The Book

I am standing in a kitchen of the future and looking out of the window at a pretty grim London in 2050 – polluted, a climate of drought and hurricanes with some additions to the skyline since today. It is the world you would expect if climate change and the greed of capitalism continue a trajectory towards a doomsday scenario. This kitchen has all the tools and media to cope with this world on the inside: hydroponic plant production, books on insect proteins and news on the new world order – and interestingly, no fridge ordering the milk by itself. This kitchen is designed by Superflux and commissioned by CCCB in Barcelona as part of the exciting exhibition called ‘After the End of the World’.

Standing in this kitchen in Barcelona in February of 2018, I was wondering – why can’t we imagine and hope for a city of the future that is green, has less cars and is part of the solution of a climate that has been saved from this dystopian future? I look outside and see plants and gardens, kids playing outside in the park and trees, people on bicycles, market stands with local produced & seasonal vegetables, a few flying taxis but mostly a community space that serves the connected village inside this city of opportunities.

The power of imagination helps inspire us to envision a world that is desirable and possible. We can help shape a world if we start by asking why not? And be part of creating a better tomorrow. Hope springs eternal but can also seduce citizens into complacency. We need to take action and produce services, products and experiences that design a world we actually want to live in, and want to see our kids and future generations thriving in as well.

We all experience the urgency and challenges we are facing today – from climate change to politics, from exponential technologies to ethics in AI. The incoming Anthropocene is defining a human-influenced new epoch, that is clawing into our daily lives and already overtaking our real-time newsfeeds. It seems hard to switch off the noise of human-made bad news to find the signals of hope and lights at the end of a tunnel of narrow-mindedness to the left and far–right. But if you look beyond the surface you will find it: the good news, the progress and the opportunities that are left to bring actionable steps to create a better tomorrow.

We need to create moonshots for desirable futures for our citizens in the context of a new world order, increased complexity by technological breakthroughs, peak democracy and peak capitalism. As the outside world is getting harder to understand and cope with, the tectonic shifts of political landscapes and new geo-political superpowers in tune with the Rising Billions and the potential for change that is inherit in our Western world of social market economy, ingenuity and open society.

Harald Neidhardt
CEO & Curator,
Futur/io Institute