[Interview file] "A sure prediction of the future? You may be a'scammer'"

After the coronavirus pandemic, as uncertainties in life increase, many people's worries about how to prepare for the future are growing.

Among these, a lot of information is pouring out in the form of'predicting' the future.

Then, what kind of shape is the'future' that we always wonder about now?

To this difficult question, there is a scholar who asked a fundamental question about the'future' from before the corona pandemic, claiming that'the future does not come'.

On the 11th, at the Media Education Center, we had a conversation with Sungwook Hong, a science and technology scholar and co-author of <The Future Doesn't Come>, a professor at the Department of Life Sciences at Seoul National University.

▲ Hong Seong-wook, professor of science and technology at Seoul National University (Last 11th, Media Education Institute)

The Chinese character'future (未來)' means'I'll come' to'Any Mi', and the future doesn't come.

It is also a concept that literally solves the word future and talks about it.

On the other hand, many people predict the future.

Some people make predictions very clearly and very confidently, but looking back on how accurate the future predictions were so confident that they didn't fit that much.

That said, the future predictions you're making will be similar.

The co-author Professor Chi-Hyung Jeon and I started the problem consciousness that I had at first.

** Chi-Hyung Jeon Professor of KAIST Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy.

He majored in'Science and Technology', which studies the relationship between science and technology and society.

I am interested in the impact of the emergence of artificial intelligence and pseudo-human technologies such as robots on human identity and human relationships.

And I wrote a book while I was very angry.

It was a state full of anger or something like that.

Because the future is what we create by living properly now, and seeing too many dazzle people while saying,'The world will be like this in 5 or 10 years', would it be an alarm for such a phenomenon?

It may sound a little weird, but how convinced, prophecy-like people who make predictions of the future can be ``scammers'', and there is a way I wrote a book to talk about them.

After the pandemic, there seems to be a part where my thoughts were strengthened.

There were one or two people who predicted this situation when Corona 19 broke out, but in fact, most people couldn't imagine that such a big infectious disease would circulate.

The whole world suffered from Corona 19 in a state of being completely unprepared.

When we suffered from MERS and SARS, we didn't think that these infectious diseases would come back so soon.

So, I felt that'the future is unknown' once again, but I think we are learning the power and wisdom to live while overcoming this and preparing for similar disasters to come.

I am actually a person who studies the history of science and technology.

I am still looking at the history of technology.

When I say that I study history (history of science and technology), few people are interested.

They even say, "I have to think about the future, what do I do by looking at the past, it's all past technology and innovation"

But if you look closely at the past, you can see how technology and society interacted.

It's a lot better to see why the promising technologies weren't adopted, and how we are using all of the technologies that we thought nothing to see at first, and under what conditions and processes these things went through.

But most of them are only interested in how the sparkling technologies were invented.

What's really hard to know is the future, and I think it's necessary to look at the past and history much more closely in order to gain a more wise insight into the future.

When we care too much about the future, we actually forget the present.

In some cases, it may be good temporarily.

If you dream that'in the future, my future won't be like' when you are currently suffering and difficult, you can relieve the suffering of the present a bit.

It can be socially too.

When we really can't live and get out of the horrors of the war, when the whole society dreams of'the Korean society will be able to enter the middle and advanced countries 20 years from now', it is a way to forget the current difficulties a little. I have.

However, there are such problems that can be solved now and that must be solved, and I think paying too much attention to the future has consequences that make us look away from such problems.

When technology develops, you have to think about who is using it, who will benefit from it, who will make money from it, and who will be excluded from it.

I think future predictions are future predictions for those who still have.

It is because the focus is on what the industry will be like in the future, what technology will emerge.

It is important to imagine stories for ordinary people's daily lives and for their better future, and to make those stories into discourse.

Because it's a future we don't want.

We don't try to think about a bad future, not a good future.

In the future that climate change brings, sea levels rise, glaciers melt, crops decline, and disputes begin to arise between countries.

I try not to think about that future.

'Somehow it will be solved...

I don't think a lot of people are thinking of'.

Even if I don't worry, politicians and scientists think that they will solve it, politicians think that'scientists will solve it', and scientists think that it will be solved politically.

You can talk about the future in different ways.

The important thing is'What kind of future do we want?'

The future I want to live in, or the future my child wants to live in, is that I can and must imagine what kind of future it is.

For example,'Is the future where my child will live with a nuclear power plant?

In the future in which our next generation will live, I wish we could supplement our energy in a way other than that,' or this is an imagination and discourse about the future.

I think we need to share and share these stories more than we do now.

I think it would be nice to start with science fiction.

In science fiction works, stories about various futures come out, and we meet some strange beings in the near and far future.

I live in an unfamiliar environment with new worries and conflicts.

So many different futures are drawn.

Just a few years ago, Korean novelists didn't like science fiction very much.

There were only very few enthusiasts, but it's been changing a little lately.

Science fiction writers are also attracting social attention, and many books and tens of thousands of copies are sold.

I think science fiction works are creating an environment where we can talk about various futures together and create discourses.

As more people read science fiction novels, I think that if they read, feel, and talk about things they think, there will be more people who can share similar stories, and discussions can start.

At the end of the interview, Professor Sungwook Hong said, "Now, depending on how we live, how often such a crisis (such as corona and pandemic) will be determined."

What kind of'future discourse' are we creating now, facing a world we have never experienced with Corona 19?

What kind of future are you envisioning now?

(Written by: Choi Ye-jin sdf@sbs.co.kr)

*** The report files of the SBS Press Headquarters Future Team are created by members of the SBS Press Headquarters' Future Team, centering on SBS's representative social contribution knowledge sharing platform <SBS D Forum>.

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