Keely Adler

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.

When you choose whom to follow on Twitter, you’re choosing what types of mindsets and aesthetics to expose yourself to on a regular basis. You’re choosing what types of conversations to have. You’re choosing to be reminded regularly of certain things, and not of others. This is a kind of Programmable attention.

For Komporozos-Athanasiou, a similar process is at work in the early twenty-first century: the recent collapse of neoliberal legitimacy and the rise of a heavily financialized digital capitalism have produced new uncertainties, out of which grow speculative communities, bound together by shared precarity and a stabilizing account of the future.

Boredom, lust, embarrassment, resentment, confusion, euphoria, anger, ambivalence… everything is amplified in the febrile, white-hot heat of adolescence. As we navigate this perilous passage between childhood and adulthood, we’re unwittingly forging the neural pathways, habits and identities that we’ll likely spend the ensuing years attempting to

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Intelligence is a form of friendship with the world. It can’t be cultivated out of fear of it.