What's Next? Exploring Science of the Future

Jim Al-Khalili at Pompey Skeptics on 8 March 2018 — full set of pics:

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmf8SYpR

From Pompey Skeptics:

We welcome back our Honorary President Professor Jim Al-Khalili with What's Next?

Predicting what the future will look like is not new. It is also a notoriously unreliable enterprise. Science fiction writers and Hollywood movies constantly paint imaginative pictures of future worlds, but what does today’s cutting-edge science tell us about the way we will actually be living in the decades to come? In this talk, based on his book What’s Next?, Jim Al-Khalili looks at the challenges facing humanity and what science can do to tackle the biggest of them. By considering the impact of such fields as nanotechnology, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, he argues that the world not likely to be all shiny utopian marvels – nor is it going to be a dystopian hell. Along with the the known ‘knowns’ (technologies based on today’s scientific advances) and the known ‘unknowns’ (such as predictable advances in healthcare, transport or robotics) are there going to be any unknown ‘unknowns’ (utterly unexpected and fantastical breakthoughs that no one has yet dared imagine)? Probably, yes – whatever it holds, the future is bound to surprise us. But we need to prepare for it and examine the possible implications, ethical or otherwise, of these scientific advances.