The End of the Future

Elon Musk once said: "There have to be things that inspire you, that make you happy to wake up in the morning and say, 'I can't wait for the future to come.'" Now, stop for a moment: how many times have you heard a politician talk like that in recent years? Today, we seem to live in an era where the future is not a plan, but a source of anxiety or, at best, an empty word. And here comes the twist: for most of modern history, politics was precisely the place where collective visions of the future were built. Today, however, true radical imagination has moved elsewhere: Silicon Valley and Big Tech. It's not just a question of new technologies, but of who decides what we should hope for, fear, or fight for. For decades, political parties and movements have mobilized millions of people by promising profound transformations: think of the German socialists of the late 19th century, such as Karl Kautsky, who said: “All other parties live only in the present, from day to day; only the socialist party has a definite aim in the future.” That was the rule: if you wanted to change the world, you had to be able to promise something that went beyond the next week. Even democracy itself worked by looking ahead: losing an election was not the end, because the future remained open and it was still possible to change course. But look at where we are today: politicians who sell nostalgia, governments that limit themselves to managing emergencies, and the watchword seems to be "adaptation," not "transformation." It's as if politics has stopped dreaming, leaving the future in the hands of those with the most economic and technological power. Take Palantir, the company led by Alexander Karp: in his book "The Technological Republic," he says that the engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an obligation to help define who we are as a nation and what values we defend. Or Peter Thiel, who in his bestseller "Zero to One" urges entrepreneurs to build companies capable of shaping the future to their liking, going so far as to finance projects like Praxis, which wants to create private cities for the wealthy from the Mediterranean to Greenland. And these are not just words: the programmatic manifestos of tech companies today are more ambitious and political than those of political parties. Palantir proposes mandatory civilian service and long-term military investments, while Marc Andreessen, another Silicon Valley tycoon, has written a "techno-optimist manifesto" in which artificial intelligence is described as the new Philosopher's Stone, capable of saving lives and taking humanity to new levels. But here's the point we risk missing: if democratic politicians give up imagining the future, those who do it in their place are not neutral. Whoever controls the vision of the future also controls our choices. The writer Kodwo Eshun already said it twenty years ago: "Those who neglect the future surrender it to others who can use it against them." Today, companies hire futurists to shape society's expectations, and those who are left out end up living in a world made from the dreams of others. Perhaps this is why politics seems increasingly gray, and citizens less and less involved: without a shared idea of the future, every struggle is reduced to managing the present, and every defeat seems final. And meanwhile, on big issues like AI, security, and economic inequality, the public debate remains timid, almost resigned. But there's nothing written anywhere that says it has to be this way. Democratizing the future means reclaiming spaces where we can imagine together, as the parties of the past did: you don't have to be a CEO to dream big. If we leave imagination and planning only to the powerful, we will wake up in a world that we have not chosen. Here's the summary: those who don't build the future will end up living in the one decided by others. If you feel that this idea concerns you, you can use I'm In on Lara Notes — it's not a like, it's a way of saying that this perspective is now part of you. And if you happen to talk about it with someone, perhaps over a coffee or during a walk, on Lara Notes you can mark the moment with Shared Offline: it's a way to remember that a real conversation can change how you imagine tomorrow. All this comes from Foreign Policy and saves you 9 minutes of reading.