'At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners': The Power of Science Fiction to Enrich Ethical Knowledge Creation for Responsible Innovation

Knowledge Management (KM) can reflect an aspirational vision of how human knowledge, identity, and technology should interact. As innovations emerge, our view and expectations of the future evolve. Innovation is part of the KM process and requires the ability to imagine these mutable futures before they materialise. The imagined worlds of Science Fiction (SF) offer one way to explore possible futures and future possibilities. Indeed, some classic SF literature is strikingly prescient. These imagined worlds provide a landscape of inspirations and warnings that can support our understanding of the ethical and social impacts of working with and managing knowledge. Often presenting an extreme vector or 'ideal type' of how technology is shaped by, and in turn shapes, human life, SF provides a rich repertoire of imagined futures that enable us to support a Precautionary Principle in how we develop and implement technology. Drawing on classical and contemporary SF literature, this paper explores a number of SF visions of the future. It categorises the major themes of the roles played by human knowledge and technology, as portrayed in the selected texts. It then discusses how these imagined futures currently influence our discourse about knowledge, and how they might inform current and further ethical concerns on KM and technology development. Finally, it offers some new insights for how SF might inspire and influence KM, particularly with respect to the social and ethical impact of managing knowledge. We conclude that SF literature provides a repertoire of imagined future possibilities and possible futures that could inform and improve KM's ability to ethically plan for innovation.