The Role of Animation in Creating New Visions for the Future

Fig. 1 - My forthcoming animated series, Ada.

In the libraries of history and literature, there’s a recurring theme: it’s not enough to have knowledge, you have to be able to navigate it, accessing and linking relevant pieces of information that often seem disparate. The goal of the Library of Alexandria in Ancient Egypt was to amass all the knowledge in the world in one place, and the world’s first known index system, called the pinakes, was developed to organise the expanding collection as it became more and more unwieldy. In his short story, “The Library of Babel,” Jorge Luis Borges takes this idea of amassing all the knowledge in the world even further with a library that contains every possible permutation of letters. The result is an effectively infinite library where the vast majority of books contain total nonsense, and the protagonist spends his life seeking morsels of understanding he’s unlikely ever to find.

Fig. 2 - Ada.

The problem of organisation increases as we amass more knowledge and the ratio of signal to noise decreases. This problem is immediately apparent to anyone who spends any time on the internet, and could increase exponentially with the prevalence and advancement of generative AI. Traditionally, librarians are specialists in the ways subjects interact. The internet’s recommendation algorithms are bad librarians–they reinforce your existing beliefs instead of drawing new and exciting connections you wouldn’t have been able to make on your own. The fragmentation of content across seemingly countless platforms doesn’t help, either. In this rapidly evolving world, it can be difficult to tell which ideas are important–or will be in the near future–and which are nonsense.

Fig. 3 - Ada.

Animation is a slow, labour intensive medium–so what role can it play in helping us figure out what’s important in an endless, rapidly-evolving sea of information? Animation has a long history of use in educational content, from shows like The Magic School Bus to the current trend of YouTube explainer videos. At its most basic, educational animation follows a format of ‘show and say’, where the visuals literally and directly depict the narration. But at its best, the animated visuals and words complement each other. Visual humour and visual metaphors work to solidify educational messages without directly repeating them, adding a layer of information density that can convey more information in a short time without feeling dense to the viewer. And in a sea of hastily generated and edited video, the artistry of quality animation can stand out and capture viewers’ attention.

Fig. 4 - Ada.

Once the medium captures people’s attention, animation can help clarify which ideas are most important. Its most exciting pedagogical application relates to shifting the Overton window: changing the range of policies that the public will accept. Women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery were once outside the Overton window; until a few years ago, so was the notion of AI safety as a key policy issue. Most likely, some of the key issues that will shape our collective future are not broadly considered important or even acceptable today. In fact, the technologies, policies, and open questions that will most shape our collective future start out, almost by definition, outside the Overton window–seemingly speculative, weird, and even off-putting. Getting new topics and ways of thinking about them into the public consciousness is essential to making progress, and as a medium that allows for (in fact, requires) the creation of worlds entirely from scratch, animation is ideal for depicting a world that doesn’t exist yet. Through intentional aesthetic choices, the medium can represent the future in an approachable way, subtly subverting negative preconceptions and delivering information in an unexpected form.

‘Weird’ ideas that turn out to be important often come to us first through science fiction and fantasy, but lots of people are put off by the prevailing aesthetics within these genres. When it comes to the issues that most shape the future, this is a problem, because it turns away many of the people who could contribute to making that future better. Animation can offer an alternative to the exclusionary, off-putting steel-and-laser-gun futures that dominate science fiction and the imaginations of today’s tech leaders. Animation has a way of de-genre-ing these genres–the viewer accepts that they’re getting an alternate reality no matter what, and can leave their preconceptions about science fiction or fantasy behind. Even more importantly, animation can lean into its handmade, artistic roots, creating futuristic worlds that feel lush, illustrated, and human, even when taking advantage of all the technical tools available today.

Fig. 5 - Ada.

Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s reality, and in order to be adequately prepared for that reality, we essentially need to create science fiction for people who don’t like science fiction. I created my forthcoming animated series, Ada, with that goal in mind (Figs. 1-7). The series is set in a library, and each episode explores how a different technology or policy could shape the future.

The choice of protagonist is meant to relate to people who aren’t usually included in futurist discourse. Ada is a recent grad working in a public library, with tedious duties and a grumpy boss. She’s thinking about big questions–Should we eradicate mosquitoes? Create superintelligent AI? Create artificial wombs?–but nobody’s interested in hearing her answers. This show is especially for people in their twenties and teens who, like Ada, have lots of passion, little power, and existential worries about the world they’ll inherit.

Fig. 6 - Ada.

Some of the topics Ada explores, like artificial wombs that can replace pregnancy from start to finish, are still considered pretty out there. The art direction, music, and other creative choices are designed to counterbalance the scary, dystopian associations some viewers will have with these technologies and make these worlds inviting and intriguing. Each episode features two visually distinct worlds: Ada’s mundane reality as a clerical assistant at a public library, and the grand future she imagines, where she explores how different technologies and policies could shape the world. The present and future have different visual styles that represent Ada’s reality and her imagination. Each episode’s imagined future is also visually distinct to reflect the episode’s topic, but all aim for a lush, vibrant look. The tone is conversational and exuberant, like friends debating existential questions at a bar, rather than consistently optimistic or pessimistic. The plotlines are personal, focused less on posing hypothetical questions about future technologies, and more about answering those with the specifics of what it would be like to be one person living in that future.

Fig. 7 - Ada.

Aside from places to store and navigate knowledge, libraries are one of the last remaining true public spaces. Everyone has a stake in humanity’s future, but too often futurist discourse is exclusionary and off-putting, amplifying the voices of a few and discouraging the majority of people who could make the future better. Ada always returns to the library from her wild adventures through the future to regroup, reconsider, and learn. Like the best librarians, she gives viewers a guided tour of her subjects, highlighting what’s truly important and making unexpected connections between topics. Above all, she models an exuberant, open-hearted spirit of inquiry: a willingness to engage with weird or off-putting questions and be open to surprising answers.

**Article published: October 25th 2024**

Biography

Elizabeth Cox (LinkedIn) is the founder of Should We Studio — an independent animation studio dedicated to projects that will raise awareness of the most important issues facing humanity. Before that, she was the Senior Editorial Producer at TED-Ed, where she wrote and edited the scripts for over 200 educational animated videos on all sorts of subjects which have hundreds of millions of views and more than 10,000 years of watch time.