The following article first appeared in the Digital Education newsletter.
I've been running a series called Dystopian Visions. In each article I look at a story written years ago that ruminates on the possible unintended consequences of developments in technology. I've compiled an interim index with links to each article so far. Here's a new one:
A Sound of Thunder
One of my favourite stories, this one by Ray Bradbury looks at the possible consequences of making a small, apparently insignificant, change in the past. Indeed, some people attribute the origin of the term 'the butterfly effect' -- in which a small change results in a disproportionately large outcome -- to this story.
Now, I realise that we don't have time travel, but I still think this story makes for an interesting starting point for discussion. An obvious application, for instance, would be the accuracy of a machine that administers medication. A small change in the program controlling the dosage, like moving the decimal point one place to the left or right, could prove fatal.
A less dramatic example would be the work I was commissioned to do some years ago by a company. I was asked to construct a spreadsheet that would keep track of their costs and profits, but with a lot more features than that brief description would suggest.
Because the whole thing was complex enough, the company told me not to worry about pence, and to round amounts up or down to the nearest pound.
I thought, and told them, that this was a mistake because the rounded figures would grow further and further away from the actual figures over time. They wouldn't listen.
What I did, though, was to design the spreadsheet in such a way that only the display showed the rounded figures. Behind the scenes, all the calculations were based on the real figures rather than the rounded ones.
Fortunately, when, a couple of months later, they said they did want the real figures after all, it took me just a few minutes to change the display accordingly.
On another financial matter, a member of my time came to me looking very nervous one day. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me he'd made a tiny error in a formula. Consequently, far from having a surplus of £20,000, we had a deficit.
But it's not all about money. Bradbury's story posits changes in language and even politics, in a richly entertaining way.
You can find the story in this collection (Amazon associate link).
If you're interested in how science fiction has influenced scientific development, then do book a visit to this exhibition at the Science Museum in London if you can. It's a great immersive experience, albeit a bit noisy, and fascinating. There are discounts for school groups. I've been asked to write a review of the exhibition for Schools Week magazine, so I'll publish links to that when it's ready. In the meantime, enjoy this short video:
Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination
See this book by clicking on the cover
This is the book that accompanies the exhibition at the Science Museum, but it's a pretty good tome in its own right. The editor is Dr Glyn Morgan, who has an MA in Science Fiction and a PhD in Eng Lit, from my alma mater Liverpool University. Boy, I'd love to do an MA in science fiction, which sounds dead exciting!
As you would expect from Thames and Hudson, the paper is high quality, and the text is lavishly illustrated. What I love about these books is that they embrace film as well as stories and academic treatises. I think this makes it potentially useful for other subject areas too, apart from the obvious ones of science and technology. For example, there's a section about the cold war in the 1950s, and other topics covered include robotics, communications and climate change.
A fuller review will appear in due course.
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