INFECTIOUS FUTURES Stories of the post-antibiotic apocalypse
INTRODUCTION At Nesta we believe that engaging in science fiction and speculation is a powerful way to intervene in society’s desires and expectations of the future. We seek to better understand how imagined futures impact our present and our preparedness for what comes next. Visions of the future can illuminate potential paths forward. If those on offer are limited, they may lead us towards a limited set of identities, values and possible actions. If they cluster around particular concerns or desires they make those appear clearer and more compelling; even inevitable, and blind us to alternatives. Creating new visions can reveal a wider range of routes forward. When science warns us of slow, complicated, yet potentially enormous catastrophes, we need to engage with a variety of tools to effectively envisage and recognise threats and identify possibilities for change. Nesta grapples with questions of how real and imagined futures coconstruct one another in a number of ways, and seeks to support alternative perspectives. We explored the mutual influence of science fiction and innovation in our paper Better Made Up. We invite the public to debate, taste, feel and play out potential futures at our annual FutureFest event. We commission and support a number of narrative projects. For instance, we split the future of nanosatellites into six narratives in an attempt to demonstrate to policymakers that the ways they choose to talk about a new technology affects how it plays out in the world. With the British Council we supported a group of Nigerian creatives in their work creating and sharing films, images, music, art and narratives exploring alternative futures of Lagos. Our society’s relationship with microorganisms is going to have to change over coming decades. We will not succeed in overcoming antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by simply producing more and stronger drugs within the same environment that pressures microbes to evolve resistance. New technologies are allowing us to learn ever more about bacteria, and to negotiate a new relationship. The overall solution to AMR involves a long-
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