Nature Future Conditional

The story behind the story: Sparrowfall

The story Sparrowfall marks a welcome return to Futures for Robert Dawson, whose last Futures tale offered a chilling view of the future of advertising. This time, he’s looking at another application of technology — and how it may or may not help. Here he talks about the ideas behind the tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Sparrowfall

I wrote this story to explore the limitations of ‘intelligent’ systems. A self-driving car may have reflexes faster than a Formula 1 driver, and never be tired or tipsy — but can it predict when a child’s football will roll into the street and its owner follow?

In the same way, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a habitat, whether city or space ship, with ubiquitous sensory devices, machines to act on its behalf, and enough computing power to coordinate them all,  would almost be its own tutelary deity. The title (echoing Matthew 10:29) and the apple-picker at the beginning of the story are, of course, meant to encourage the reader to consider this idea.

But the city, although giving a superficial appearance of omniscience and programmed to be benevolent, or at least helpful, is limited in its powers. It has not been designed to respond to all emergencies, and its programmers have deliberately required it to respect the free will of all the inhabitants. It wasn’t built to be a god, and it can’t save the woman from herself.

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