The last fuse was lit by Midjourney, the text-to-edit software (that is: assign a brief to Artificial Intelligence and it will obtain an image from it) which surprisingly entered the world of design a few months ago and immediately experienced as a threat by architects and designers.
One more proof of the fact that it is almost always fear that accompanies us to the door when the future knocks.
Because? We asked Roberto Paura, author of an essay, published by Codice Edizioni, which traces the relationship of man with the future and launches a precise message, enclosed in the title: the future must be occupied, just like schools and universities.
First of all, is there enough talk about the future in the media?
“A lot, if by future we mean the simple word.
Indeed, it is one of the most abused terms by marketing, political propaganda, the world of innovation, not to mention that of training.
On the other hand, attention to the future understood as a long-term dimension is completely absent from public discourse, dominated by the urgency of the present".
Why do we talk about the future more as something that scares us than a challenge?
“When used as a slogan, the future is always seen in a positive way: it is used as a synonym for innovation, which it obviously isn't.
The future is simply where we will live in the next few years and it can be anything, depending on how we act in the present. When we leave the future = innovation rhetoric, then the discourses become more problematic.
An example of this is Fridays for Future, which uses this term to emphasize the lack of attention to the main long-term challenge we face, that of climate change. Here the term future serves precisely to remind us that if climate change is a reality this depends on our inability to imagine the future, anticipate the long-term consequences of our actions and decisions".