Abstract
Improving the future for our civilization is one of the foremost goals of both the sciences and the humanities. These endeavours allow us to learn from both our past mistakes and successes, to anticipate potential catastrophes, and to develop technologies and lines of thinking to preempt them. Yet dystopic visions of the future—often based on the unchecked rise of the very scientific and technological innovations designed to help society—abound in literature and film, while optimistic ones are more rare.
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
Isaac Asimov (1931) [1]
We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
Stephen Hawking (2010) [2]
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References
Asimov, I.: How Easy to See the Future, Natural History magazine (April 1975); later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
Hawking, S.: Interview with Larry King, CNN, 10 September 2010
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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Aguirre, A., Foster, B., Merali, Z. (2016). Introduction. In: Aguirre, A., Foster, B., Merali, Z. (eds) How Should Humanity Steer the Future?. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20717-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20717-9_1
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