Four Futures
Ratings4
Average rating4
15
Ratings4
Average rating4
An “invigorating” vision of four post-capitalist futures that consider the intersections of technology, the environment, and modern politics (The Guardian) Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism, socialism and exterminism might actually entail. Could the current rise of real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender’s Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there’s no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of “likes,” wouldn’t rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.
Reviews with the most likes.
A small but still good book tackling the upcoming changes in our societies. It gives us some paths to think about our common future(s) which might not all be bright. While I liked the presentation of those 4 possible futures, it lacked a bit of depth for me, and as the author say, while me might know where we're going to end in those four futures, the path to them is still unsure and might be quite difficult. I'll keep an eye out for the changes to come, and hope & work for the best.
“That is the other important point of this book. We can't go back to the past, and we can't even hold on to what we have now. Something new is coming—and indeed, in some way, all four futures are already here, “unevenly distributed,” in William Gibson's phrase. It's up to us to build the collective power to fight for the futures we want.”
Before getting into de Conclusions, my punctuation was three stars, for the same reason Frase said in this last chapter: “But none of these model societies are meant to represent something that could be implemented overnight, in a complete transformation of current social relations. Indeed, probably none of them is possible at all in a pure form; history is simply too messy for that, and real societies exceed the parameters of any theoretical model”.
What I really enjoy, is the relation with movies and books that Frase does through the book, making the explanation easier and understanding his examples. What I do not like that much is how utopian his writing was. We really need a new/better future, for sure. But I think it is not going to be just one of them itself but a configuration of many of them.
“Things in our world may not play out with such literal deceptions, but we can already see how our political and economic elites manage to justify ever-higher levels of misery and death while remaining convinced that they are great humanitarians” Pos. 1616
