2017 # WRITING

November 2017, Venice

Utopias are nothing, says Thomas More, who inscribed the word utopia into our body of thought. Writing about the condition of a fictional island in 1516 he designed the prototype of a social utopia. The term derives from the Greek “ou” (not) and “topos” (space) and hence means no-place, a geographical metaphor for an imaginary or unknown place. And yes, it was always accompanied by a desire of finding this no-place, which went perfectly along side with the discovery of unknown territories — until there was no terra incognita left to be conquered. The world was finally finite, which led writers like Jules Verne to relocate their stories to the inside of the Earth, into the depth of the Sea or to the distant Moon. However, by doing so he implanted these images into the minds of the readers and consequently enabling the landing of the first man on the Moon in 1969. So let’s call Verne a pioneer of design fiction, a speculative design practice testing what-if-conditions by creating fictitious artifacts. (…)

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