Using Storytelling to Investigate Scientific Questions

Fiction can be an important tool to explore complex science and technology questions: Would our legal system be more equitable if an AI delivered verdicts rather than judges and juries? What will happen to future climate refugees? Is human consciousness just another algorithm? That’s why Issues has partnered with ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination to publish Future Tense Fiction, a speculative fiction series that uses imagination to explore science and technology questions like these ones. 

On this episode, host Mia Armstrong-López, an editor of Future Tense, talks to Arula Ratnakar, a computational neuroscience PhD student at Boston University and author of “Coda,” a recent Future Tense Fiction story about computing, consciousness, and cryptography. They discuss how Ratnakar’s work as a writer enhances her work as a scientist and vice versa, and how storytelling can help both experts and nonexperts think about complex technical issues and enhance the practice of science. 

Resources: 

• Read Arula Ratnakar’s story, “Coda,” and Cristopher Moore’s response essay, “Computing Consciousness.” 

• Check out the paper that inspired “Coda”: “An RNA-based theory of natural universal computation.”

• Find more of Ratnakar’s stories and research on her website. 

• Check out Future Tense Fiction to find more stories!