i’ve written about inventing the future by nick srnicek and alex williams before, but as time has passed, i’ve become more and more confident that it’s one of the most important books of the past decade (a bold claim, i know). its basic thesis rings truer than ever: that the key project of the left is to build global hegemonic power around an ambitious technologically and socially progressive vision of the future where everyone is free to act.
If power is the basic capacity to produce intended effects in someone or something else, then an increase in our ability to carry out our desires is simultaneously an increase in our freedom. The more capacity we have to act, the freer we are. One of the biggest indictments of capitalism is that it enables the freedom to act for only a vanishingly small few. A primary aim of a postcapitalist world would therefore be to maximise synthetic freedom, or in other words, to enable the flourishing of all of humanity and the expansion of our collective horizons.
a culture of agency accelerates change, for better and for worse.
