Between February 2009 and December 2010, we spoke to hundreds of people about the future. A few dozen of these people were nice enough to make predictions about the future.

Some of these predictions took the form of elaborate short stories, or intricate drawings or maps.

Click on their names to see what these participants submitted to the project. (Note: to see these predictions in context, click on "Timeline & findings", above.)

(image source: Emily Arkin)

PRESS RELEASE
April 6, 2074
Somerville MA

Opening Friday, April 27th, The Somerville Arts Council celebrates the kickoff of a new exhibit at the Arts at the Holarmory*, "The Palimpsest of Memory." Using new forensics technology to scrub the surface of a human brain to recover lost memories, the exhibit uses preserved severed heads (of those who died of natural causes) to project images from the former owner of the head's life onto a screen**.

The exhibit may prove controversial with privacy activists and the squeamish, but the Arts Council is no stranger to controversy since inducting its first Artificially Intelligent member, Ip/So, onto its board in 2072. Ip/So's reign has been characterized by a bold exploration into what it means to be human, deconstructing age-old ideas about individuality, sentience, bodily fluids--and some claim--old fashioned good taste.

What might be the next frontier in the arts in Somerville? The Arts Council hints at a future exhibit that will harness new technology to project unrealized futures directly from human minds onto a top-secret "canvas." Quoth the Mayor of Somerville, centenarian Emily Arkin: "Not since 'Somerville Speaks Out' was outlawed*** have we had this kind of unfettered look inside the Somerville psyche."

* After the original Armory was destroyed by an earthquake in 2036, an image was reconstructed from Google documentation of the original building along with recovered memories of recently deceased seniors, and projected onto a plain white building--which makes the Holarmory an ideal setting for an exhibit using recovered memory and projection.

** The process of memory scrubbing is much like scratching a record or sampling the contents of a hard drive at random access points. The resulting movies are fairly indistinguishable from avant-garde 16mm film collages of the 20th century but the ghastly heads and the voyeuristic glimpse into other's memories adds an exciting spin.

***In the post-quake police state.

(source: Emily Arkin)