Keller Easterling

The future rarely follows the ecclesiastical or tragic templates of dramatic futurologists. It often lies not in the revolutionary advent of an unfamiliar idea, but rather in the design of a disposition that successfully inflects an obvious idea in the present. Disposition is not the idea but the way the idea plays—the spin that gives the idea some traction in the present. Sometimes the obvious idea needs only a rumor to give it runaway velocity. In the spirit of this confidence game, no manifesto is offered here—only a short demonstration of technique. For instance, the following reports, or rumors, are part of an ongoing series of wagers on a U.S. future—wagers unencumbered by (paraphrasing Robert Musil) “the disadvantages of truth.”