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Fitzrovia Futures 2055 applied scifi event

Events News No Comments

On 7 September, there will be a public, live reading event as part of Fitzrovia Futures 2055, the applied science-fiction project I’m co-leading with Christine Aicardi.

This is a project inspired by those who live, work and visit Fitzrovia.

We’re a diverse and disparate community, made up of long and short term residents, local business (big and small) and a lot of visitors (tourists).

We have universities, residents who’ve been here for over 40 years and those who are new. We have family run businesses, Oxford Street, headquarters of international businesses, students, wealthy young professionals, and on it goes.

The project is getting as many different perspectives on the future of the area, opening up imaginations rather than closing them down with predictions.

Our 7 short stories set in the Fitzrovia of 2055 will be read by professional actors at the event.

There’s info on the event here and details on how to join the mailing list here

Paper in Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice.

News Thoughts and speculation No Comments

For those with an interest in applied science fiction, in particular the digital psychiatry project I worked on with Dr Christine Aicardi and others at King’s College London – our most recent paper is published in the Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice.

https://www.tatup.de/index.php/tatup/en/article/view/7276

“Abstract • This practice-based research article defines, analyzes, and reflects on the use of applied science fiction (SF) for anticipating the sociotechnical and ethical challenges of future digital mental health technologies. It details the bespoke applied SF process designed for the 3-year project, which involved creating two short SF stories and organizing their subsequent afterlife. The key findings of the project show the impact of this experience on the scientific team: They became aware of and attentive to possible societal implications of the projected technology and questioned taken-for-granted assumptions.
Developing future-oriented critical reflexivity is part of futures literacy, which is essential to technology assessment but often
overlooked.”