Dispatches from exponential imagination
Bird songs: a concert of instructions on designing a new world.
Look.
A monument to our Covid-19 moment in 2030, polished smooth, with narrow ticks lining its surface like the 1s and 0s of computer code. What’s written here is the human genome, depicted as stacked bands of DNA; all four faces are covered in this etching of humanity.
The 1990s…but different. What would our country look like if all those young men of color imprisoned in the 1990s had been given opportunities to lead productive lives in society rather than being permanently sidelined with unfair sentences for nonviolent offenses? What if Biggie and Tupac had lived to make more great music and inspire other young men?
Before your memory disappears as a result of that ill-fated 2022 Covid vaccine. But don’t worry—Ancestral Intelligence Memory (AIM) is here in 2040 to give you a new-and-improved collective consciousness.
These are just a few of the many possibilities kicked up by the Guild of Future Architect’s Futurist Writers’ Room series, 20 Decades of 2020: Stories from Exponential Imagination.
In this moment of crisis, where we are all responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, a discourse has emerged about how to “get back to normal.” A social media meme has gone around calling this “the great reset.”
However, the members of the Guild of Future Architects are not interested in going back to normal or resetting the status quo. We are interested in imagining, prototyping, and building a much better set of systems for our interdependent global society.
These sessions, which ran from March 26 -May 28, 2020, were designed to create space to imagine the pathway between now and a post-pandemic future.
Each Thursday, through the first months of the pandemic, we spent two hours on Zoom, looking back and forward together. In the first week, we went 10 years back and 10 years forward (2010 & 2030). By the final week, we travelled 100 years out each way (1920 & 2120), well beyond our current life spans.
We published pieces about possible futures, re-imagined pasts, and the lessons these offer from each session—as well as responses from participants. See the whole series as it evolved here.
Thanks to everyone who participated in these sessions, including: Karim Ahmad, Mark Beam, Jennifer Brandel, Ana Brzezińska Beata Calinska, Amber Case, Brooke Chapman, Emily Cooper, Peter DiCampo, Yalini Dream, Alixa Garcia, Bernie Garcia, Gerry Garcia, Alexandra Johnes, Ben Kreimer, Esther Maloney, Laura Polk, Alexander PorterMegan Reilly, Márquez Rhyne, Stephanie Rubenstein, Indy Rishi Singh, Sydney Skybetter, Elizabeth Strickler, Stacy Switzer, Meedo Taha, Mahyad Tousi, Michele Y. Washington, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, and Janet Wong.
