A new PBS show promotes a more promising vision of the future : NPR

Ari Wallach interviews Andrea Kritcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

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Ari Wallach interviews Andrea Kritcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

BetterTomorrows/PBS

Dystopias are disappearing. At least that’s Kathryn Murdoch’s hope.

The activist and philanthropist is married to James Murdoch, the liberal-leaning son of Rupert Murdoch, the founder of Fox News. She is also an executive producer of her own television show. A brief history of the future premieres on PBS April 3.

“Actually, the whole concept started when my daughter told me she didn’t think there was any hope for the future,” Murdoch told NPR. “And that really upset me, because I had been working on issues of democracy and climate change for so long.”

Murdoch has dedicated herself to environmental issues since 2006. She served on the board of directors of the Environmental Defense Fund and co-founded the Quadrivium Foundation, which funds “practical, evidence-based solutions for critical societal problems.” She is well aware of the huge problems currently plaguing the planet and she reassured her daughter that smart people are doing their best to solve them.

“She always thought her future looked bleak,” Murdoch said. “And I didn’t understand that. And she said, well, look at all the young adult books (that) are about dystopias. Watch the TV shows. Watch the movies. Everything in the future is dystopian.”

It was hard not to admit this point. Cultural preoccupation with zombies continues The last of us and other films and video games. The hunger Games And The Handmaid’s Tale remain influential in fiction and on screen. Murdoch couldn’t find a single YA show or book that depicted a positive vision of the future, at least not a plausible vision that didn’t involve superheroes or dragons. “In reality, the last time we dreamed of a better future was Star Trek“, she said. “It was 1964.”

THE Star Trek The universe, she says, is a good example of “protopia.” She didn’t invent the word. It was coined by futurist Kevin Kelly in his 2010 book, What technology wants. The idea is this: dystopias are horrible and utopias are perfect (and therefore unrealizable, and potentially also menacing and pre-dystopian.)

Protopias, on the other hand, are feasible. They present a realistic and better future. But even the prototopic visions of more recent iterations of Star Trekshe notes, are not necessarily grappling with our most immediate crises.

“We don’t have anything that addresses climate change, democracy, AI and all the problems and challenges we face today.” Murdoch said, adding that films such as Two days later And Don’t look for only serve to scare us into thinking that we will not be able to save the planet. “We have been less successful in showing what the world would look like if we took action.”

So Murdoch co-founded Futurific Studios, which focuses on telling these stories. Its first production was the PBS series, hosted by the company’s co-founder, futurist Ari Wallach.

In A brief history of the future, he travels the world to meet people who find solutions. Like Valérie Courtois, a Canadian expert in indigenous forestry, who works with other First Nations activists and the Canadian government to protect national parks. And Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, who runs a nonprofit called The Ocean Cleanup.

“We now have interceptors in 11 of the most polluting rivers in the world and we believe we can stop most of the world’s plastic emissions from leaking into the ocean,” Slat explains in the second episode of the emission.

The series also features stories about training AI on the best of humanity, not the worst. The story of Copenhagen’s cleanest waste-to-energy power plant. An American company at the forefront of the use of virtual reality in the healthcare field. The common thread: innovation and hope.

“If you look at history, everything we take for granted today was impossible at one point,” Slat observes. “If there’s one piece of advice you should really ignore, it’s from people who say something can’t be done.”

But is it possible, I asked Kathryn Murdoch, that PBS viewers are already receptive to the show’s measured, evidence-based message? Wouldn’t it be more productive if a Futurific production ended up on, say, Fox, where the audience is massive? What are the chances that his series will be broadcast on the channel launched by his father-in-law?

Murdoch pointed out that PBS attracts a bipartisan audience, nearly half of whom in 2017 identify as conservative. Additionally, she added, the Murdoch family no longer owns most of Fox’s entertainment assets. “Actually, it would be Disney, and I think it would be awesome,” she said.

According to Murdoch, the next step for Futurific is a series of graphic novels, a renowned dystopian medium. After all, graphic novels were the original source of The Walking Dead. Perhaps, eventually, Futurific could also be adapted into prototopic shows or video games. But it’s not easy, Murdoch admits, to compete with the perverse appeal of dystopian stories.

“It’s kind of exciting to think, ‘Oh, I’m going to be the only survivor of the apocalypse but I think there’s something to be said for civilization,'” she said with a laugh. “And I would like to see examples of people working together and cooperating to create a better future for my children.”

And become, as Ari Wallach says, the ancestors our future desperately needs.

Edited for web and radio by Rose Friedman.