ideas for the future. We need people to carry them out.
Neal Stephenson
Slate – Future Tense

Sci-fi’s warning tales are as important as its optimistic stories.
Ramez Naam
Slate – Future Tense

Take a whirlwind tour of tomorrow through the minds of 10 young authors as they paint compelling pictures of what could happen over the next several decades through short science fiction stories. Featuring a foreword by professional futurist Brian David Johnson and an interview with journalist Bryan Walsh.

Science fiction has inspired scientists and political activists, but it should be an inspiration for municipal governments too.
Annalee Newitz
Slate – Future Tense

When I wrote a novel about a Nigerian space program, I didn’t expect it to be so close to the truth.
Deji Bryce Olukotun
Slate – Future Tense

A short story from Hieroglyph, a new science fiction anthology.
Charlie Jane Anders
Slate-Future Tense

What sci-fi gets wrong about income inequality.
Lee Konstantinou
Slate – Future Tense

Joey Eschrich
Robohub

By Ed Finn, Slate/Future Tense

Why gadgets aren’t the coolest part of science fiction.
Joey Eschrich
Slate – Future Tense

A short story from Hieroglyph, a new science fiction anthology.
Elizabeth Bear
Slate – Future Tense

Inspired by New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson, an award-winning anthology of stories, set in the near future, from some of today’s leading writers, thinkers, and visionaries that reignites the iconic and optimistic visions of the golden age of science fiction.

Our center’s progress for the year 2013-14.

In his 1984 film The Terminator and its sequels, James Cameron imagines a dystopic future in which armies of intelligent robots move with startling suddenness from positions of servility to utter and violent dominance, destroying civilization and driving humankind to the brink of extinction.

This, of course, is pure science fiction. There’s little reason to believe things will unfold that way. First, they would take all our jobs and wreck our economy.

This is the nightmare narrative of our future with robots and artificial intelligence. The utopian version of this tale—one accepted by many powerful people in industry and government—involves a …read more

A voice cries out in the desert:

“Know thyself, not thy selfies!”

“Digital media will not save you!”

“The zero is not whole and the one is not The One!”

Technically, we’re not in the desert—we’re in a dusty parking lot in downtown Phoenix. And the voice is not coming from the Prophet Isaiah, but from professor Ron Broglio, whom I’ve ordained as a Minister of the Digital Tabernacle. As people wander into the massive circus tent at Arizona State University’s Emerge: Carnival of the Future, they are greeted by a pair of shifty evangelists preaching the analog Word. (Disclosure: …read more

The good thing about performing music with drones is that they always show up for rehearsal on time. The bad thing is that they might suddenly drop out of the air and onto your head.

I learned all this while putting together a piece called “Drone Confidential” for Arizona State University’s Emerge, a “Carnival of the Future” that was held in Phoenix recently. Emerge is an annual circus of cool new technologies in performance, dedicated to showing how artists and machines can work together to create something awesome. …read more

I recently read about the launches of both an “ultrasecure” mobile phone for protecting privacy and a clip-on camera that takes a picture of everything you do at 30-second intervals. Our cultural relationship with data is more complicated and contradictory than it has ever been, and our debates on the subject almost always center on privacy. But privacy, the notion that only you should be able to control information about yourself, cloaks a deeper tension between information and meaning, between databases and insights.

Ruth Wylie and Michelene T. H. Chi The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning

A collection of science fiction stories exploring possible futures, written by authors from Brazil. Presented by futurist Brian David Johnson and the Tomorrow Project.

As histórias reunidas nesta antologia nos permitem vislumbrar possíveis cenários do nosso futuro, onde a única limitação é a nossa própria imaginação.

Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt, Germany

Science-based visions of the future, created by professional science fiction authors and young people from across the globe, exploring futures we want to work toward and possibilities we work together to avoid. Presented by CSI and the Tomorrow Project.

Download the 2012-13 Annual Report

By Ed Finn, Huffington Post

By Ed Finn, Asimov’s Science Fiction

Newly released: American Dreamers, a collection of “dreams from optimists, inventors and mavericks with ideas for a brighter future.” My essay (online here) leads off the book with a look at the combustible, illuminating nature of good ideas and the unique optimism of the American Dream. It’s also a pretty good declaration of principles for what we are trying to accomplish at the Center for Science and the Imagination.

We can change the future by changing the story we tell ourselves about the future that we are going to live in. Imagining the Future and Building It features science fiction prototypes written by leading science fiction authors Madeline Ashby and Karl Schroeder, and technologists Roger Kay, Kathleen Maher, Rob Enderle, and Jon Peddie.

Conversations about changing the future with futurist Brian David Johnson, science fiction author Cory Doctorow, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, and artist/technologist will.i.am.

Authors and futurists Douglas Rushkoff, Ray Hammond, Scarlett Thomas, and Markus Heitz create tales of the future, inspired by cutting-edge technology research, in this collection presented by Intel’s Tomorrow Project.