No matter how much we fight it, we still think of the future as what is to come instead of what we might bring about. In our eyes, the future tends to be inherently deterministic; in culture, it is still depicted as the train barreling down at us from the other side of the tunnel.
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But what if the real tyrant is the present? Our present conditions, limitations, and context govern what we can imagine and limit our options to the solutions we are willing to consider as «realistic». As we continue to fall into the trap that is late stage capitalism, some voices have even described our situation as «capitalist realism», wherein the lines between our society as it is and our lives as they must be are blurred.
During his talk, Eden Kupermintz will use several future scenarios, some «science fiction» and some more «realistic», to show how thinking about the future can and should challenge our present paradigms, assumptions, and ways of thinking about the world. What is a human in the far future? What responsibility do we have towards the far future? What will society look like when millions of years have passed? Will we even exist? Is our future in-existence of any worth or concern to us in the present? We will ask all these questions and more, attempting to draw lines "back from the future" and into our present condition.
Eden Kupermintz holds a BA in history and philosophy and has ever been fascinated with and passionate about science fiction, music and culture. He has written and given numerous talks on these topics, covering the future of the state, urbanism, space exploration, the body and many other futures. Eden is on the program team for the Tel-Aviv-based Utopia Association and name-sake festival, curates the online archive anarchySF, is editor-in-chief for Heavy Blog is Heavy and does some work for corporations so he can eat.