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And that the strategy for navigating difficult times is to tap into the diverse ideas, energy and resources of everyone. With this identity, it becomes easier to see that all of us are smarter than any of us. In this future, people are citizens, rather than subjects or consumers. Over the past few years we have been researching a book called Citizens, in which we propose a more hopeful narrative for the 21st Century. Yet despite the bandwidth and airwaves devoted to these twin dystopias, there's another trajectory: we call it the "citizen future".
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While it sells itself on personal freedoms, the experience for most is exclusion: a top-heavy world of haves and haves-nots. The benefits of technology, whether artificial intelligence, bio-, neuro- or agrotechnology, accrue to the wealthiest – as does all the power in society. This is a future shaped by the whims of Silicon Valley billionaires. The rest of us strive to be like them, fending for ourselves as robots take jobs and as the competition for ever-scarcer resources intensifies. The richest have their boltholes in New Zealand and a ticket for Mars in hand. In the other, everyone is a "consumer" and self-reliance becomes an extreme sport. What follows is the abdication of personal power, choice, or responsibility.
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Fearful in the face of compounding crises – climate, plagues, poverty, hunger – people accept the bargain of the "Strong Man": their leader's protection in return for unquestioning allegiance as "subjects". In one, an Orwellian authoritarianism prevails. The doom-laden headlines of our times would seem to indicate there are two futures on offer.