possibility studies
lack of institutions working seriously on issues where technology and society intersect.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Future Design Inquiries. September 2024
The way the future is imagined is inherently selective, because the future is inherently unknowable. Anything could happen, so the things we choose to imagine must necessarily be a subset of what is possible. Given this fact, it is important to carefully consider who gets to be involved in the act of imagination, and which ontological and
... See moreCassie Robinson • Imagination Infrastructure - what do we mean?
If knowledge is a network and curiosity is its growth principle, and if the adjacent possible is indeed hovering over the edges of knowledge systems as they currently exist, then curiosity is at least one of, if not the primary, epistemic access point to that field of adjacent epistemic possibilities. Crucially, that field of adjacent epistemic
... See morePerry Zurn, Dani S. Bassett • Curiosity and Networks of Possibility
There is an audacity in focusing on the possible in an age of major personal and societal impossibilities.
Vlad P. Glăveanu • Possibility Studies: A Manifesto
Rutger Brenan says: “You may be dismissed as gullible and naive at first. But remember, what’s naive today may be common sense tomorrow. It’s time for a new realism. It’s time for a new view of humankind.”
Philosophically, modernity is often referred to as “The Age of Man.” In ascension since the Renaissance, it crystallized toward the end of the 18th century into a configuration of knowledge that French philosopher Michel Foucault characterized as an episteme in which the figure of Man as the foundation of all possible knowledge. Jamaican
... See moreArturo Escobar • Welcome to Possibility Studies
societies that become too specialised, or too optimised in a particular way, are likely to struggle when conditions change. That is just as true if they seem to be doing well, since history never stands still. In this sense, imagination is functional rather than a luxury. It generates possibilities and keeps them alive.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
They also follow a narrative structure in which choices and opportunities are rendered intelligible by placing them within wider stories of who we are and who we are becoming.