Why we’re doing this project
Typically, the Brookfield Institute’s future-looking research analyzes present-day data and historical trends to make near-future predictions, or uses strategic foresight techniques such as horizon scanning to analyze signals of change and identify possible future implications. We use storytelling and narrative in knowledge translation and research dissemination, but our analysis is always grounded in facts. This project is a bit different.
Science fiction can be a window into the future, offering us entire galaxies of possibility models, as well as alternate pasts and worlds that exist entirely unconnected to our own timeline. Often, science fiction imagines technological or scientific advancement and what that advancement makes possible or instigates, for better or for worse. But it has also been applied to great effect to imagine alternative economies, labour markets, and employment models; community and family structures; social stratification and wealth distribution; and political and governance systems, freed from current (perceived or real) limitations such as affordability, scientific feasibility, political and electoral viability, and social norms; and widely-accepted stylized facts about our current systems, markets, and society.
We believe science fiction can provide frameworks within which to ask ‘what if’ questions, and answers them through imaginative, and imaginable, narratives and characters. For researchers and policymakers, especially those of us interested in anticipating and preparing for the future, near and far, science fiction can help us pose the questions we may not know we need to ask and create space to imagine both incremental and disruptive change; dystopias, utopias, and everything in between; and the medium and long-term impacts of maintaining the status quo. What if corporations replace governments and citizenship becomes tied to employment? What if intergalactic mining creates enough shared wealth that work becomes a choice, not a financial necessity? What impact could normalizing space travel or major climate disasters have on skills demands and future occupations?
Through the Policymaker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Brookfield Institute’s team interviews leading science fiction authors, both Canadian, and international, to answer some of these questions. Many of our authors are experts in their own right on technology and media, democracy and governance, science and social science, and draw on this expertise in their worldbuilding and plots. Join us as we examine the future of work and the economy, on Earth and in space!
