possibility studies
as Akomolafe (2022) puts it: the way we respond to a problem might become part of the problem. To escape this pattern, we need new ways of doing, being, thinking. Stretching our imagination beyond the boundaries of what is possible might turn out to be crucial to get unstuck from dominant narratives
Loes Damhof • Imagining the Impossible: An Act of Radical Hope
even in places where there’s more optimism, there are fewer signs of social imagination than in the past.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
The tone of action in context, alters possibility.
The possibility pesticide of rationality within the existing system will likely monocrop the awaiting ecology of potentialities.
The familiar is not the only way, but it is in fact, the way to keep the unnamed unfound, unseen possibilities in exile. That which does not make sense can be called
... See morewe need a sustained ethical reflection on the scope, nature, and limits of our engagement with the possible and the consequences this engagement has for ourselves, for others, for society, and for the planet. Being in the position to envision a course of action and its alternatives and to evaluate which possibilities should be acted upon and which
... See moreVlad P. Glăveanu • Possibility Studies: A Manifesto
The science-fiction writer William Gibson suggested that in his lifetime, the future ‘has been a cult, if not a religion’, but that this has waned.4 Future fatigue has set in instead.5 The Brazilian polymath Roberto Unger put the problem starkly: we suffer from a dictatorship of no alternatives.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
it’s important for artists to engage with these conditions, but if the response is too tethered to the present, that does sometimes foreclose the possibility of imagining alternatives. Likewise, if the response is set too far into the future, it can quickly disintegrate into something abstract - like far-flung science-fiction vs the more
... See moreOn Technology and Humanity: Alice Bucknell and Her Alternative Worlds
(5) But the Real is much more than this “reality”! The real refers to the endlessly changing stream of life, “the unbroken wholeness,” to use Physicist David Bohm’s wonderful expression, out of which everything comes, including the Planet we all share. As the Manifesto puts it, the real is characterized by radical open-endedness and becoming. In
... See moreArturo Escobar • Welcome to Possibility Studies
a good futurist spends a lot of time trying to decipher the present and to try to see it through the mask of present-day biases.
I sometimes think of “seeing the present” as trying on alien eyes; looking at the world as if I were an alien from another planet.
Trying to see beyond the immediate cycles of news is a challenge, because rather than being... See more
I sometimes think of “seeing the present” as trying on alien eyes; looking at the world as if I were an alien from another planet.
Trying to see beyond the immediate cycles of news is a challenge, because rather than being... See more
Kevin Kelly • How to Future
“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*