The author calls for creators to present a new future world that is optimistic and to me, that feels a little shallow and half baked. It is certainly not subver

The author calls for creators to present a new future world that is optimistic and to me, that feels a little shallow and half baked. It is certainly not subversive, it is naive. We are out of the pure postmodern cynicism, but the rebuttal isn't a swing back to modernism as the author seems to vaguely hint at. Personally I subscribe to the idea that we have moved into a new cultural period that many call Meta-modernism. There are many other theories alongside this, Digimodernism and 'New Sincerity' being the ones I've heard the most about. Point being is that this new approach blends the cynical with the optimistic to have a more holistic view. Objectivity and subjectively co-exist. In this frame, there has been a movement in the design world for the past ten years called Design Fiction that works in this space I think. Dunne and Raby at the RCA London pioneered it and sci-fi author Bruce Sterling is an adamant supporter. From MIT Media Lab, Design Fiction is: "How to provoke discussion about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of new technologies through design and storytelling." In short, it creates objects that imply worlds of the future. It is not completely dystopian, nor is it completely optimistic. Those views are left up to the viewer to decide on. I definitely feel this approach is much more valuable than the authors' knee-jerk out-of-date push to happy-up sci-fi.