Help shape the future

Justin Rattner

The Tomorrow Project

Chief Technology Officer, Intel

Science and technology have progressed to the point where what we build is only constrained by the limits of our own imaginations” Justin Rattner, Chief Technology Officer, Intel

What kind of future do you want to live in? What future do you want to avoid? The Tomorrow Project explores our possible futures through fact-based, science-based fiction and video conversations with scientists and science fiction writers, world-renowned experts, passionate advocates and everyday people. Science fiction gives us all a language in which to converse about the future, and inspire dramatic change.

The Tomorrow Project is collaborating with Arc to expand these conversations. Visit www.uk.tomorrow-projects.com to read work from Arc ’s community of emerging writers. You’ll also find interviews with cutting-edge scientists and in-depth discussions with lauded and up-coming authors. And we don’t want to stop there. We’ll take the conversations and comments from the website as our inspiration for new stories, expanded interviews and live events. These conversations will explore the amazing, breathtaking possibilities that science and technology can bring – and also examine the consequences and dangers we face when, in the words of T. S. Eliot, we “dare disturb the universe”.

We invite you to join the conversation, contribute your voice, your concerns and your expectations of the future.

To that end, Arc and The Tomorrow Project are once again running a major short story competition. The theme for submissions this issue is POST HUMAN CONDITIONS. You’ll find our approaches to that theme throughout Arc 1.2, and on our blog at arcfinity.tumblr.com .

We are looking for short stories – between 3000 and 5000 words – about the way our minds and bodies will be shaped by technology in the near future. We want you to explore the post human condition and tell us what you see. Is humanity due for a make-over? Dare we change ourselves? And into what? Fifteen or twenty years from now, will we have made ourselves happier, or not? What will “happiness” mean to our children, and their children? The technology in these stories should be plausible enough to inspire us, wild enough thrill – and frighten. Remember as well that we’re looking for stories, not theses, and the human element will have to be compelling.

Anyone, anywhere in the world, can enter. Arc ’s editors will select one story for publication in the next issue of the magazine. We will pay £500 for that story and £200 for each of five shortlisted stories. The Tomorrow Project will use all of these stories to stimulate conversations about the future on its own website .

More details, including full terms and conditions, are at arcfinity.org/submit .

The Arc /Tomorrow Project collaboration has been made possible by the sponsorship of Intel.