possibility studies
The world is combinatorially weird and fractally interesting. And therefore, omnivorous curiosity is the only proper response. ... let’s optimize instead for the interesting, the strange, and the weird. Ideas and topics that ignite our curiosity are worthy of our attention, because they might lead to advances and insights that we can’t anticipate.
📡 No.317 — From utopian Star Trek to absurdist Douglas Adams? ⊗ How to fix “AI’s original sin” ⊗ Islands of coherence
This vision of a society where violence and conflict are uninteresting, where everyone is seen in their power and full emotional breadth, created a yearning in me. I want to make that world come true,
adrienne maree brown • Loving Corrections_adrienne Maree Brown
“Hope is the embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists”—Rebecca Solnit *“Any useful idea about the future should appear ridiculous”–Jim Dator*
Loes Damhof • Imagining the Impossible: An Act of Radical Hope
Given the inherent emergence of futures — both imaginary and realised — imagination infrastructures need to be understood as verbs, not nouns, actions, not things — processes of creation in a constant process of becoming.
Olivia Oldham • Imagination Infrastructure — What Do We Mean?
In general, the dynamics of possibility should not be thought of as confined to a particular period of life
Tamar Kushnir • How Children Learn to Transcend Limits: Developmental Pathways to Possibility Beliefs
Pedagogies of the possible are an educational necessity . Traditional forms of education, focused on standardised goals, uniformity in teaching, and sameness of outcomes, are increasingly recognised as not suitable for the challenges (and impossibilities) of today. Living within uncertain, complex and difficult environments, defined by a fast pace
... See moreVlad P. Glăveanu • Possibility Studies: A Manifesto
Our assumptions of the future are being challenged: even what we took for granted now seems uncertain. And instead of asking: how did we get here? We are left with the question: what made us think we would never get here? If the unimaginable suddenly becomes a reality, then what is left to imagine? Is it still worth being hopeful? It appears that
... See moreLoes Damhof • Imagining the Impossible: An Act of Radical Hope
What if imagining and even engaging with the impossible has actually become a necessity? In the current landscape of geopolitical events, climate change, and other accumulating societal challenges, it seems that we are stuck in our inability to perceive and respond to emergence. The call for urgency, the awareness that technology is changing
... See moreLoes Damhof • Imagining the Impossible: An Act of Radical Hope
As a condition of innovation, Johnson (2010) argues, “the adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself” (p. 31)