Hello everyone!
I’m new and looking forward to connecting with you in the edge riders community. I’m currently a researcher at the Wuppertal Institute, working on socio-economic metabolism and sustainable individual consumption. However, I’m also a big fan of science fiction in my spare time and would like to somehow bring the two together and start some sort of scientific project/brainstorming for something like “socio-economic imaginaries” oriented on e.g.:
Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S. H. (Eds.). (2015). Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power
or Beckert (2016). Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics
I have no concrete idea yet, but I am open to all ideas or book/text recommendations in this direction.
Very excited to start and learn more about and from the community and to contribute what I can!
Hello @Jenaer , and welcome. I am Alberto, and I absolutely see where you are coming from.
We started the Sci-Fi Econ Lab as a tongue-in-cheek space for discussion about bold economic ideas. The main idea was to make intellectual space for radically different economic systems, as we found that the long imperium of neoclassical econ had resulted in an atrophy of our ability to imagine anything different from minor tweaks of the dominant model.
Maybe it is my own interests speaking, but it seems that this journey is easiest and most fun if you attempt to give a very practical dimension to economic imagery. For example, I really enjoyed coming up with the Great Retrofit world with Ha-Joon Chang, mixing a good 95% of real-world elements with a 5% of science fiction.
If I think about science fiction, in general, I find it consists most of thought experiments. Authors start with a main idea, and apply it to a society that looks mostly like our own. What of we had FTL travel? Human cloning? Designer babies? Telepathy? Generally intelligent humanoid robots? And so on. Most of them are interested in technology, not economics; but we can apply the same method to economic institutions or models we like. For example, I am involved in building a cohousing in Brussels. Nothing science fictional about cohousing, it’s right there. But this can be a seed of a worldbuilding exercise. What would the world look like if cohousing was the rule, rather than the exception? That would mean that the housing stock would be de-financialized and become an element of sociality. What would this be like? A lot of solarpunk moves from similar prompts.
Would this be an acceptable angle of attack? What economic idea or institution would you like at the center of your thought experiment?
I am taking the liberty of moving this thread into the Sci-Fi Econ Lab’s space, let me know if you want me to undo the change.