It’s 2022 and we’re living in the future.
Not the true future mind you, the one we could conceivably reach this century where rules of politics, economics, and society are unrecognisable and awe-inspiring. But still a future that would make a medieval peasant dizzy. Homo sapiens has transformed its societies, and the world around it, to create immense wealth and technological power.
In such a world, what does it mean to be utopian-ish?
Utopian is a dirty word, used to describe a person or idea as naive, unserious, or even actively dangerous in some way. I want (with all due caution) to reclaim this word. Because when I ask people “what do you want the year 2100 to look like?” or “what would be a good future?” people don’t have answers. We’re far too good at dystopian thinking. But what do we actually want? What vision of the future is both realistic and desirable for humanity, and how do we get from here to there?
Being utopian-ish is about trying to envision and articulate good futures as well as bad ones. It’s about attempting to understand the world we live in, and what paths are open to us. And it’s about rejecting pragmatism over perfectionism, realism over idealism, and optimism over cynicism.
Concretely, what sorts of topics am I interested in?
Political economy: the intersection of economic theory with the thorny world of values. For example, discussions of universal basic income and the question “who owns the future?” fall into this category
Technological development: the cutting edge and likely futures of things like renewable and fusion energy, space travel, biotechnology and (most of all) artificial intelligence
Global problems and (existential) risks: the dangers and difficulties that face us this century, including the ones that could conceivably destroy our future potential
Envisioning good futures: discussions of human values, and what a utopian(ish) world could look like. What are we aiming for?
Personal and ‘human’ topics: now and then I may write about more narrow topics that interest me. Things like meditation, human rationality, meta-ethics, and the virtues of the movie Groundhog Day.
I hope you find it interesting. Feel free to follow me or send personal feedback on Twitter.