Go ahead, dream about the future | Charlie Jane Anders (re-release)

Summary

Summary of “Go ahead, dream about the future | Charlie Jane Anders”

In the re-released episode of TED Talks Daily, science fiction writer Charlie Jane Anders delivers an inspiring and thought-provoking talk titled “Go ahead, dream about the future.” Anders delves into the significance of imaginative foresight in shaping our collective tomorrow, blending speculative dreaming with research-based insights to explore potential futures. Below is a detailed summary capturing the key points, discussions, insights, and conclusions from her presentation.

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Imagining vs. Predicting the Future

Charlie Jane Anders opens her talk by distinguishing between predicting and imagining the future. She emphasizes that while predictions attempt to forecast specific outcomes, imagination allows for a broader and more creative exploration of possibilities. Anders states, “You don’t predict the future, you imagine the future” ([00:07]). This foundational idea sets the stage for her exploration of how speculative thinking can empower individuals and society to construct better futures.

The Role of Science Fiction in Future Forecasting

Anders draws from her experiences as a science fiction writer, illustrating how her stories often envision futures that arrive sooner than expected. She shares an anecdote about writing a story where the government uses drones to kill people, only to see such practices emerge before her tale was even published. This example underscores the accelerating feedback loop where technological advancements and social changes rapidly influence each other, often outpacing our ability to foresee their implications.

Uncertainty and the Evolving Nature of the Future

Reflecting on her childhood in the 1980s, Anders notes that past visions of the future were more concrete, featuring “neon megacities and flying vehicles.” However, today’s unpredictability makes it challenging to visualize what lies ahead, even a few years down the line. She observes, “now nobody knows what the world is going to look like, even in just a couple years,” highlighting the increased complexity and uncertainty of contemporary future scenarios.

Empowerment through Dreaming

One of the central themes of Anders' talk is the empowerment derived from dreaming about the future. She encourages the audience not to shy away from envisioning various future possibilities, even those that seem bizarre or unsettling. “Don’t be afraid to think about the future, to dream about the future, to write about the future,” she urges ([03:55]). This imaginative process serves as a way to vaccinate against future shock and equips individuals with the mental frameworks needed to navigate upcoming changes.

Techniques for Creating Future Visions

Anders elaborates on her creative methodology, which integrates active dreaming with diligent research. She relies on a mixture of:

• Cutting-edge trends in science and technology
• Insights into human history and behavior
• Attention to detail in world-building

She explains, “I use a mixture of active dreaming and awareness of cutting edge trends in science and technology, and also an insight into human history” ([05:10]). This blend ensures that her imagined futures are both imaginative and plausible, rooted in realistic advancements and human experiences.

Key Concepts: Future History and Second Order Effects

To articulate her visions, Anders introduces two important science fiction concepts:

• Future History: A chronological framework that outlines events leading into the future. She references Robert A. Heinlein’s intricate timelines and her own extensive timelines that stretch into the 33rd century, envisioning humanity’s expansion to other planets.
• Second Order Effects: The unintended consequences that follow from new technologies or societal changes. As she puts it, “a good science fiction story should predict not just the invention of the automobile, but also the traffic jam” ([09:20]).

These concepts help Anders build comprehensive and nuanced future scenarios that account for both planned developments and their ripple effects.

Envisioning Future Cities

A significant portion of her talk is dedicated to imagining the cities of the future. Anders envisions sustainable, green cities featuring:

• Vertical farms and partly grown structures
• Walkways replacing traditional streets due to the decline of automobile use
• Interactive environments influenced by augmented reality

She describes these cities as “living and breathing,” integrating natural elements with advanced technology. Her creative process involves both wild daydreaming and practical research, striving to make her visions plausible while maintaining their imaginative essence.

Innovations in Everyday Infrastructure

Anders speculates on transformative changes in everyday infrastructure, using the example of toilets. She critiques the inefficiencies of current sewer systems and imagines futuristic solutions such as:

• Fungus-based walls that self-repair
• Toilets that analyze waste for health insights
• Technologies turning human waste into renewable energy

“What if your toilet could analyze your waste and let you know if your microbiome might need a little tune up?” she muses ([13:15]). These innovations illustrate how mundane aspects of daily life could be revolutionized through technological advancements, improving both functionality and health outcomes.

The Dual Nature of Future Outcomes

Acknowledging that the future will encompass both wonders and challenges, Anders maintains that it won't be purely utopian or dystopian. She asserts, “it’s going to be both. It’s going to be everything” ([14:10]). This balanced perspective encourages embracing the complexity of future developments, recognizing that advancements will bring both benefits and unforeseen complications.

Optimism in Technological Progress

Despite acknowledging potential dystopian elements, Anders remains hopeful about technological progress. She discusses advancements in social media and AI, envisioning scenarios where smarter AI fosters healthier, more meaningful connections. “Maybe the social media of the future will be better. Maybe it'll help us to form healthier, less destructive relationships” ([14:50]). Her optimism extends to fields like medicine, where genetic advancements could lead to longer, healthier lives and improved options for marginalized communities, including transgender individuals.

Conclusion: Embracing the Weirdness of the Future

Charlie Jane Anders concludes her talk by embracing the inherent weirdness of the future. Comparing the early 21st century to the past, she marvels at how technologies and societal norms might appear utterly strange to future generations. “The future is going to be incredibly weird,” she states ([15:25]). She encourages the audience to leverage their imagination as a tool for navigating and shaping the uncertain yet promising landscapes ahead. “The first step to finding your way forward is to let your imagination run free,” she affirms, leaving listeners with a powerful call to action.

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Charlie Jane Anders's talk serves as a compelling reminder of the importance of creative imagination in anticipating and shaping the future. By blending speculative dreaming with informed research, she provides a roadmap for envisioning a world that is both innovative and thoughtfully constructed.

Transcript

[Elise Hu]

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. You don't predict the future, you imagine the future, says sci fi writer Charlie Jane Anders. In this archive talk that's part dream, part research based extrapolation, she takes us on a wild speculative tour of the delights and challenges the future may hold and shows us how dreaming up weird, futuristic possibilities empowers us to construct a better tomorrow. This episode is sponsored by Upwork. Navigating Today's Economy well, it's a lot. Tariffs, tight budgets, hiring freezes. But if you're trying to build something right now, one of the smartest moves you can make is upwork. Upwork is the hiring platform designed for how business actually works. Today you can find, hire and pay expert freelancers who deliver from day one without blowing your budget or your timeline. Whether you need support with AI design, admin work or a new marketing strategy, upwork gives you access to top talent without the overhead of full time hires, no subscriptions, no upfront fees. Posting a job is free. You only pay when you hire. Never tried Upwork? Well, now's the perfect time because they're giving our listeners a $200 credit. After spending 1,000 in your first 30 days, that's $200 you can put towards your next freelancer. Visit upwork.comsaverightnow for this great offer that's up w o r k.coms a v e Don't wait. This offer is Only valid through August 5, 2025. This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. Okay, if you're like me, you wait all year for the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale. Because it's not about clearing out old stuff, it's about scoring new arrivals on sale. Think of it as a rare moment when time bends in our favor. Fresh styles, beauty exclusives, even home goods up to 33% off. It's the perfect time to stock up on those pieces you'll wear or use on repeat. And yes, there are great finds for under 100 from brands like Madewell, Free People and Charlotte Tilbury. The sale is on now, but not forever. Prices go up August 1st forth and Nordstrom makes it easy, which honestly, we all need. There's online order pickup, free shipping, free returns, and even free style help. If you're stuck in decision fatigue, check out all the fun anniversary events happening at Nordstrom near you, like in store promotions and daily beauty events. Shop now. Your future self will thank you. This episode is sponsored by McDonald's okay. Confession time. I love a good comeback story, especially when it's delicious and totally unexpected. Back in 2006, McDonald's released the snack Wrap, and it quickly became the Go To Bite portable, crunchy, juicy perfection. Then it vanished. Gone. Poof. But the fans, like me. Oh, they never gave up. I'm talking nine years of petitions, Facebook groups, memes, international snack wrap scouting missions. People built entire identities around this thing. It was intense in the best way. And now it's back. Yes, really. Thanks to relentless sauce loving dedication, McDonald's brought back the Snack Wrap. Think crispy, juicy white meat, shredded lettuce, melty cheese, all hugged in a soft tortilla and drizzled with ranch or your pick of sauces. It was never supposed to return, but the fans made it happen. Because sometimes passion wins and sometimes it tastes like a snack wrap. Try the Snack Wrap that broke the Internet at a McDonald's near you.

[Charlie Jane Anders]

Every science fiction writer has a story about a time when the future arrived too soon. I have a lot of those stories. Like, okay, for example, years ago, I was writing a story where the government starts using drones to kill people. I thought that this was a really intense, futuristic idea. But by the time the story was published, the government was already using drones to kill people. Our world is changing so fast, and there's a kind of accelerating feedback loop where technological change and social change feed on each other. When I was a kid in the 1980s, we knew what the future was going to look like. It was going to be some version of Judge Dredd or Blade Runner. It was going to be neon megacities and flying vehicles. But now nobody knows what the world is going to look like, even in just a couple years. And there's so many scary apparitions lurking on the horizon, from climate catastrophe to. To authoritarianism. Everybody is obsessed with apocalypses. Even though the world ends all the time and we keep going. Don't be afraid to think about the future, to dream about the future, to write about the future. I found it really liberating and fun to do that. It's a way of vaccinating yourself against the worst possible case of future shock. It's also a source of empowerment because you cannot prepare for something that you haven't already visualized. But there's something that you need to know. You don't predict the future. You imagine the future. So as a science fiction writer whose stories often take place years or even centuries from now, I found that people are really hungry for visions of the future that are Both colorful and lived in. But I found that research on its own is not enough to get me there. Instead, I use a mixture of active dreaming and awareness of cutting edge trends in science and technology, and also an insight into human history. I think a lot about what I know of human nature and the way that people have responded in the past to huge changes and upheavals and transformations. And I pair that with an attention to. To detail, because the details are where we live. We tell the story of our world through the tools we create and the spaces that we live in. And at this point, it's helpful to know a couple of terms that science fiction writers use. All of the future history and second order effects. Future history is basically just what it sounds like. It is a chronology of things that haven't happened yet. Like Robert A. Heinlein's famous story cycle, which came with a detailed chart of upcoming events Going up into the year 2100. Or for my most recent novel, I came up with a really complicated timeline that goes all the way to the 33rd century and ends with people living on another planet. Meanwhile, a second order effect is basically the kind of thing that happens after the consequences of a new technology or a huge change. There's a saying, often attributed to writer and editor Frederick Pohl, that a good science fiction story should predict not just the invention of the automobile, but also the traffic jam. And speaking of traffic jams, I spent a lot of time trying to picture the city of the future. What's it like? What's it made of? Who's it for? I try to picture a green city with vertical farms and structures that are partially grown rather than built. And walkways instead of streets because nobody gets around by car anymore. A city that lives and breathes. And, you know, I kind of start by daydreaming the wildest stuff that I can possibly come up with. And then I go back into research mode, and I try to make it as plausible as I can by looking at a mixture of urban futurism, design porn, and technological speculation. And then I go back and I try to imagine what it would actually be like to be inside that city. So my process kind of begins and ends with imagination. And it's like my imagination is too, pieces of bread in a research sandwich. So, as a storyteller, first and foremost, I try to live in the world through the eyes of my characters and try to see how they navigate their own personal challenges in the context of the space that I've created. What do they smell? What do they touch? What's it like to fall in love inside a smart city? What do you see when you look at your window? And does it depend on how the windows software interacts with your mood? And finally, I asked myself how a future brilliant city would ensure that nobody is homeless and nobody slips through the cracks. And here's where future history comes in handy. Because cities don't just spring up overnight like weeds. They arise and transform. They bear the scars and ornaments of wars, migrations, economic booms, cultural awakenings. A future city should have monuments, yeah, but it should also have layers of past architecture, repurposed buildings, and all of the signs of how we got to this place. And then there's second order effects, like how do things go wrong or right in a way that nobody ever anticipated? Like if the walls of your apartment are made out of a kind of fungus that can regrow itself to repair any damage? What if people start eating the walls? Speaking of eating, what kind of sewer system does the city of the future have? It's a trick question. There are no sewers. There's something incredibly bizarre about the current system we have in the United States, where your waste gets flushed into a tunnel to be mixed with rainwater and often dumped into the ocean. Not to mention toilet paper. A bunch of techies led by Bill Gates are trying to reinvent the toilet right now. And it's possible that the toilet of the future could appear incredibly strange to someone living today. So how does the history of the future, all of that trial and error, lead to a better way to go to the bathroom? There are companies right now who are experimenting with a kind of cleaning wand that can substitute for toilet paper using compressed air or sanitizing sprays to clean. But what if those things looked more like flowers than technology? What if your toilet could analyze your waste and let you know if your microbiome might need a little tune up? What if today's experiments with turning human waste into fuel leads to a smart battery that could help power your home? But back to the city of the future. How do people navigate the space if there's no streets? How do people even make sense of the geography? I like to think of a place where there are spaces that are partially only in virtual reality that maybe you need special hardware to even discover. Like, for one story, I came up with a thing called the Cloudscape Interface, which I described as a chrome spider that plugs into your head using temporal nodes. And I got really carried away imagining the bars, restaurants, cafes that you could only find your way inside if you had the correct augmented reality hardware. But again, second order effects. In a world shaped by augmented reality, what kind of new communities will we have? What kind of new crimes that we haven't even thought of yet? Okay, like let's say that you and I are standing next to each other and you think that we're in a noisy sports bar, and I think we're in a highbrow salon with a string quartet talking about Baudrillard. I can't possibly imagine what might go wrong in that scenario. I'm sure it'll be fine. And then there's social media. I can imagine some pretty frickin dystopian scenarios where things like Internet quizzes, dating apps, horoscopes, bots all combine to drag you down deeper and deeper rabbit holes into bad relationships and worse politics. But then I think about the conversations that I've had with people who work on AI and what I always hear from them is that the smarter AI gets, the better it is at making connections. So maybe the social media of the future will be better. Maybe it'll help us to form healthier, less destructive relationships. Maybe we'll have devices that enable togetherness and serendipity. I really hope so. And you know, I like to think that if strong AI ever really exists, they'll probably enjoy our weird relationship drama the same way that you and I love to obsess about the Real Housewives of wherever. And finally, there's medicine. I mean, I think a lot about, like, how developments in genetic medicine could improve outcomes for people with cancer or dementia. And maybe one day your 100th birthday will be just another milestone on the way to another two or three decades of healthy, active life. Maybe the toilet of the future that I mentioned will improve health outcomes for a lot of people, including people in parts of the world where they don't have these complicated sewer systems that I mentioned. But also, as a transgender person, I like to think, what if we make advances in understanding the endocrine system that improve the options for trans people the same way that hormones and surgeries expanded the options for the previous generation? So finally, basically, I'm here to tell you, people talk about the future as though it's either going to be a technological wonderland or some kind of apocalyptic poop barbecue. But the truth is, it's not going to be either of those things. It's going to be in the middle, it's going to be both. It's going to be everything. The one thing we do know is that the future is going to be incredibly weird. Just think about how weird the early 21st century would appear to someone from the early 20th. And you know, there's a kind of logical fallacy that we all have where we expect the future to be an extension of the present. Like people in the 1980s thought that the Soviet Union would still be around today. But the future is going to be much weirder than we could possibly dream of. But we can try. And I know that there are going to be scary, scary things, but there's also going to be wonders and saving graces. And the first step to finding your way forward is to let your imagination run free. Thank you.

[Elise Hu]

That was Charlie Jane Anders at ted women in 2019. This talk was originally posted in December of 2019. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out [e-mail] curationguidelines and that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar and Tonsika Sarmarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balaurazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feedback. Thanks for listening. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Each Apple product, like the iPhone 16, is thoughtfully designed by skilled designers. The Titanium Apple Card is no different. It's laser etched, has no numbers, and it earns you daily cash on everything you buy, including 3% back on everything at Apple. Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone in minutes, subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and [e-mail].

[Charlie Jane Anders]

The McDonald's snack wrap is back. You brought it back. Ranch Snack Wrap Spicy Snack Wrap. You broke the Internet for a snack. Snack Wrap is back. Bottom up.

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