We’ve time-shifted the lyrics of a traditional festive song and plundered the larder of possible futures to present you with one future a day for 12 days. An assortment of both near/likely and far/fictional futures to say ‘Happy Holidays’ to friends, clients, supporters and audiences, and to once again openly declare our love for the future-focused thinking inherent to science, technology and science fiction.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, The Future gave to me:
12 drones delivering
11 capsules cuisining
10s of billions of Earth-like planets
9 dodos de-extincted
8 bots-a-thinking
7 genes-a-changing
6 ships-a-jumping
5 (where’s my) jetpacks
4 bionic eyes
3 lab-grown steaks
2 lunar cities
And an upload singularity
[In case you didn’t pick up on it, this series appropriates the rhythms and structure of “The 12 Day of Christmas”, a cumulative Christmas carol detailing 12 days of increasingly over-the-top, medieval-themed gift giving.
This gifting period was the way Christmas was originally played out (and still does in some places) and was a festival the Christians borrowed from the Roman Saturnalia and the Pagan European Yule. All are more or less winter solstice celebrations (“half way out of the dark” as Doctor Who writer, Stephan Moffat, wonderfully puts it).
Giving starts 25 December and ends on January 5th, the “Twelfth Night” (Yes, and as Shakespeare aficionados probably know, Twelfth Night was written as a close to a Christmas festival).]
[…] at the Finch and Pea, we love things that put a scientific spin on tradition, so this remake of The 12 Days of Christmas is right up our alley. Created by James Hutson of Australia-based […]