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The Power of Maybes

Machines, Uncertainty and Design Futures

The Power of Maybes cover

The Power of Maybes

Machines, Uncertainty and Design Futures

Description

In a world of endless predictions and precision algorithms, The Power of Maybes offers a daring new way forward.

What if uncertainty isn't a problem to solve, but a gift? This book reclaims hesitation, ambiguity and not-knowing as powerful tools to resist the rigid control of digital systems. Where machines seek to lock down knowledge, capture potential, dictate futures and foreclose possibilities, The Power of Maybes presents the radical idea that embracing uncertainty is essential in our age of planetary computation and offers ways of cultivating it as a form of resistance.

By reframing the unknown as a powerful resource, Marenko offers a bold approach to living and thinking alongside machines without surrendering to their grip. Blending philosophy, design and critical tech studies, it challenges dystopian fears and utopian hopes about technology, and champions new ways of being-open, ungridded, unscaled. It's a call to cultivate the unknown and nurture potential. For those ready to reclaim their agency in an algorithmic age, The Power of Maybes is a guide to living with oceanic uncertainty-and finding power in it.

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Table of Contents

Foreword, Adam Nocek
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Hybrid Futures
A Note on Method

Part I
1. Machines Work
2. Algorithmic Subjects
3. Resisting Reduction

Part II
4. Metic Wayfinding
5. Oceanic Uncertainty
6. Unknowing Stratagems

Conclusion: Whatever Designs

Bibliography
Index

Product details

Published 21 Aug 2025
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Pages 176
ISBN 9781350377295
Imprint Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Series Beyond the Modern
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Betti Marenko

Betti Marenko is Reader in Design and Techno-Digit…

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Environment: Staging