Late Futurism – The Future as a Mode of the Present

Of Cones and Cradles

One of the most popular conceptual tools among futurologists, and therefore among late futurists as well, is Joseph Voros’s Futures Cone from 2003. However, as Voros himself explains, the idea of representing the future in the form of cones of various diameters based on higher or lower probability dates back to at least 1994. There are countless variations of this diagram (there are even workshops dedicated to producing new versions), but they all fit into the same probabilistic logic. Here, time is represented as a bundle of possibilities, ranging from the probable to the preposterous. Generally, this spectrum also encompasses the designer’s own value system, that is, what they considers preferable. However, since it is not easy to produce consensus on what is desired, the center and breath of this area of possibility are not entirely clear. A revolutionary, for example, is well aware that what is desirable to them lies much closer to the zone of the preposterous (if not beyond) than to the zone of the probable.

But we must not give in, to the temptation to improve the diagram by adding further subdivisions, modifications or nuances ad infinitum. On the contrary, we need to question the legitimacy of the conic figure as a means of framing the future in the traditional sense, that is, as what could or will happen. The fundamental problem with this tool is that it suggests a linear development of History (a category, moreover, nonexistent in the vocabulary of late futurists), as if it were an unrolling carpet. In fact, the projection of the cone necessarily develops from a single point, from which what comes after, in spite of greater or lesser probability, is still predetermined. In this sense, Voros’s cone is analogous to ideal cities such as the one painted by Piero della Francesca(reference), which unsurprisingly is supremely static: the various buildings are imbricated in the same grid produced by the central perspective. This deterministic conceptualization prevents the new from being recognized and thus from emerging, because the different contains no actual alterity, as a line, straight or curved as it may be, is made up of points that are different but still similar to each other, in as much as they are produced by a predetermined formula.

The late futurist is static, firm in their position of observation, and contemplates the unfolding of events as one looks through a spyglass. They know (sometimes without being aware) that the after, in one way or another, will respond to the logic of the before. Not only that: since the late futurist exists outside historical development, they cannot imagine their own demise. In other words, can the foresight officer of some company imagine a scenario in which said company fails, and perhaps even argue that this is a preferable scenario? In this respect, the now well-known New Yorker cartoon by Tom Toro does more and better than late futurism: a post-apocalyptic landscape is illuminated by a makeshift fire in front of stockbroker explaining to those around him that: “Yes, the planet got destroyed, but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.” With frugal means the vignette surpasses in imagination and effectiveness most of the high-resolution scenarios produced by the professionals of anticipation, who, thanks to Midjourney and programs alike, can finally generate in the blink of an eye terabytes upon terabytes of pseudo-Hollywood images only good for illustrating sentimental statements about the necessity to “imagine otherwise”.

Once we have tossed out the Voros cone (except for very basic or pedagogical uses) as a surreptitiously deterministic tool that, through the different, limits the emergence of the other, we are left with the task of proposing a model, or at least an image, that allows us to frame the dynamic of the new, that is, of radical change. Where to start? Some years ago, Ballard registered the impression that “change has slowed down its pace, or, perhaps, that it has gone underground.” It is precisely the hypothesis of clandestinity that we must consider—taking it to its extreme.

The philosopher and economist Cornelius Castoriadis devoted The Imaginary Institution of Society(his chef-d’œuvre from which I drew the distinction between difference and alterity) to the problem of radical change. Somewhat enigmatically, Castoriadis defines the new as the emergence of figures. I must admit that I struggled quite a bit to construct a mental image of this idea until I came across, through the work of Donna Haraway, a perfect analogy: the game of cat’s cradle. It consists of the interweaving of threads pulled by two or more hands, with each finger pulling a different thread in a constant transformation of the web produced. At first what we see is just the combination of an indistinct texture, but all of a sudden something unexpected happens: the formless web takes on the appearance of an animal, a plant, a star. A figure has emerged. 

In the cat’s cradle, there is no linear development, or rather there is, but only if we get fixated on an atomized view of history as a swarming domino of micro-events in succession, thereby, however, losing the deeper meaning of the analogy. The new is produced by the interaction between different actors who, while related to each other, act more or less autonomously without knowing to the full what figure they are helping to create. Once that figure is recognized, a decision can be made to stabilize it. At that point one “institutes” the new, which, at that very moment, ceases to be so. There is no extrapolation here, except that of individual actors acting within their individual cone of possibility. In this context, preferability loses value, as it is just an attribute of the individual actor. On the contrary, there is much more preposterousness than expected, because the new, so understood, is always strange, if not absurd.

According to Bifo, the transition from the possible to the real consists in “extracting and realizing one of the many immanent futurabilities.” This idea still proves to be yet too deterministic, for if the futurabilities were “inscribed in the present institution of the world,” then they would already be deducible, extrapolable, and thus would represent a mere development of the present, that is, nothing new. Bifo knows it, in fact he states that “the relation between now and tomorrow, between the present state and the future state of things, is neither necessary nor necessitated. The present does not contain the future as if it were its own linear development.” However, what we are saying is something else: the new is not even non-linear or complex: it is other. It can be brought back to the more or less complex dimension of the cause-and-effect relationship only a posteriori, because, as Emmanuel Carrère explains, “in history there are no laws that can explain revolutions as one explains the boiling of water brought to a certain temperature.” Even if the new existed somewhere, that place is inaccessible to us. And here we reconcile with Bifo, firmly convinced that “in life as in history the inevitable in general does not occur, because what happens is the unpredictable.”

Voros 2017
Joseph Voros, “The Futures Cone, Use and History”, The Voroscope, https://thevoroscope.com/2017/02/24/the-futures-cone-use-and-history/.

Horvath 2023
Peter Horvath, “A Futures Cone Workshop Template” Medium, https://medium.com/@petertamashorvath/a-futures-cone-workshop-template-9f690bc760f9.

Castoriadis 1987
Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society. Boston: MIT Press.

Haraway 2016
Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Durham: Duke Press.

Carrère 2024
Emmanuel Carrère, Ucronia. Milano: Adelphi.

Berardi 2019
Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility. London: Verso.

Berardi 2024
Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, “The Unpredictable”. Il Disertore, https://francoberardi.substack.com/p/limprevisto-the-unpredictable. London: Verso.