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This is so obvious and at the same time so frequently overlooked. Whatever social dynamic we want to examine – from decreasing trust to loss of agency – we should always consider that it involves people who now spend a large majority of their time (11.1 hours a day in the US) staring at screens.
“The First Five Minutes of the Future” is a new future forecasting game developed by Institute for the Future’s Director of Game Research and Development, Jane McGonigal.
“Utopia For Realists” by Rutger Bregman
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
‘Finland, for the fourth consecutive year, topped a list of countries evaluated on the well-being of their inhabitants. “Really?” Finns ask.’
“From all sides, the same call emerges: “We need new narratives”, to make imaginable, and therefore possible the – social, ecological – transitions that we need in order to live together.”
From Technological vs Mythical
Étienne Klein on France TV
“People who speak without nuance give the impression of being right”, says the philosopher Étienne Klein. Indeed, according to him, the nuance is intimately linked to doubt, uncertainty and prudence. “We know very well that it is not in the most extreme positions that we find the truth, but in overlaps, in superimpositions, in nuance”, he explains. Social networks, enemies of nuance? For the philosopher of science, there is a tendency to be more extreme on social media. Conversely, individuals who exchange face to face will be more nuanced. “In other words, when you are physically in front of someone, the nuance returns”, he specifies. He adds: “Me, I was insulted on social networks by people I ended up meeting, they were absolutely charming”. A language crisis? Also, Étienne Klein raises a language crisis. “That is to say, we talk a lot with slogans, or proclaiming a slogan and thinking, these are two completely different things”, he explains. Indeed, he considers that we “spoil” the language in particular by our use of short sentences and often deprived of a constructed argument. “We provoke clashes rather than leaving room for nuance precisely and the truth is undoubtedly not easy to say”, explains Étienne Klein.
Kim Stanley Robinson
“There is no other home for us than here. That we will cope no matter how stupid things get. That all couples are odd couples. That the only catastrophe that can’t be undone is extinction. That we can make a good place. That people can take their fate in their hands. That there is no such thing as fate”.”
Granta 146: The Politics of Feeling
Guest-edited by Devorah Baum and Josh Appignanesi
“If extreme feelings are a contagion within the political cultures of today, so too is the spread of a kind of affectlessness, as if we’re starting to resemble the very technologies that threaten to replace us.”
The New Yorker. January 25, 2021.
“The great question of China’s Maoist experiment now looms over the United States: Why did a powerful society suddenly start destroying itself?”
Awarded “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”
Tom Chatfield
Suggested by Victoire Maurel. April 25, 2021.
Suggested by Victoire Maurel. April 24, 2021.
Suggested by Victoire Maurel. April 23, 2021.
Suggested by Victoire Maurel. April 22, 2021.
Donna J. Haraway
Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland, Hans Ulrich Obrist
Nicolas Nova
Bruno Latour
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