Consultants McKinsey and Company and yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur championed 3D printing in a report on the potential of the ‘circular economy’ presented to the 2012 World Economic Forum in Davos (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2012). David

Social studies of technology show that future economic and social innovations are rarely the outcome of linear processes but involve unpredictable combinations of elements, as elaborated by Arthur in the context of ‘new’ technologies (2013). Similarly, futurist Ray Kurzweil said: ‘most inventions fail not because the R&D department can't get them

This may be true, for example, of driverless cars, around which there is currently enormous excitement being generated by their developers but no clear sense of just what social practices they will enable.

‘The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones’ (1936: viii).

Most people are unaware of the ‘systemness’ of their daily practices and how they ‘bear’ systems as they go about their weekly shop or commute or daily shower or participation in a cultural event. People can be said to ‘bear’ such system relations; – this notion generalizing Marx's thesis that people are Träger (bearers) of class relations and not

They are sociomaterial; power is as much material/technological as it is social.

Visions of futures, whether dystopic or utopic, may indeed engender futures, as they are part performative and not merely analytic or ‘representational’.

Porritt sees crisis as the basis for innovation, especially as organized through the ‘global cooperative movement’ in relationship to finance and capital markets.

And there is what is called ‘face-crime’ – this is the adoption of an improper expression on one's face when watching the tele-screen as ever more improbable facts get transmitted (Orwell 2008[1949]: 65).