Speculation

This note is about different forms of speculation. Speculative futures, speculative design, speculative law, speculative politics, etc. Cf. Life as speculation.

Key Ideas

  • Currently most likely futures are not attractive
  • Plausible futures are not inspiring and ultimately also not attractive
  • One can cultivate futures within, without waiting for the society or plausibility
    • This is good as a decent thing to do: staying with the trouble
    • This is also more likely to lead to meaningful large scale change than complicity
  • Habits, systems, and structures prevent imagination, systematic methods are needed to overcome the cultural momentum
  • The future is not evenly distributed, it is possible to practice the futures now
  • There are well-known traditions trying this, in literature, in humanities in general, in science (as thought experiments), in religious practices/cults, in utopian communities, in marginal/radical politics

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