Welcome to The Future
An Interview with author Kathryn Hulick
What would it take for a robot to be able to make you a sandwich?
On Disobedient Femmes, I spoke with science writer Kathryn Hulick, who has just published Welcome to the Future: Robot Friends, Fusion Energy, Pet Dinosaurs and more.
Ms Hulick talks about:
How her love of science fiction led her to write about science for kids and about the great need there is for more books about science written for kids.
The process of writing Welcome to the Future and how she took popular topics such as robots, cities in space, living forever, endless clean energy, and food for all and did extensive interviews with scientists to help assess the feasibility of these ideas.
The possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence and the surprising complexity involved in “simple” human activities like making a sandwich
Genetic engineering, what’s feasible and what’s desirable
Giving students a nuanced understanding of the science and the ethical questions involved in making decisions about the technology of the future.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
“Technology itself is never good or bad. It’s a tool. Genetic engineering could be used to create a monster, like it has in many science fiction stories, or it could be used to create vaccines for Coronavirus and save lots of lives. It’s really is how you use technology that counts.”
“I think the technology of the future is going to be life based, it’s going to be engineering living things to make our lives hopefully better.”
“The ability to choose something like athletic ability, or intelligence we may never be able to do, because it’s just so complex. But the thing that will be possible, and I think should be possible, is the ability to, cure genetic conditions before a child is born.”
“We all have the responsibility to learn about what’s happening with these technologies, and to make our voices heard to decide what we want, what we think the ethics of these machines and robots should be.”
“Sometimes people will try to make things a little too optimistic for kids. I think kids deserve a more nuanced truth.”
“No one really knows what’s feasible. What’s much more interesting to me is what is desirable”
Listen to interview here:
