HET IS ZONDAG
In spring 2035, you see shopping bags everywhere that return themselves to the stores after being used, origami-ing themselves into butterflies. Invented more than 25 years ago by William Gibson.
In 2026, Uber and Lyft were taken over by their employees and became worker co-ops. A cooperatively owned network of drivers now democratically sets pay rates and work rules.
MONTAG
It’s summer. The negotiations start on June 7th, 2027. Most of the world is connected: Geneva, Montreal, Maputo, Taipei, Brasilia, Rome, Tel-Aviv, Baghdad. Proposals for new modes of organizing, for fundamental geo- and cosmopolitical rights and legal frameworks are on the table. Ready to be discussed and streamlined. The idea is to collectively establish viable, adaptable systems on a planetary basis, giving decentralised, local structures the space to maintain and create highly diverse models of coexistence. That work for human and non-human subjects at the same time. About reality, life and everyday constraints. Systems that repair themselves. Models that last. For one hundred years? Or more?
On that 7th of June 2027, Uranus was in Gemini— an auspicious time for new ideas. When the two encounter, innovation and revolution meet information and transmission. Of new creations and unknown technology. But Gemini has two faces and their Mercury casts a shadow on Uranus! Intellect vs. feeling. This we learned. No success without emotions. How do we build a planetary system that functions but does not exclude affects and emotions? We had to take the chance. Erik Bordeleau, one of the architects of the contracts, remembers: "Already in planning stage we had to think about how to incorporate emotions. We experimented with Fred Moten's and Stefano Harney’s Fugitive Planning. Precarious, transductive, ecstatic. The type deployed by a self-effacing radical bureaucracy. This was about transforming fundamentally what it means —for anyone, really— to be 'part of the system' and changing the structure of feeling usually associated with it."
Emotions mean uncertainty, but based on necessary decisions made by the mind. And by autonomous systems. We are in the constant process of snatching emergent order out of affect. What does it mean at a collective, psycho-political level? How do you feedback contingency into open- ended systems? How do you feedback feelings into ecologically-infused planning? Seek advice! Spirited, assertive and energetic women will help. They may tell you that uncertainty (and the resulting backfiring) sometimes 'make sense'.
The negotiations lasted four years and 18 days. They were tough but fruitful. The complexity of the system (many still refuse to use the word 'system') and its subsystems is enormous. But nobody has to know or understand all of it. It is decentralised within the planetary framework, and the subsystems are more or less autonomous. Only when the confused signals of subsystemic problems reach a higher level in the overall system, centralised councils—of humans and non-humans— intervene.
Joanna Pope, another architect of the frameworks explains: "The challenge has been to figure out what technologies we want to keep and which ones are just too socially and ecologically detrimental in everyday arrangements and everyday life to keep maintaining. Now both, bottom-up and top- down processes have to work together to end the artificial scarcity that capitalism created."
Information about environmental, social, and economic conditions are collected and monitored by the public and governments on all levels as continuously and promptly as possible. Fast- responding, self-regulating, self-organizing. E. Glen Weyl, responsible for social tech at the negotiations mentions: "There has been a major change in attitude from the local to the global scale. The whole point of these social technologies is that they allow us to reproduce more of the features of life of small communities in the broad world."
We included environmental and social costs in prices and indicators, so that there is no confusion about the consequences. This makes the entire system and all of its layers adaptable, robust and viable.
Everything was ready to be signed, on June 26th, 2031. Jupiter stands for abundance and generosity. This giant planet fuels all kinds of positive optimism in our lives and is considered to be the planet of miracles, of hope and opportunity. In cancer, Jupiter is exalted, which means that all its good qualities are maximized. Loyalty, justice, fairness, balance, judgment, incorruptibility. Very rarely is there a day of such clear vision: of equity, fairness and objectivity. And on this very day the contracts and legal agreements that are mutually beneficial to all parties, are signed.
Erik Bordeleau in 2031: "For we are always already at stake with each other, partnered all the way down. Inhabitants of the world, earthlings and earthbounds, creatures of all kinds, human and non- human, we are entangled in a series of interlaced trails and creative feedback loops, holding open life for one another. In the world to come, everyone holds pieces of each other’s life, socially and financially. We are entre-preneurs and entre-donneurs, inter-holders and inter-givers, networked together to collectively distribute the risks and opportunities of living."
ES MARTES
