possibility studies
Countries that used to define themselves through creating bold new institutions no longer do so—there are no recent equivalents to the NHS or the BBC in Britain; no equivalents of NASA or DARPA in the US. In much of academic life, too, you are more likely to succeed by slightly tweaking an established idea than creating a novel one.18
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
It is not accidental, in this context, that the inability to reimagine one’s life is a primary indicator of traumatic experiences, and its reversal represents a key sign of recovering and, in some cases, of entering a new phase of post-traumatic growth.
Vlad P. Glăveanu • Possibility Studies: A Manifesto
Scientific progress, then, is not unidirectional but multidirectional and its characteristic discoveries both add new information and reformulate old information. Scientific curiosity, in this context, drives individual scientists and scientific communities to fill internal and external network cavities with informational nodes and conceptual
... See morePerry Zurn, Dani S. Bassett • Curiosity and Networks of Possibility
Positive politics emphasises the openness and possibility of the future. Negative politics emphasises risk and harms. It is defensive, sceptical and nostalgic, convinced that the best years lie in the past.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Tomorrow morning is a vast realm of possibility. Ten minutes from now is a vast realm of possibility. Both are blooming through a tangle of threads behind this moment that are shifting each other. A change in the tone of voice in a conversation opens the possibility for humor, and a tiny shift and gesture opens the possibility for several future
... See moreNumbers are just numbers; they cannot source possibilities from each other or find a way when the basic arithmetic says there is none—people can. Abstracting the solutions to numbers inherently dehumanizes and unnecessarily constrains the spectrum of possibilities. The metric logic removes the human breadth of experience and relationship. This cold
... See more(4) The dominant notion of reality is deeply related to the fact that we (moderns) believe in science and abstract knowledge as arbitrators of truth, in the autonomous and competitive individual as the kernel of society, and in the economy as a separate domain ruled by “free markets.” These entangled set of beliefs have created the modern idea that
... See moreArturo Escobar • Welcome to 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
While many of the foregoing assertions seem to suggest that human explorations of the possible lead to a variety of positive outcomes, from personal to societal, we cannot underestimate the darker sides of this engagement. For example, the discourse of possibility can become a burden when normatively imposed