Ed Finn is the founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, where he explores how storytelling shapes our collective future. With a background in literature, journalism, and digital humanities, his work bridges science, technology, and the arts to create more imaginative, inclusive visions of tomorrow. He is co-editor of Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future and lead editor of Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds.

Imagen is a GenAI tool from Gemini.

Instead of utopia, Ed believes in protopia—a future that gets a little better over time, with real debate and complexity. Stories, in his view, are essential infrastructure: they help us imagine new possibilities, feel our way into unfamiliar futures, and stay accountable to what we create. Hope, for him, comes not from perfection, but from our shared capacity to care, collaborate, and continue imagining better.

‍