Talk given at the Open Data Institute in London on various visions of Data in science fiction. The text based slides contain the text of the talk from the script. Some pictures are clickable to online links.

1. Richard Adams
@dickyadams

2. I have added the text of the talk in note
form on blank slides in-between the
picture slides so this can be read.

3. • Science fiction is perhaps the most maligned of literary genres. At various times it
has been insulted, ignored, pilloried, renamed and even possibly stunned by
phasers. You can see this easily where certain authors create what on every level
is science fiction but they refuse to call it that. For example Audrey Niffenegger ,
who wrote The time Traveller's Wife is reluctant to label the novel as scifi, saying
she "never thought of it as science fiction, even though it has a science-fiction
premise. Similarly, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is often classed as
speculative fiction rather than sci-fi, despite it being set in a world that Huxley
might have created. She had the following to say. "I like to make a distinction
between science fiction proper and speculative fiction. For me, the science
fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do, such as
going through a wormhole in space to another universe; and speculative fiction
means a work that employs the means already to hand, such as DNA
identification and credit cards, and that takes place on Planet Earth. But the
terms are fluid."
• Personally I like Clarkesworlds definition better.
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/submissions/

4. Sci-Fi has a history but its primarily a 19th and 20th
Century form as we know it
Kaguya-hime returningto the Moon
in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
Bacon describes the discovery of a utopian society
based on experimental science, including the
development of "New Artificiall Metals," vivisection,
genetic manipulation, telescopes, microscopes,
telephones, factories, aerial flight, and
submarines.

5. Another thing to understand with sci-fi apart from
it not being totally infantile is that it very
strongly has an interesting relationship with the
time in which is written and there are clear
trends. Science fiction is a modern era
invention. There were proto science fiction
books around and fantasy stories but sci-fi as
we know it was a child of the technological era.

6. It's very interesting when you look at
what futures are represented when.. I
was digging around and found these
diagrams that show what era various

7. Time

8. One can't help but conclude that scifi does follow
the concerns of the era in which it is written…
as do other art forms of course. Brave new
World for example was written during an era
where eugenics was being actively proposed as
something that could be used. It's even set
in London AD 2540 or 632 A.F. – "After Ford“ –
mass production was the major invention of the
age.

9. Brave New World

10. Obviously we are here today to talk about data in science fiction, there are rarely
arguments about the way data is represented in sci-fi or whether it’s speculative
or not….this is a mighty odd subject for a talk really but one I have been
concerned with in my own limited way through my own work both day job and
writing. I guess most people wouldn’t want to read a sci fi story if you told them
it was about data but some really popular stories were built on data at their
hearts.
Data is also a very dry subject - mention it and people run to the hills with
nightmare pictures running through their heads of mutant Excel spreadsheets
trying to tie them in knots for the rest of their lives….well, whether we fear it or
love it, data is a fact of life for everyone in this room - for those digital experts
here it's now almost impossible to call oneself that without being able to
understand the impacts and scope of data in your workspace.
But the thing is, if you think about it, data can tell a story in its own right.

11. People

12. For example the following picture is data interpreted as a person
like this or http://allthingsd.com/20111229/if-android-were-a-
single-person-heres-what-he-would-look-like/
We all know that marketing people for instance invent characters
from data…and with more data comes the chance to create
much more complex characters. Writers use tools to create
characters and stories based on data - we can see that with this
with tools that some writers use such as
this http://www.charlottedillon.com/CharacterChart.html
Rarely do we find characters created from data, but we do find data
at the heart of numerous stories.

13. Or This

14. Today I'm going to look at just a few stories -
including two by one author and a TV series
The first story is Foundation by Isaac Asimov, a
story and epic series that puts data at the
heart of the narrative.
The foundation Series is one of Asimov's best
loved works…

15. Foundation The premise of the series is that
mathematician Hari Seldon spent
his life developing a branch of
mathematics known
as psychohistory, a concept of
mathematical
sociology (analogous
to mathematical physics). Using
the laws of mass action, it can
predict the future, but only on a
large scale; it is error-prone on a
small scale. It works on the
principle that the behaviour of a
mass of people is predictable if
the quantity of this mass is very
large (equal to the population of
the galaxy, which has a
population of quadrillions of
humans, inhabiting millions of
star systems). The larger the
number, the more predictable is
the future.

16. The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon spent
his life developing a branch of mathematics known as
psychohistory, a concept of mathematical sociology (analogous to
mathematical physics). Using the laws of mass action, it can predict
the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone on a small
scale. It works on the principle that the behaviour of a mass of
people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal
to the population of the galaxy, which has a population of
quadrillions of humans, inhabiting millions of star systems). The
larger the number, the more predictable is the future.

17. Psychohistory
“Psychohistory dealt not with man, but with man-
masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their
billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with
something of the accuracy that a lesser science
could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard
ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by
no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is
something else again.”
—Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire
Lookslikeaproperboffin

18. Using these techniques, Seldon foresees the imminent
fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the
entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting thirty thousand
years before a second great empire arises. Seldon's
psychohistory also foresees an alternative where the
intermittent period will last only one thousand years.
To ensure his vision of a second great Empire comes to
fruition, Seldon creates two Foundations—small,
secluded havens of all human knowledge—at
"opposite ends of the galaxy".

19. Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and
January 2, 1920[1] in Petrovichi in the Russian Soviet
Federative Socialist Republic (near the modern border
with Belarus) to Anna Rachel (Berman) Asimov and Judah
Asimov, a family of Jewish millers. His family emigrated to the
United States when he was three years old…

20. • Basically though the world he grew up in was one of great super powers and massive
blocks - the rise of control economies and new science meant that new ideas abounded
and Asimov reflected and distilled these. He also grew up in a time new theories of the
mind and behaviour were exploding into consciousness, Freud, Jung etc. In a lot of ways
Asimov's Psychohistory was a a clear mix of this new attitude to mind mixed with the new
physics of the time but framed by geopolitics.
• So is it possible? Well lots of chat on Quora about this http://www.quora.com/Is-
%E2%80%9Cpsychohistory%E2%80%9D-possible
• Thing is that new maths such as Game Theory and so on seemed to render this as a fairy
tale but just recently we have seen moves back to using larger and larger data sets to
predict events – for example – this in Afghanistan http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-
east/afghanistan/computer-analysis-predicted-rises-ebbs-in-afghanistan-violence-
1.183131 where the insurgency was predicted … there was even a talk given by a noted
mathematician in London earlier this year where he discussed the fact that Asimov may
have been right. In my day job I'm looking at health and predictive health through big
data, so for me this is very real. After all, what is Psychohistory but big data?

21. • Now of course that was years ago and things change – Asimov’s
society has evolved into something else. We now live in an era of
terror by unseen forces that aim to undermine our lives and
souls. The old certainties have disappeared. Supra national blocks
have and are dissolving. Old businesses are being disrupted and
disintermediated; manufacturing is facing a threat from 3D
printing. The end of mass production that backbone of the
twentieth century economy is now starting to face a challenge.
We also live in a era of surveillance from every time you logion to
your email down to walking the streets under c0onstant camera
surveillance and indeed cameras that can recognise and track
you.
• Which brings me to Person of Interest…

22. Person of Interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series)

23. Still paranoid after all these years.

24. • POI has a very modern take on Data we all I think saw the Minority Report future but I think POI is a little more real and very very now. It
concerns the invention of a computer than can predict crime. The series revolves around a former agent recruited by a mysterious
billionaire to prevent violent crimes in. The Machine is a mass surveillance computer system programmed to monitor and analyze data
from surveillance cameras, electronic communications, and audio input throughout the world. From these data, the Machine accurately
predicts violent acts. Under control of the U.S. Government, its stated purpose is to foresee terrorist attacks, allowing the government to
forestall terrorist activity. However, the Machine detects future violent acts of all kinds, not just terrorism. During the development of the
Machine, Finch created a routine that would pass on the "irrelevant" non-terrorism related data to him in the form of social security
numbers, via coded messages over a public telephone. Unknown to Finch, his partner, Nathan Ingram, also created a routine, called
"Contingency", on the eve of the government handover. It has not been revealed what this program does, or whether it is currently active.
• http://www.tv.com/news/person-of-interest-its-getting-smarter-27563/
the course of each episode, the viewer periodically sees events as a Machine-generated on-screen t display of data about a
character or characters: identification, activities, records, and more may be displayed. The viewer also sees a Machine-generated
perspective as it monitors New York. Commercial flights are outlined by green triangles, red concentric circles indicate no-fly zones
around tall buildings, and dashed boxes mark individual people The Machine classifies the people it watches by color-coding the boxes:
white for no threat or an irrelevant threat, red or red-and-white for perceived threats, and yellow for people who know about the
machine, including Finch, Reese, Ingram, Corwin and Root. The white-boxed "irrelevant threat" targets include the Persons of Interesthat
Reese and Finch assist.
• http://www.channel5.com/shows/person-of-interest/clips/series-trailer
• There was a great episode, "Super", that gave us a flashback for the machine.
• The whole show was devoted to flashbacks about the machine and we saw how far the computer has progressed and where it will go
next. The machine was much more basic in 2005 but through the episode we saw how it became smart. Now it's generating three-
dimensional wireframes of buildings and tracking people, even keeping tabs on its partners Reese and Finch. Before, it used voice
recognition (and gait analysis!) to spit out information on people in DOS-style font. Now it's registering audio, tapping mobile phones (it
even has the decency to block out the whole phone number), and updating threat analysis in real time. It's getting smarter every day and
becoming more of an actual character with each episode
• Of course in the UK we had this in Blakes 7 where Orac
• But any show can make a super-smart computer program that can spy on the population and identify potential threats and victims. What
Person of Interest does differently is show us how that kind of technology relates to the two characters who rely on it. It also shows how
the information the machine processes and spits out is useless without the right people to process it.
• Of course there is also a potential wider government conspiracy surrounding this. The most intriguing question for me is whether or not
the machine is sentient. Of course this is drawing on all the current angst about the Singularity and so on as well as tapping basic fears
logical
refresh that society undergoes.

25. Me

26. • The writing I’ve been doing is similarly in this space – I won't
pretend I’m brilliant but I’m rapidly improving – the first fours
shorts deal with the changes in society in the midterm that such
pervasive computing have brought.
• Behind the scenes is a view of the very far future; of planetary
networks evolving and beyond that to when intelligence is
capable of reaching the stars through being data, not organic
bodies. The next few stories bring the action closer to now and
deal with things such as big data dating going wrong… Dark
stories tapping that slight paranoia. I also look at the idea that big
data profiles might take on our illnesses, paranoias and other
personality traits and reflect them back at us.

27. There are other terrific ideas around about the nature of information, for example this passage from Olaf
Stapledon's 1930 "Last and First Men" (Chapter XV, Part 4) seems to suggest that thought has
gravitational mass. Or something like that.
"You may wonder how we have come to detect these remote lives and intelligences. I can say only that the
occurrence of mentality produces certain minute astronomical effects, to which our instruments are
sensitive even at great distances. These effects increase slightly with the mere mass of living matter on
any astronomical body, but far more with its mental and spiritual development. Long ago it was the
spiritual development of the world-community of the Fifth Men that dragged the moon from its orbit.
And in our own case, so numerous is our society today, and so greatly developed in mental and spiritual
activities, that only by continuous expense of physical energy can we preserve the solar system from
confusion.“
Of course this notion of information and data as being "something real" is really interesting… in some
ways this is reflected in the Holographic Principle that posits that the entire universe can be seen as
a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon - or even more as data
sitting on the event horizon of a black hole.

28. Last and First Men

29. But although these more philosophical pieces exist, most sci-fi tends to reflect what is
happening now but through a mirror of enlargement. For me good speculative fiction has
the power to reflect to us what we are doing and to enable us to ingest and process
ideas. It always surprises me that a marketing team can spend so much money on
understanding customers and their stories that they don’t go further and don’t actually
create fictions around their customers.
There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years around stories and conversations and we are
now entering an era where we can get these personalities accurately defined to the point
of them becoming virtual characters with whom we can interact. Data is empowering
this. It's not the new oil as some slick commentator once said, in some ways, data is the
new molecular structure of experience and interaction.
Of course someone had to go much bigger than this. To finish off I'd like to talk about one last
short story written in the 50’s at the dawn of computing….

30. The last Question

31. From Wikipedia: The Last Question: Isaac Asimov
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity
first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over
highballs, and it happened this way...
—Opening line, The Last Question
The story deals with the development of computers called Multivacs and their relationships with
humanitythrough the courses of seven historic settings, beginning in 2061. In each of the first
six scenes a different character presents the computer with the same question; namely, how
the threat to human existence posed by the heat death of the universe can be averted. The
question was: "How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?"
This is equivalent to asking: "Can the workings of the second law of thermodynamics (used in
the story as the increase of the entropy of the universe) be reversed?" Multivac's only response
after much "thinking" is: "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.“
All of which reminds us of the Hitchhikers Guide and Deep Thought - which gives us a model for all
of us working with big data… you need to ask the right question!

33. Anyway….
The story jumps forward in time into newer and newer eras of human and scientific development. In each
of these eras someone decides to ask the ultimate "last question" regarding the reversal and decrease
of entropy. Each time, in each new era, Multivac's descendant is asked this question, and finds itself
unable to solve the problem. Each time all it can answer is an (increasingly sophisticated, linguistically):
"THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity (the unified mental process of over a trillion, trillion,
trillion humans that have spread throughout the universe) watches the stars flicker out, one by one, as
the universe finally approaches the state of heat death. Humanity asks AC, Multivac's ultimate
descendant, which exists in hyperspace beyond the bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question
one last time, before humanity merges with AC and disappears. AC is still unable to answer, but
continues to ponder the question even after space and time cease to exist. Eventually AC discovers the
answer, but has nobody to report it to; the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to show the
answer by demonstrating the reversal of entropy, creating the universe anew. The story ends with,
well, let’s listen…
Play video from 23.24 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0

34. The last Question

35. 3 key questions for working with data
1. Am I asking the right thing
2. What are the real impacts of what I am doing?
3. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Good
Governance)

36. Richard F Adams on Kindle @dickyadams