What If?

<P><B>An imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures off-kilter</B><BR/><BR/> </P><P><I>“Probability is a chimera, its head is true, its tail a suggestion. Futurologists attempt to compel the head to eat the tail (ouroboros). Here, though, we will try to wag the tail.” —Vilém Flusser </I></P><P>Two years after his <I>Vampyroteuthis Infernalis</I>, the philosopher Vilém Flusser engaged in another thought experiment: a collection of twenty-two “scenarios for the future” to be produced as computer-generated media, or technical images, that would break the imaginative logjam in conceiving the social, political, and economic future of the universe. <I>What If?</I> is not just an “impossible journey” to which Flusser invites us in the first scenario; it functions also as a distorting mirror held up to humanity. </P><P>Flusser’s disarming scenarios of an Anthropocene fraught with nightmares offer new visions that