The packed auditorium left him overwhelmed as "old man" Jack Turney spoke to Gen Y about the future.

On his maiden visit to India, the science writer kicked off British Council's Great Talk series with a lecture on Futurama - Does the Past Cloud our Thinking about Futures To Come at BITM recently.

The series inspires young minds through interactions with writers and educationists.

Turney's talk about our future did not typically revolve around flying cars, robots and climate talks, though they did make it to the list. It began with the past.

"The past has offered an ever-increasing proliferation of vision about the future," said Turney, as he shared with the audience tales of The New York World's Fair of 1939 which offered a futuristic glimpse of the US landscape 30 years hence. "The world has been changing faster and faster in the past few decades," said the author of The Future, as he placed a few of his assumptions before the young audience.

Assumption I: The end is much further away than we believe. The universe is there for the next 10 trillion years and more.

Assumption II: Population can be a more serious issue in future. Solution: mid-day meals and education for girls as health and education will make women aware.

Assumption III: Robots may take away more and more jobs from humans. They don't need fair wages, health insurance and leave. So humans may have fewer job opportunities at their disposal.

Assumption IV: Space exploration will continue but its doubtful if a new civilisation will be discovered anytime soon.

Assumption V: Medical science will continue to flourish and mortality rate will increase.

"Our consideration of the future is edged with a variety of doubts. It is hard to predict the future. But one thing is certain. Energy is the master resource. With enough energy we can solve many problems. We should take care to decarbonise and renew energy use," Turney said.

Peppering his talk with anecdotes from history and popular visions of future as captured in books, films and theme parks, Turney highlighted the ambivalent nature of our future. "Yet, it is cities like Chandigarh that were designed out of a futuristic picture drawn post Independence," said the science writer.

Hemlata Sarkar, a Class XII student of GD Birla Centre for Education, was engrossed. "I loved the imaginative-yet-realistic way the future was presented," she said.