What is the Future?

Specifically, ‘utopia as method’ relativizes what is in the present. Bauman argues that the ‘presence of a utopia, the ability to think of alternative solutions to the festering problems of the present, may be seen therefore as a necessary condition of historical change’ (1976: 13; Levitas 2013).

This may be true, for example, of driverless cars, around which there is currently enormous excitement being generated by their developers but no clear sense of just what social practices they will enable.

Geels and Smit term such new technological niches as ‘hopeful monstrosities’ (2000: 879–80). Technology innovators often hype the possibilities of the new as representing unambiguous ‘progress’ in order to attract attention, and especially funding, for what is often a rather limited system in the initial stage. The

Martin Luther King, for example, argued: ‘Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable …Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals’

Overall, the history of major technologies shows that the best new system is often not the system that happens to win out.

Consultants McKinsey and Company and yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur championed 3D printing in a report on the potential of the ‘circular economy’ presented to the 2012 World Economic Forum in Davos (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2012). David

Futures are multiple, contested and complex. In

The future may present a promissory note that helps to transform the present in the direction of progress

Systems in which humans are ‘bearers’ of social relations possess features that make knowing and bringing about proposed futures exceptionally difficult.