FARSIGHT

FARSIGHT #17 THE FUTURE OF VICE 🎰🚬🍾 A vice can take many forms: overindulgence, moral fault, depravity, among others. Many things once considered vices are now widely accepted. In the Western world: premarital sex, usury, and apostasy, to name just a few.   Some vices have been embraced, only to later slide back into questionability. The question of what might be considered a vice in the future matters if we accept that novel vices – as well as shifting definitions of what does or does not count as a vice – are underappreciated indicators of the direction in which society is heading. Coffee rose to prominence in Britain’s Whiggish 17th-century coffee houses, with their excitable atmospheres and free flow of information. Psychedelics are associated with the 1960s and with ideals of expanded consciousness, universal togetherness, and world peace. Cocaine-sniffing yuppies fuelled the highs of financial capitalism in the 1980s, and so on.   But vice is not confined to drugs and inebriants. Habits and behaviours can also assume the role of a vice when deemed overindulgent or morally or ethically questionable. In this issue, we explore the future of vice – and what it reveals about our society and culture. Illustration: @na___toro Grab a copy of the issue or subscribe to FARSIGHT by becoming a Futures Member 👉 Link in bio

Will speed replace sloth as a deadly sin? Time and technology are inextricably linked. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, doing things slowly, inefficiently, and without precision looks existentially preferable. Author: Caitlin van Bommel @casitlin Read the full article 👉 Link in bio PIC 1: Acedia, by Hieronymous Wierix (in Ancient Greece a state of indifference or carelessness; by early Christian monks, defined as a spiritual state of listlessness) PIC 2: Sun-dial illustrations

HISTORY OF THE FUTURE: PIERRE WACK 🎙️🇫🇷🛢️ Mysticism meets Big Oil in FARSIGHT’s latest History of the Future episode on Pierre Wack, the eccentric French economist who brought scenario planning to the corporate world during the geopolitically turbulent 1970s. Then, as today, a war in the Middle East upset global energy markets, showing the limitations of traditional forecasting. Yet not everyone was equally unprepared. Wack and his team of scenario planners at Royal Dutch Shell had highlighted the risks to Big Oil constituted by the rise of OPEC, public and political backlash to the industry, and other vulnerabilities ahead of the 1973 oil crisis. The story of how Wack and Shell were able to use scenarios to navigate the global shake-up of capitalism has become the mythologised origin point of corporate foresight. Yet Wack’s obsession with the mystical dimensions of scenario writing – his “spiritual documents” – is often glossed over. Listen to the podcast 👉Link in bio

How will the world end? For much of history, we found answers to this question in religion and myth. From the Great Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Armageddon of the Old Testament or the Ragnarok of Norse Mythology, the World has ended many times in our collective imagination. In recent times, mythical stories of future doom have been mostly supplanted by scientifically grounded ones. Our fate is no longer in the hands of spiteful Gods. Instead, beginning in the 19th century, nature itself took control, with the natural sciences taking the place of theology in mapping out the many ways in which we our world might come to an end. In this article, the scholar Christian Kaarup Baron writes about how the complexity of our world-system is pushing us closer towards a scenario of inescapable global collapse. Read the full article 👉 Link in bio Images: Apocalypse series, Mortier’s Bible. Phillip Medhurst Collection.

🎙️Technological Tipping-Points w/Professor Andrew Maynard We are joined by Andrew Maynard, scientist, author, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions at Arizona State University, to discuss phase shifts, technological risk, and the accelerating LinkedInification of human expression. Andrew Maynard writes the “future of being human” substack / and co-hosts the Modem Futura podcast. Listen to FARSIGHT wherever you get your podcasts!

What is the relationship between religion and technology? Ideas about transcendence, agency, destiny and the end of the world all predate computing, yet they regularly surface in contemporary debates about machine intelligence. As AI grows more influential, people reach for familiar symbolic frames to explain what it means and where it might be taking us.   We sat down with Professor Beth Singler to explore the relationship between religion and technology. Professor Beth Singler is an Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich and co-Director of the university’s programme on Digital Religion(s), and her work looks at how religious concepts shape our hopes, fears and expectations about emerging technologies. In this conversation, she reflects on why AI so often invites comparisons to gods, demons and messianic figures, how different traditions respond to technological change and what these reactions reveal about the way societies confront uncertainty. Read the full article 👉 Link in bio Images: Marco Schmid, Phillip Haslbauer, Aljosa Smolic, Peterskapelle, Luzern. (AI-Jesus confession booth)

RAILS ACROSS EUROPE 🚝🇪🇺   Trains and rail once symbolised progress and in Europe modernity. Today, they have more-so come to  represent ideas of social equity and public good  – an unassuming but universally accessible  means of transport. Could rail reclaim its lost significance and prestige – and if so, what would it take?   In this article, we interview Kaave Pour, founder of 21st Europe, a Copenhagen-based think-tank designing blueprints that spark conversations and inspire optimism and action for the continent’s next chapter.   One of these blueprints is Starline, an ambitious vision for a new European high-speed rail network - one that connects countries as seamlessly as city metro lines.   But is the plan actually feasible? Roger Vickerman, Professor of European Economics at the University of Kent, who believes the task of Europe wide rail interoperability is far harder than it seems. Read the article 👉 Link in bio Author: Casper Skovgaard Petersen Illustration 1: @sophia.prieto.v Illustration 2: 21st Europe, Starline

THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF UTOPIA 💡 Since its invention in the sixteenth century, the idea of ‘Utopia’ has carried an inherent ambiguity. Suspended between reality and fiction, the emancipatory and the fatal, two conflicting meanings have clung to the word for centuries and continue to do so today, as visions of utopia are making a comeback among tech billionaires and Saudi Arabian royalty alike. Read the article 👉 Link in bio Author: Mads Vindaal Picture: A woodcut by Ambrosius Holbein, illustrating a 1518 edition. In the lower left, Raphael describes the island Utopia.

THE CASE FOR CRITICAL HOPE 💡 When confronted with the great crises of our time, a sense of hope about the future can seem naïve at best, or even counterproductive if it leads to complacency. Yet thinkers across psychology, behavioural science, and philosophy recognise hope as an essential driver of social and societal change. Far from being a passive sentiment, hope paired with purposeful action enables humans to imagine alternative futures and work their way through tough times. Read the full article 👉 Link in bio Author: Lisa Di Giulio Illustration: @sophia.prieto.v

THE PREDICTION PROBLEM 💡 A widely held position in future studies – in part supported by the findings of chaos theory – is that the further we move forward in time, the harder it is to predict the outcome of a given trend or process. Indeed, most futurists will shy away from prediction altogether, preferring exploration of multiple potential outcomes over forecasting of determinate paths. Some will tell you that prediction is, in fact, impossible. However, depending on the scientific domain, this is not entirely true. Read the full article 👉 Link in bio Author: Christian Kaarup Baron Image: Herman Kahn (1965, O’Halloran, Thomas J)

Has faith in progress lost its footing? 📈 Across wealthy societies, citizens no longer believe the future will be better than the past. A new population survey conducted by CIFS in Denmark – ostensibly the happiest country on Earth – provides a point of reference. Here, in this content and prosperous society, only a quarter (24%) of citizens feel that their descendants’ lives will be better than their own. A third (32%) believe it will be worse or much worse. The idea of progress as an inevitable historical force was born in the Western world - may be drawing its last breath there, too? Read the full article 👉 Link in bio Illustration: @sophia.prieto.v Authors: Casper Skovgaard Petersen & Suus Holden

FARSIGHT #16 FUTURE HOPES, FUTURE FEARS People across the world’s richest countries no longer think the future will be better than the present. Progress has stalled, most now believe, and our descendants will be worse off than we are today. The idea of progress as an inevitable historical force was born in the Western world. Is it drawing its last breath there, too? Belief in progress has never gone unchallenged. A strain of declininsm has always accompanied it, even in eras of confidence and expansion. For every enlightened rationalist, a romantic pessimist; for every techno-utopian, a climate-doomer. Still, the degree to which the contemporary West is steeped in a mood of decline is striking. Pessimists seem to have crowded out the optimists. Is this situation merely a blip – a reaction to turbulent times – or is it becoming a semi-permanent condition? In this issue, we explore how our hopes and fears shape our ability to imagine future utopias, collapse, and dystopias in an age of pessimism. Grab a copy or subscribe to FARSIGHT by becoming a Futures Member 👉 Link in bio Cover illustration: @petra_peterffy Article illustration: @sophia.prieto.v