Cynicism is a quality almost taken for granted in tech journalism, and we’re certainly as guilty as the next publication. But both the risk and the promise of the technology exist, and a new documentary series tries to highlight the latter without discounting the former. “A Brief History of the Future”, hosted by Ari Wallach, also has the exciting quality, as a PBS production, of being completely free.
The show’s position is simply that while the risks and frustrations of technology (often due to its subversion by business interests) are worth examining and documenting, the other side of the coin should also be highlighted not out of naivety but because it’s really important and imperative.
I spoke with Wallach, who embraces the moniker “futurist” unapologetically from the get-go, suggesting that we’re in danger of blinding ourselves to the transformative potential of technology, startups and innovation. (Full disclosure: I met Ari many, many years ago when he was going to Berklee with my brother, though that’s completely coincidental.)
“The theory behind this is that when you ask 10 Americans ‘what do you think about the future?’ 9 out of 10 will say, I’m afraid, or they’ll say it’s all about technology. Those are two things that this show is kind of an intervention for,” Wallach explained.
The future, he said, isn’t just what a Silicon Valley journalist tells you, or what “Big Dystopia” warns you about, or even what a TechCrunch writer predicts.
In the six-episode series, he talks to dozens of individuals, companies and communities about how they are working to improve and secure a future they may never see. From mushroom skin to ocean cleanup to deaths, Wallach finds people who see the same terrifying future as us, but choose to do something about it, even if that something seems hopelessly small or naive.
“We wanted to bring the future into the living rooms of people who don’t usually think about it with a critical, open mind, in terms of the future you’re creating,” he said. “People are just not exposed to it. Because right now, there are a lot of reasons that, culturally, to be critical and cynical is to think of them as smart and self-aware. But now we’re at a point where if we keep doing this, we’re going to lose the thread. We will lose the narrative of the entire greatest human work.”
The point, in other words, is not to pretend the problems don’t exist, but rather that there are already enough people talking about the problems. Shouldn’t one focus on what people actually do to solve them?
Of course the expected topics of artificial intelligence, automation and climate are there, but so are food, art and architecture and more philosophical concerns like governance and value.
The most common objection my cynical mind made as I watched was the classic “how’s that scale?” And Wallach was quick to admit that many of them don’t.
“How you scale and how you monetize — that’s kind of creating Silicon Valley, the Sand Hill Road to look to the future. And there is a time and place for that! It may go ahead, it may not. That’s not the point. We’ve tried to inform and educate how to think differently about tomorrow, and here are examples of people doing it. It is a pattern of behavior and action to give people a sense of agency. Like, are we all going to live in 3D printed houses? Probably not. But if we think about the 2-3 billion homeless people on the planet and how we’re going to house them, that’s potentially going to be part of it,” he continued.
“It’s about solution centricity that isn’t purely VC solution centricity. It’s about how we solve the problems we have today through an opportunistic lens, as opposed to the ‘we’re all going to die’ lens, which is usually the headlines, right?”
Wallach’s thesis won his crew a golden ticket to travel around the world and talk to lots of interesting people and companies. Vertical farms, mushroom skin, coral propagation. Pete Buttigieg, Emmanuel Macron, Reid Hoffman, Grimes, footballer Kylian Mbappé. And everyone seems relieved to be able to talk about the promise of the future rather than its threat.
When I asked Wallach where or with whom he would like to spend a little more time, he gave three answers. One, a professor in northern Japan who has a theatrical, but apparently quite effective, way of asking old people to think about the future by having them pretend to be visited by it. Second, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, where the level of innovation and ambition was, he said, too high to express. And three, the “death doula” who helps people overcome the stress of their existence. (Although technology is often discussed, it is far from the only topic.)
Image Credits: PBS
In case you’re wondering what special interest money is trying to placate you with this benevolent presentation of a kinder, wiser future… don’t worry, I asked. And the shady company behind this extremely well-produced documentary is nothing short of nefarious Public Broadcasting. Which means, as noted above, that it’s not just free to stream PBS.organd on YouTube (I’ll add the first episode below once it goes live), but it will also be shown on regular, linear TV every Wednesday at 9 p.m. — “immediately after Nova.”
The general audience for a show like this, Wallach reminded me, isn’t into TikTok or often even streaming services. Millions, especially older people who are not yet bitter about the promise of the future, turn on the TV after dinner to watch the local news, a network show, and maybe a documentary like this one.
Wallach and his crew have also created a classroom version of the show that includes educational material to follow with students about the topics covered.
“This will be the first future curriculum nationwide, available to over 1.5 million educators on the PBS education platform. It’s like 20 million kids. It is nice. And it’s free.”
As a parting thought, Wallach noted the shows he grew up with and how it’s “cutting edge” to be able to emulate — though he was careful not to compare his own to — classic shows like Cosmos, The Power of Myth and Connections.
“Cosmos changed the way I think about the universe. The Power of Myth, how I think about faith, meaning, psychology. Hopefully, A Brief History of the Future changes the way people think about the future and tomorrow. This is the company we wanted to be in.”
