Category Archives: Interesting links

King’s College London Writing Challenge

I am really pleased to be part of this writing challenge for 15 to 18 year olds which starts today on the hot topic of digital twins.

It is being run by King’s College London along with participating schools – CLS, CLSG, City of London Highgate Hill, City of London Shoreditch Park and The City Academy, Hackney.

Looking at the areas of Aviation, Healthcare and the Built Environment, it will take the form of two workshops followed by a short story writing challenge that will be judged by experts, academics and writers.

The first workshop will explore the technologies and their related potential and risks, the second will be a workshop on writing, which will help the participants plan and imagine their story.

When imagining what a future with digital twins might look like, consider this…

“What if an all-seeing, all-knowing machine could connect every dot of data and replicate the world – the flow of planes and of cars, of energy and of people, of healthy cells and of diseased cells? What if that reflection then re-entered through the data dots to alter the world, for better or for worse?” Stephen Oram

The workshop slides, supplementary materials and a 7 day ‘story starter’ are available here.

Now | Future | Me | Us

Inventing characters, their motivations and their development in a world that is futuristic takes a bit of thought. As some famous non-science fiction authors have shown when they turn their hand to the genre it takes more than a few bits of wizzy technology and a simple twist of history to create a believable story.

So, it’s always a pleasure to come across new techniques for creating and developing characters and worlds. But, that’s only one of the reasons I enjoyed the “bentoism” of Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler. It’s also a good way of getting perspective on life and its many complex choices.

What is it? Well, in essence you weigh up the pluses and minuses of a decision for the now you, the now us, the future you and the future us.

There’s more about it on the bentoism website and you can hear him being interviewed on the Futures Podcast.


photo credit: Bennilover “Halloween and Vergie’s pumpkins, weird and wonderful and very, very creepy” via photopin (license)