"Walls turned sideways are bridges."                                                                - Angela Y. Davis

"Mainstream futurist discourse tends to extrapolate from the status quo and proposes singular, predetermined future visions. The problem with a lot of such foresight is that it is bound by the constraints and suppositions of dominant perceptions of reality (*Radha Mistry).

"Within the Protopia Framework, however, we position that there is no singular 'future' trajectory but rather a vast scope of many alternative futures. It is continuously shaped not just by our actions but also by our inactions and our apathy. Hence, we consciously choose to use the plural 'futures', instead of singular 'future', throughout this text. Our work is always meant to engage the plurality of future possibilities — not a singular thread but rather the ever shifting perimeter of the probable, possible, plausible, and, most importantly, desirable." - Monika Bielskyte

Article: Protopia Futures [Framework]

Related Article: Dangerous Visions: How the Quest for Utopia Could Lead to Catastrophe

Related Article: Forget Utopia. Ignore Dystopia. Embrace Protopia!

"Thanks to evolution, we have numerous biases and heuristics programmed into our brains to try and keep us safe.

"Two of the most common ones are:

• In-Group Bias: Our preference to be around people just like us and conform to the group (our herd)
• Status Quo Bias: The preference to keep things the way they are, even if a change could make things better

"Unfortunately, these biases (and many others like them) which evolved over hundreds of millions of years to keep us safe, also make it much harder to innovate.

"Even when we as individuals want to push our company and our colleagues to try new things, or do things differently, their desire for the status quo often means that we are pushing uphill." - Nick Skillicorn

Skillicorn wrote this article for corporate leaders, but the clear and simple suggestions he makes for working with natural biases is relevant to family and community members, too.

Article: We Are All Sheep

"Close to 80% of adult Americans think “libraries provide them with the resources they need,” according to a survey published by the Pew Research Center in 2016; findings published by Pew in 2017 showed that a whopping 78% of adults felt that “public libraries help them find information that is trustworthy and reliable” and 56% said that “libraries help them get information that aids with decisions they have to make.” Among adults, millennials were libraries’ biggest fans: in a separate article published by Pew in 2017, millennials were reported to have used libraries “more than any other adult generation” over the previous year.

"By contrast, people absolutely hate the media. According to Gallup data published in 2022, “Americans’ trust in the mass media to report the news ‘full, accurately, and fairly’” was at a near-record low of 34%, with just 7% having “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media. A striking Gallup study of confidence in 16 US institutions found newspapers in 12th place, and television news 15th—only Congress fared worse. 

"So when I heard, some months ago, that Albany Public Libraries (APL) had partnered with the city’s local paper, the Times Union, to produce a series of articles, I wanted to learn more about it." - Kate Harloe

One-liners

Article: Children who walk to school concentrate better.

Article: Study: Cycling is 10x more Important than electric cars for reaching net zero.

Article: Scientists make pain relievers like Tylenol from pine trees rather than fossil fuels.

Article: Starbucks expands ‘100% reusables’ tests in bid to sink disposable cup waste.

Article: Winemakers in the prestigious Bordeaux region are set to uproot thousands of hectares of vineyards as altered consumer habits and global warming hit one of the crown jewels of the French agricultural industry.

Article: Why bilinguals may have a memory advantage – new research

"The Desert Sessions began in August 1997 at the Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree when Josh Homme brought together musicians from the bands Monster Magnet, Goatsnake, earthlings?, and Kyuss. The ranch, located in the Mojave Desert, has an old house filled with rare and unique recording equipment and instruments, and was owned by Dave Catching and the late Fred Drake. With the large numbers of musicians arriving to the ranch over time, and with many albums having been produced there, the setting has been described as creating a unique 'desert sound' comparable to the grunge rock of Seattle in the early 1990s and the acid rock of San Francisco in the 1960s.

"The first Desert Session was not actually a 'session' per se, but Homme and his band at the time (The Acquitted Felons) playing for three days straight on psychedelic mushrooms. Since then, the Desert Sessions have become legendary, growing in intensity and artistic merit. Homme said: 'At Desert Sessions, you play for the sake of music. That's why it's good for musicians. If someday that's not enough anymore, or that's not the reason behind you doing it—that's not your raison d'être—then a quick reminder like Desert Sessions can do so much for you, it's amazing. It's easy to forget that this all starts from playing in your garage and loving it.'" - wikipedia.org

Rocket Science 3: Airstream Interplanetary Explorer 2011-2012 by Edward Tufte. Steel, aluminum, stainless steel, electronics. Length 84' x height 31'. Photo by Fred Orkin.

This is one of 100 environmental artworks that grace a 234-acre tree farm and landscape sculpture park in Litchfield, CT. According to Tufte's website "the artworks will remain open space in perpetuity." 

Tickets for weekend days from September 23 - October 29, 2023 are available now. 

Webpage: Hogpen Hill Farms