idle gaze 061: stressful dystopias & VIP utopias
We spend more time than ever thinking about the future. So why do our visions lack so much imagination?
This essay was originally published in the inaugural print issue of Playground, a bi-annual magazine for imaginative minds. It features an abundance of thought-provoking writing and conversations designed for those working in, or curious about, Europe’s cultural and creative industries. If you enjoyed the piece below I highly recommend you snag yourself a copy!
Keynotes, conferences and opinion columns are steadily multiplying; a frenzy of consultants, researchers, experts and gurus feverishly setting their sights on the distant horizon to inform the anxious and concerned businesses, citizens and politicians about what lies ahead.
As the skies darken, the fog thickens and strong gusts begin to blow from all directions, the world today feels more unpredictable than ever. As the chaos grows, the future tellers with the crystal balls command our undivided attention. But while the concept of tomorrow used to be a source of collective inspiration, a window into another world filled with possibility, today it feels increasingly banal. We obsess over the future more than ever, yet paradoxically, the predictions feel increasingly devoid of real opportunity.
The agencies and consultancies that comprise the trend forecasting industry, once at the forefront of emerging cultural shifts, increasingly produce cookie-cutter reports, selling generic, one-size-fits-all visions of the future. Whether it’s promises of impending AR, VR and metaverse domination, or the allure of new hyper-convenient consumer-centric trends, these are often temporary fads thinly disguised as signals of what’s truly emerging. As Piers Fawkes, founder of trend consultancy PFSK, lamented about his own profession: “trends research has turned into a meme”.
Meanwhile, celebrity intellectuals are working overtime to inject the news cycle with a dramatically binary view of what’s ahead. On one side of the fence, there are the likes of historian Yuval Noah Harari peddling predictions of nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological imperialism, painting a picture of impending AI-driven human extinction. On the other side, there are pop psychologists like Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker offering reassurances that exponential technology growth will solve virtually all of humanity’s most wicked problems. Motivated by the desire to go viral on TikTok and drive book sales, these emotionally charged and overly simplistic viewpoints are rarely rooted in reality. These cliché-ridden statements often fail to communicate the multiplicity and complexities of the future.
But perhaps most worryingly, the captains of the tech industry–the supposed vanguard of human potential–show a remarkable indifference towards notions of a dying world. Instead they embrace and accelerate a future where the rich escape to luxury alpine bunkers in the depths of New Zealand and fly off to Mar-a-Lago-style holiday resorts on Mars, all while the planet faces impending collapse. Writers at the political publication Current Affairs aptly label this phenomenon as ‘stressful dystopias’: pointing to Silicon Valley’s lacklustre childhood obsessions with the post-capitalist hellscapes of Blade Runner and Mad Max.
When Elon Musk was once asked by talk show host Jay Leno why it was important for the Tesla Cybertrucks to feature a bulletproof exterior, he responded: “Because it’s badass and super cool! I mean, do you want your truck to be bulletproof or not? Of course you do! We want to be a leader in apocalypse technology”. This vividly sums up the Palo Alto elite’s mindset: When the world is on fire, why try to extinguish the flames, when you can design badass trucks to drive through the scorching inferno?
It is widely acknowledged that there is no singular future trajectory. Instead, what’s ahead is a forever shifting landscape of potential scenarios and realities shaped by society’s actions (or inactions). With so many probable, possible, plausible (and, most importantly, desirable) futures, why do we continue to resort to such binary concepts? Why do we limit ourselves to the two traditional blueprints - an exclusionary utopia designed for the wealthy few, or a future where we slouch towards a depressing global dystopia with collective apathy?
The limitation of our vision is not due to insufficient information or processing power; we’re witnessing exponential advancements in complex data modelling and predictive AI. However, statistics - always trapped in the prison of the past - merely allow us to follow historical trendlines and extrapolate the future from what exists in the present.
To think creatively and limitlessly about the future requires a tragically underutilised, but also inherently human skill: imagination.
With imagination, we can go beyond the recycled, repeated iterations of the past. It allows us to slip beyond the predictable what-is to the unknown future realities of what-might-be. And by charting these unexplored territories, we can begin to discover and course correct towards entirely new worlds, unstuck from the life, earth and soul-draining tropes that surround us today. As scientist Jason Silva puts it: “Imagination allows us to conceive of delightful future possibilities, pick the most amazing one, and pull the present forward to meet it.”
The future is not yet cancelled because these ‘delightful possibilities’ on the fringes shimmer with anticipation. Opportunities that feel radically inclusive, collaborative and empowering. Not just for the few who can afford to build their own little utopia as the rest of the world crumbles, but a way forward that feels attainable and relevant for all. A future where we no longer have to feel like non-playable characters in someone else’s narrative.
Glimpses of these re-imagined possibilities can be found in the workshops of research and design organisations like IDEO, RADAR, and the recently-closed Space10, which have pioneered creative, inclusive, multiplayer modes of future thinking. Approaches designed to break us free from the rational confines of the current world by inviting a diversity of experiences to the table and enabling them to co-create tangible futures through rapid prototyping, ‘makeathons’ and communal worldbuilding. As Mitch Carter Jafery, a partner at IDEO describes the process, it’s a way to envision versions of tomorrow “with the use of glue sticks and glitter, not just whiteboards and whitepapers.”
While much of trend forecasting operates in the nebulous realm of buzzwords and lofty statements, envisioning the future through speculative design and collaboration brings emerging concepts down to the streets of everyday neighbourhoods and into the hands of ordinary people. This creates a tomorrow that feels tangible, a future that seems more real, whether it involves imagining better pedestrian infrastructure in cities or inventing cookbooks that bridge the culinary gap between the insects-and-algae diets of tomorrow and the daily cooking habits of today.
And while Hollywood and Netflix continue to invest in starkly dystopian cyberpunk stories filled with smog and pollution, alternative genres are infusing the world of sci-fi with fresh, forest air. Fiction that weaves more hopeful narratives about the relationship between humanity, technology and nature. One prominent example is Solarpunk, a loosely connected group of writers, artists and filmmakers offering a countercultural perspective that rejects the current wave of climate doomerism. In Solarpunk, civilisations are fuelled by renewable solar energy, creating a sustainable future built around self-sufficient communities, biodiversity and ecological balance.
The imaginary futures of sci-fi impact real life far more than we realise, creating a feedback loop where these narratives take hold of the collective imagination and seep into news cycles, inspire corporate agendas, and spark changes in national policies.
This fight to break free from the constraining binary of exclusionary utopian idealism versus dire dystopian dysfunction is not a recent one. Over a decade ago, Kevin Kelly, the futurist and co-founder of tech magazine Wired presented a third vision that lives in the margins between the two: he coined it ‘protopia’ (‘pro’ as in progress, progression, prototype). The protopian movement has lately been gaining momentum with greater urgency than ever, presenting more realistic, humane and inclusive pathways to better futures. It resists traditional ideas of technological and societal progress, which often involves the exploitation of resources in the global south to build and fuel the ever more convenient consumer experiences and exclusive technological gadgets of the global north.
Monika Bielskyte, the founder of Protopia Futures, is perhaps the highest profile adoptee of the concept and most notably helped the producers of the blockbuster film Black Panther integrate protopian values of social equity, resilience and shared rituals into the shaping of the fictional world of Wakanda. The film is an astonishing piece of imaginative worldbuilding that’s been heralded as a pinnacle of afrofuturism, positively impacting the cultural consciousness of millions. It poses questions that were once unimaginable: What if the idea of the future was not rooted in the fantasies of Western imperialism? How would the world be different if an African country were the model of ideal nationhood?
If we’re willing to roll up our sleeves, get our hands dirty and ditch the keynotes and conferences for collaging and collective creativity, we can begin to imagine real-life Wakandas, other worlds beyond the lazy visions of VIP utopias and stressful dystopias. Amidst the messy margins, exciting and inspiring realities exist; plausible, possible, and, most importantly, preferable for everyone.
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