the effects of historical knowledge, which shows us the fairly arbitrary choices with which our reality was made. By reminding us of the malleability of the world, it also reminds us of our freedom; as the Lithuanian philosopher Leonidas Donskis put it, it is a form of ‘liquid evil’ to believe that there are no alternatives.8

On balance, we should always choose hope over fear. We may be wrong, but at least hope is productive (and there are worse things in life than disappointment).

Like our own imagination, art can wander off, seeking out the edges, the borderlands, the mysteries. Indeed, this autonomy is art’s power and part of its emotional appeal. But this very ability to separate from everyday material life may also make art impotent in trying to shape the world from which it has escaped. At most it can be a nudge or a

There are also genuinely novel ideas that could prove generative in the future. The idea that everyone on the planet should have a fixed and equal allocation of carbon certainly seems utopian now but may become tomorrow’s common sense. The same may be true of the idea that everyone should control and even sell their own data.

Anyone wanting to change the world needs to cultivate a mix of rationality and intuition, as well as a mix of arrogance and humility: the arrogance to believe that they may be able to alter the course of human history, but also the humility to observe and change their views.

lack of institutions working seriously on issues where technology and society intersect.

Often, these shifts in vision need new concepts as well as descriptive methods.

If we lose faith in the future, we are likely to do less to make a better future happen. In this way, fatalism can, indeed, become fate.

ideas that spread in part because of their fuzziness and simplicity.