Recently I sent a twitter request out into the wider internets. I got 23 responses, which I am running (with permission) below. I’ll tell you who I selected as the winner in a moment, but first I’d like to tell you what I learned.

It’s a hard assignment. Compressing anything as messy as the future into 100 words is a near-impossible challenge. Almost like writing poetry. And 100 years is so immensely distant from us that we need to fictionalize it. But the most difficult part is imagining a scenario that is desirable.

This exercise began with my dissatisfaction with the visions of our future today available in movies and science fiction. For the most part they are dystopian. Name a Hollywood future you’d like to live in? I couldn’t. OK, maybe I could be talked into boarding the Starship Enterprise, but what about a future on this home planet, where we will all live for the next century? Minority Report? Elysium? Battlestar Galactica? These are repulsive futures you hope never materialize. They may contain one or two cool innovations we’d like, but the total culture of these future worlds is broken, scary, one-sided, and wholly unappealing. Even if we are the lucky 1%.

I am not asking for utopia. In fact, a world where everything worked perfectly, with no side effects, is its own kind of hell. I am a protopian. I believe in progress, an incremental betterment with corresponding downsides each year, inching toward a world that is desirable despite its many flaws. A protopian future would generate plenty of unexpected ills and unjust distributions, but overall the greater net benefits would draw us to it.

It might be that such a pragmatic protopia is so boring and square that it can’t inspire us beforehand. Just as we no longer marvel at the miraculous abilities we have today (cross a continent in 5 hours while watching movies, ask a stone in our pocket a question and have it answer) because each of these magics have arrived in small increments. We are no longer enthralled by simple betterment.

It also may be that there is a vacuum of desirable futures next century because none are possible. We can’t imagine a working technological future, because none work. We are just screwed. Hollywood is correct. The future means we go backwards, or blow each other up, or escape to our hideouts.

Yes, an inescapable dystopian future is entirely possible, but not inevitable. However, a trajectory towards dystopia will be hastened and aided by our lack of an imagined alternative to doom. Without a vision of a desirable future, it is unlikely we can head toward it.

On the chance that desirable futures ARE possible, we need to imagine them.

Thus, my quest for a desirable future scenario. The number of scientists and technologists who have been motivated by science fiction in the past are legion. Poke anyone today working on a disruptive technology and they’ll tell you of a forecast by a science fiction story or movie that inspired them. After hours, many speculation-averse scientists will admit they got started in their field by trying to make some sci-fi dream come true, such as the Star Trek tricorder, or an anti-gravity beam. In fact, the full influence of science fiction scenarios upon science proper is woefully unacknowledged in the official accounts, and under appreciated by the culture at large. The stories we tell about the future greatly affect our future.

At the moment we have no shared positive vision of tomorrow. We are unable to imagine it. I will be quick to add: that includes me. I too have difficulty in describing an exciting future for all of society in 100 years that seems plausible given what is happening today. I can imagine singular threads of the future rolling out positive — massive, continuous, cheap, real time connection between all humans, or total genetic control over crop plants, or synthetic solar fusion energy — but it is hard to see how all these threads weave into the other threads of climate change, population decrease, habitat loss, human attention overload, robot replacement, and accelerating AI.

I wanted some help. Maybe my future blindness was a lack of my own imagination. So I posted my request to the wisdom of the cloud, and quickly got back some revealing alternatives. I know none of the contributors, so I consider this a random sample of my tribe.

Upon inspection, the 23 submitted scenarios share some common dreams. The most recurring hope/expectation is of a new energy source. Instead of fossil fuels, they expect in 100 years we’ll rely on solar and fusion, which will be cheap and clean. Second is the deepening merger of the digital and physical into a holistic internet of everything. The third most common vision is the rise of artificial intelligence and artificially intelligent robots, who transform our economy into one of plenitude and creative work/play. A minor fourth thread is the spread of education in new modes, with universal reach around the globe, and lifelong.

That’s a good start. I certainly desire these. Abstractly the four trends are consistent and cohesive. Yet the specifics matter, as do the corresponding ill effects. But, hey, I only gave them 100 words! That tiny cell can only hold a few headlines, so I have to applaud each of the contributors for their attempt at this haiku. My choice for the most plausible vision of a future I desire goes to John Hanacek’s scenario. I think I’d like to live there, and I think it is plausible in 100 years. My $100 goes to him.

The purpose of this future fantasy challenge was to assist me in visualizing a cohesive, sensible future that I wanted to work towards. The submissions helped. After the 23 scenarios, I append a 100-word future haiku that I wrote, inspired by pattern of their common hopes.

A New Energy Source

Blockchain-based technologies and structures accomplish what most major institutions did. Solar power runs everything, as it is 100X cheaper than alternatives. As energy is inexpensive food is grown in symbiotic aquaponic multi-story indoor “farms”, conserving water, the most precious resource. CO2 sequestration also becomes fuel source, albeit subsidized. We buy self-driving car service subscriptions. Nicotine and sugar are Schedule I and II narcotics. Much as empathy has served humans’ ability to collaborate and socialize, so will it be in the silicon species as they out into deep space to connect with their own kind. — Leonard Kish