Science fiction plus the value of the ‘humble app’

Julia Hobsbawm and Georgina Godwin discuss how science fiction contributes to the age of the human and the machine. What is probable, what is improbable and what is impossible? They also look at the humble app.

They are joined by Hana Sutch – Co-Founder and CEO of nature and walking app GoJauntly, Co-Owner and Managing Partner of Furthermore design consultancy; Charles Arthur – freelance technology journalist, ex-Guardian Technology editor, blogger, The Overspill; and Jorge Vega Matos – social architect, researcher and community activator.

Finally, Alice Thwaite, founder of the Echo Chamber Club, speaks of her techno-heaven and her techno-hell.

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Key thinkers discuss apps and science fiction

“Rather than the desktop programme that does lots of things you have an app that only does one thing, and it focussed on doing that one thing very well. So in that sense, our lives have more focus, we’re more concentrated on a particular thing by an app. And then once you’ve done that, then you move onto another app.”

“Science fiction as a piece of art maybe along with poetry, are two types of writing that really capture the zeitgeist of our time. If you look at media, and you look at science fiction of late, it presents very bleak, very dystopian futures; we fear technology. And if we fear technology, we don’t learn about it, and if we don’t learn about it, then we don’t take ownership of it, and then we can’t control it.”

I feel like there are so many fears and desires about what the internet is and what it could be in the future. But anything that could be potentially hellish, I thought ‘that’s a potential, that might not necessarily happen.'”

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