Intel commissions futuristic stories for internal planning, gives away ebooks and podcasts

Intel's Chief Futurist, Brian David Johnson, is a big advocate of using science fiction narratives as a jumping off point for a discussion between management and engineering about the future of Intel's business. Intel Germany's Morrow Project ("Uber Morgen") has commissioned four writers -- Douglas Rushkoff, Ray Hammond, Scarlett Thomas and Markus Heitz -- to produce science fictional pieces on the future that the company can use in its own planning. Intel has also released free ebooks and podcasts of the works in German and English.

"The Morrow-Project" is a unique literary project which shows the important effects that contemporary research will have on our future and the relevance that this research has for each of us. Research currently being conducted by Intel in the fields of photonics, robotics, telematics, dynamic physical rendering and intelligent sensors served as the basis to inspire four bestselling authors. The results are four short stories which paint amusing, thought-provoking and hopeful pictures of our future.

The Morrow Project

„Über Morgen"

(Thanks, Brian!)

(Disclosure: I am a paid consultant for some of Brian David Johnson's related work for Intel; primarily my work consists of discussing the implications for liberty and justice in the face of technological change)

• [Douglas Rushkoff]

  They do have some non-chip-focused labs, actually, doing some simple nano, robotics, and network logic stuff.

• [Stjohn]

  That’s what I thought too. I hope it turns out better than the original scenario. A lot can happen in 150 years.

• [Anonymous]

  And here I was hoping we were finally getting ready for repopulating the earth after the coming apocalypse.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morrow_Project

• [ElfSternberg]

  Man, I played The Morrow Project all the time in college. “Dow Chemical doesn’t care that napalm sticks to MARS.” “Well, Damoclese says that conquering Australia would be a really bad idea.”

  Needless to say, it became a very high-powered game. We actually achieved orbit.

  • [Jonathan Badger]

    Yeah. The Morrow Project was great. So much better than TSR’s Gamma World, which is probably much more famous. No stupid talking plants and the like in TMP.

• [Propnomicon]

  Wait, Intel is putting teams in coldsleep to rebuild civilization after the apocalypse?

  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morrow_Project)

  • [bibulb]

    Well, it beats some of the alternatives – Intel’s next project is designing infrastructure for the Alpha Complex arcos…

  • [edgore]

    My first thought when I saw this as well!

• [Matt Staggs]

  Came for role-playing references, leaving satisfied.

• [shannigans]

  Hmmm… having worked in Intel’s CTG and having access to their full portfolio of projects, I can say unfailingly that they’re not pushing any future technology envelopes over there. It’s very much a focused push on incremental increases and maintaining Moore’s law. From a business perspective it’s a good, at least short term, move but it’s certainly not science fiction camp.

  It was always disheartening when I’d hear about Icap or NTG buying companies who were working on actual futuristic and cool technologies because one of Intel’s greatest skills is failing at great ideas that are too far from the wafer.

  That fireplace behind him does look pretty slick though.

• [Flying_Monkey]

  I couldn’t watch the video because that Intel guy looks too much like some scary manchild clone. Did they make him as part of the project?

  Two thunbs up for The (original and still the best) Morrow Project BTW.

• [Anonymous]

  @Flying_Monkey – maybe the girls should say what they think about how he looks :-) Good stories! Audio files too!

• [Anonymous]

  Greetings,
  I thought the Morrow Project was a decades old role playing game!
  I wonder if Intel knows the past….