Utopia and its discontents

I’m a huge fan of Neal Stephenson, and also of his newest project [Hieroglyph](http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/), which aims to inspire future scientific breakthroughs with optimistic near-future science fiction. But I found two critiques of the approach quite compelling this week.

First, Virginia Postrel (whose writing on design I’ve enjoyed in the past), writes that “[Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-08/peter-thiel-is-wrong-about-the-future)” (I’m reading his book as well), and mentions Hieroglyph as similarly misled:

> The dystopian science fiction Stephenson’s Project Hieroglyph aims to counter isn’t the cause of our cultural malaise. It’s a symptom. The obstacle to more technological ambitions isn’t our idea of the future. It’s how we think about the present and the past…

> The reason mid-20th-century Americans were optimistic about the future wasn’t that science-fiction writers told cool stories about space travel…*People believed the future would be better than the present because they believed the present was better than the past*. They constantly heard stories — not speculative, futuristic stories but news stories, fashion stories, real-estate stories, medical stories — that reinforced this belief.

It’s the same ambivalence toward today’s progress that [Louis CK rails about](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E), and that [many science fiction writers and futurists recognize](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5326). We do live in amazing times, yet the dominant cultural reaction is frustration and dissatisfaction. We don’t often celebrate the incredible progress we’ve achieved. As [David Brooks once wrote](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=481), “Americans have always been united less by a shared past than by the shared dream of a better future.”

The Guardian also [confronts the Hieroglyph collection](http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/oct/10/science-fiction-utopia-wilful-ignorance), calling the stories “built on willful ignorance”:

> But there is also a deliberate naivety to Project Hieroglyph. Stories such as Cory Doctorow’s The Man Who Sold the Moon are a veritable hymn to the culture of Silicon Valley and tech start-ups, but deftly wave away the part these cultures play in today’s corporate capitalism and all the inequalities that come with it.

I agree with their assessment of the best stories:

> The best contributions to Hieroglyph are the least optimistic, and the best attuned to the human reality that technology so often obscures. Entanglement by Vandana Singh and Madeline Ashby’s By the Time We Get to Arizona both look at the impact of new technologies in developing nations and among the world’s poorest people. They also tackle the obvious problem of technological innovation, the looming menace of climate change, environmental degradation and resource depletion that go hand in hand with new technologies.

I still believe there is a role for optimistic science fiction in changing the world. However it’s always good to be mindful of the present and past when thinking about the future, and to include messy and uncomfortable situations in even the most polished vision. The real future will be both based in today’s world and include a lot of today’s problems, and people are wise enough to recognize when those aspects are missing from stories about the future.

Breathing is enough

[Several nice thoughts on mindfulness here](http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/buddhist-practice/six-guidelines.html), but I love this one:

> Consume mindfully: Pause before buying and see if breathing is enough.

This works for me with snacks; let’s see if it does the trick for purchasing.

Suckers for irrelevancy

I’ve recognized this in myself and others:

> A study from Stanford reports that heavy multi-taskers are worse at choosing which task to focus on. “They are suckers for irrelevancy”, as Cliff Nass, one of the researchers put it. Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.

– [Clay Shirky](https://medium.com/@cshirky/why-i-just-asked-my-students-to-put-their-laptops-away-7f5f7c50f368)

Now, what was I just doing again?

Work without attachment

> If we do not attach ourselves to the work we do, it will not have any binding effect on our soul…This is the one central idea in the Gita: work incessantly, but be not attached to it…

> Do you ask anything from your children in return for what you have given them? It is your duty to work for them, and there the matter ends. In whatever you do for a particular person, a city, or a state, assume the same attitude towards it as you have towards your children–expect nothing in return. If you can invariably take the position of a giver, in which everything given by you is a free offering to the world, without any thought of return, then will your work bring you no attachment. Attachment comes only where we expect a return.

– [Swami Vivekananda](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/07/15/swami-vivekananda-the-secret-of-work/) ([original](http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/kyog/kyog03.htm))

Predict the future by forgetting yourself

[A good summary](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140612-the-best-way-to-see-the-future) of [Philip Tetlock](https://psychology.sas.upenn.edu/node/20543)’s research:

> As you might expect, these elite forecasters tended to score better on measures of intelligence than the other participants. But they all shared one other trait too: open-mindedness…Crucially, open-minded people tend to be able to see problems from all sides, which seems to help forecasters overcome their preconceptions in the light of new evidence. ‘You need to change your mind fast, and often,’ says Tetlock.

> Another trait of effective forecasting that Tetlock highlights is self-awareness – understanding your own foibles…he points out that too often forecasters begin by taking an “inside view” of a problem…Yet research suggests that you could come to more accurate predictions if you instead take a step back and simply look at past historical data.

> Other strategies were aimed at reducing known cognitive biases. For instance, research has shown people tend to make better decisions if they are reminded of common pitfalls, such as the tendency to exaggerate the risk of particularly frightening events, like a terrorist attack; they could also remember to consider both the best and worst case scenarios of a situation, since that opens the mind to the full range of possibilities and helps to question your basic assumptions about the event.

[Previously](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5219).

Future strangers

Couched [in an article about procrastination](http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/why-we-procrastinate) is this fascinating study result:

> Using fMRI, Hershfield and colleagues studied brain activity changes when people imagine their future and consider their present…their neural activity when they described themselves in a decade was similar to that when they described Matt Damon or Natalie Portman.

If our future selves are truly strangers to us, that affects how we design behavior change and plan for the future. We need to build empathy with ourselves the same [ways we build it with others](http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_habits_of_highly_empathic_people1)–through trying new experiences, challenging our beliefs, and cultivating curiosity about the unknown. This points to an [experiential futures](http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-history-of-experiential-futures.html) approach to design, as well as a need for individual, interactive tools for people to explore their own possible futures. And it suggests that successful approaches will address the emotional side of decisions as much or more than rational thoughts.

It’s an important aspect to consider when designing the future. After all, the next stranger you encounter could be…you!

How to know

“Never delegate understanding” – [Charles Eames](http://video.pbs.org/video/2178281391/)

Too busy to rest

Elizabeth Kolbert summarizes the new book [Overwhelmed](http://www.amazon.com/Overwhelmed-Work-Love-Play-When/dp/0374228442) with [a comparison to what John Maynard Keynes expected our society to become](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/05/26/140526crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all).

> By 2028, he predicted, the “standard of life” in Europe and the United States would be so improved that no one would need to worry about making money. “Our grandchildren,” Keynes reckoned, would work about three hours a day, and even this reduced schedule would represent more labor than was actually necessary…

> In the future, Keynes imagined, the fruits of capitalism would redeem capitalism…

> It is, to say the least, disappointing that things haven’t turned out that way—that inequality has grown, that leisure is scarce, that even the rich complain of being overwhelmed. And yet so much of what we do, collectively and individually, suggests that we still believe more wealth is the answer. Reexamining this belief would probably be a good idea—that is, if anyone had the time for it.

Wonder and Wonders

> Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you.

> The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

– [G.K. Chesterton](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tremendous_Trifles/Chapter_I)

Design as politics in a changing world

A well-written argument that [“politics”–built from mindfulness, personal commitment, and creative design–is as important to the climate crisis as science and technology](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/06/climate-change-needs-the-politics-of-the-impossible.html):

> [We have], basically, two ways out. One is extraordinary technology…[the other] is extraordinary politics: politics that goes beyond the usual interest-swapping and sets new commitments for the country and the world…

Does our culture still have the courage–and the harmony–to commit to real change based on moral beliefs?

> Consider the end of slavery—not in the US, but in the British Empire, which abolished the practice thirty years before the Emancipation Proclamation, by an act of Parliament, with compensation to slaveholders…the historians’ view these days is that British emancipation was, in fact, a wildly expensive and disruptive moral commitment, executed through extraordinary politics…

> [We need], in incremental and experimental ways, to keep building up a real politics of climate change. That politics will be both environmentalist and human-oriented, because there’s no separating the two in the age of climate change. It will have to ask how the peoples of the world are going to live together and share its benefits and dangers, and also how we are going to use, preserve, and transform the world itself.

That sounds like real design to me. See also Dan Hill’s [Dark Matter & Trojan Horses](http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2012/08/dark-matter-trojan-horses-strategic-design-vocabulary.html).