Imagination Is (Still) Not a Luxury
Practical imagination
whispersandgiants.comFaced with climate change and other interconnected existential crises in the twenty-first century, it is quickly becoming a cliché to say that there is a strong need to “imagine better futures.” But such a statement hides many questions and challenges. Who gets to imagine these futures? Who feels safe and supported enough, economically, politically... See more
Rahel Aima • Imagination Infrastructuring for Real and Virtual Worlds
Too often today, the only narratives that matter are personal ones, and many have seen a widening gulf between their individual hopes and dreams and those of the world around them. Too often, as well, people feel like powerless observers of forces and trends they cannot control. The rekindling of social imagination is one aspect of taking back
... See moreGeoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
While we know that our imaginations shape our sociocultural experience through the creation of worlds, modernity thrives by throwing tight constraints around it, degenerating our ability and capacity to imagine radically new futures into being. This ontological war against possibility is ‘defuturing’ — there are less futures available to us; or put... See more
Will Bull • Building the Infrastructure of Possibility
At the same time, imagination must be decolonized. The dominant modes of imagining the future—technocratic, extractivist, growth-driven—are not universal. They are specific to white, masculine, WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) subjectivities trained to equate imagination not only with control, scale and optimization, but... See more