Sept 15, 2020 | By Ben Colón-Emeric TD ‘22

If you wanted to build the perfect future, what would you do? When the world was brought to a screeching halt by COVID-19, there was talk of dramatic change, institutional upheaval. But how does dramatic change come about? How can we rethink the systems that shape our lives? Imagine for a moment that you have infinite resources and total control over public policy. No longer must you decide if you’re going to trust your mother to cut your hair: the decisions you make can shape anything from world governance, to education, to the direction of scientific research. What future do you choose to build, and how do you get there? I, like many people, would be heavily influenced by the genre that has focused on the future for the better part of one-and-a-half centuries: science fiction.