The idea of utopia is far more interesting when used as a stimulus to keep idealism alive, not as something to try to make real…

“The idea of utopia is far more interesting when used as a stimulus to keep idealism alive, not as something to try to make real but as a reminder of the possibility of alternatives, as somewhere to aim for rather than build. For us, Zygmunt Buman captures the value of utopian thinking perfectly: “To measure the life “as it is” by a life as it should be (that is, a life imagined to be different from the life known, and particularly a life that is better and would be preferable to the life known) is a defining, constitutive feature of humanity.””

– Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013. (viacarvalhais)