When I was writing Films from the Future, I immersed myself utterly in the soundtracks of the movies the book takes its inspiration from.
This, it turned out, was an incredibly powerful way of keeping my focus on the underlying social, emotional and aesthetic narratives that intertwine each film as I sought to tie these to technological narratives in the real world.
It also gave me a lasting love of the music these moves are built on — with one exception, these are epic sound tracks, and still inspire me!
Just for the heck of it, a couple of weeks ago I laid down a few opening episodes of a new podcast based on Films from the Future — The Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future podcast.
Apart from enjoying the process of making audio recordings (much more so than creating videos, which is way more hard work), I was interested to see if there’s any interest at all in a serialization of the book on a podcast.
As part of the ongoing project to publicly read Films from the Future aloud, cover to cover, I thought I’d post this recent video from chapter 1 on responsible innovation:
It’s pretty short — in part because ideas associated with responsible innovation threads through the whole book — but it is hopefully a helpful framing of the field and the ideas.
As I posted a week or so ago, I’m involved in a project this summer where I’m recording myself reading from Films from the Future: The technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies, and posting the readings up on my personal YouTube channel.
As I point out in the introductory video, I’m not a voice actor, and so these recordings are far from perfect. Yet despite this, there’s a nuance and insight you get from listening to an author read their own work — whether it’s from the phrasing and cadence, to what’s emphasized and what is not — that you don’t get from someone else reading the work.
Plus — and this is a large part of why I’m doing this — the videos make the book and the ideas and information it contains accessible to anyone with an internet connection (and YouTube access — sorry China!). And ultimately, this is why I wrote it.
If you find the videos useful, please let me know — and spread the word!
(Update: despite the awesomeness of this course, there was so little interest amongst students that we’re putting it on hold … we’ll see what we can do though to do something cool in this space though. Stay tuned!)
This is really exciting — this summer I’ll be teaching an online undergraduate course at ASU with my colleague Anna Muldoon on infectious diseases and movies.
World War Z — one of the movies we’ll be watching!
Of course, this is a direct response to COVID. But it also builds on three years of experience using sci-fi movies to explore the relationship between science, technology, society and the future, in ASU’s popular Moviegoer’s Guide To the Future course.
Well, despite thinking numerous times that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, I’ve reached the half-way point in my quest to record myself reading Films from the Future cover to cover…
Update May 22, 2020 – this project has now moved over to The Films from The Future Project on YouTube. New chapters will be posted over the coming weeks.
I’ve been playing around with a way to search a given YouTube channel from a simple form input, and the form below seems to work pretty well.
I specifically wanted a way to search the growing number of YouTube videos of readings from Films from the Future, allowing people to find videos that tackle specific topics. But it’s also a promising way to search the videos on other channels, including Risk Bites.
I’ll be developing a fuller version of this when the Future Rising video cycle is complete.
It’s a decision I may come to regret for many reasons. But heck, now I’ve started, I might as well persevere …
There was some method to my madness — I wanted to make Films as accessible as possible to people who are grappling with the isolation brought about by coronavirus. And in the absence of being able to give the book away, I set out to do the next best thing and post recordings of myself reading from the book on YouTube.
