possibility studies
Art, as Bloch said, is a laboratory of possibilities. Indeed, other worlds become possible as and insofar as we curiously reformulate the networks in our heads—and in our hearts.
Perry Zurn, Dani S. Bassett • Curiosity and Networks of Possibility
Collectively, we also need pictures of societal futures that go beyond today’s status quo. They complement but do not replace the necessary work of activism that fights against the injustices of the present. We also need new answers to new problems—the vulnerabilities caused by a more connected world, or by potentially lethal artificial
... See moreGeoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Collectivities of humans, moreover, take a myriad of shapes, from small groups to organizations and transnational corporations. This is not even to mention the curious possibilities pursued in and among the more-than-human world. The dynamics we are describing, then, are scalar in nature and have wide conceptual purchase accordingly.
Perry Zurn, Dani S. Bassett • Curiosity and Networks of Possibility
will have histories that have not been written yet. Possibility is the hope we wear when we charge into battle. It is stronger than assumption or reaction because it is intentional.
Kelly Hayes • Let This Radicalize You
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
Horizons have shrunk. Novelists and filmmakers seem far more at home with dystopias than with the possibility that the world might get better. The institutions that once fuelled our shared imagination have, for different reasons, given up, leaving public intellectual culture recycling old ideas, while much of politics has drifted into nostalgia.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Indeed, it is this ability to grasp and challenge at the same time, to sense directions of change while simultaneously trying to shift and shape them, that makes imagination both most useful and most exciting.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
To me, it’s very important to think about speculative fiction and worldmaking as two approaches for better orienting ourselves to the present, rather than conjuring escapist utopian futures that will never arrive.
On Technology and Humanity: Alice Bucknell and Her Alternative Worlds
The impossible we can imagine also serves as a mirror, confronting ourselves with our responses to the wide range of (im)possible scenarios. Why do we assume they are impossible to begin with? What is it about these boundaries that might make us feel uncomfortable? Can we see beyond that and expand our imagination even more?