The not-so-distant future: The perception of biosemiotics in 2050
The not-so-distant future: The perception of biosemiotics in 2050

Summary/Abstract: What’s in a prediction of the future? A hopeful calculation or a depiction of our wishes? Making predictions about what things will look like in the future is usually quite a hard enterprise, and we are reminded of old-time depictions of what our present - their future - would look like. We usually laugh at those depictions as not just inaccurate, but bordering on the ridiculous. Flying cars, odd cones as headgear and weird beeping sounds are all familiar retrofuturistic images that help us illustrate the point: We humans shape the familiar into the unfamiliar when making general predictions about what lies ahead. Even with that in mind, we keep venturing into the future armed with possibilities and aspirations. As we commemorate the 20 years of Gatherings, we also want to peer into the next years, even if we know the truth about flying cars. By remembering what we have been through as a biosemiotic community, we can also hope to see a what is expecting us in the coming decades, but more importantly, we can set our minds to new, important tasks to take on in order to make these aspirations more plausible.

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