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I would like to answer your question with Immanuel Wallerstein's little book "UTOPISTICS".
Wallerstein coined the term "Utopistics" in terms of historical choices in the 21st century. "Utopia" was a work by Thomas More, and it means "nowhere". Wallerstein shows us that the real problem with all utopias is that they seem to be dreams of heaven that could never exist on earth:
Utopias tend to be breeders of illusions and therefore, inevitably, of disillusions. Utopistics is the serious assessment of HISTORICAL ALTERNATIVES.
Wallerstein shows that it is not about face of the perfect (and inevitable) future, but the face of an alternative, credibly better, and historically possible (but far from certain) future: "We are living in the transition from our existing world system, the capitalist world economy, to another world-system or systems ... . We shall not know until we get there, which may not be for another fifty years now." (Wallerstein)
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Paris, July 2002
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