Whose Futures Get Built—And Who Gets Left Out?
- Paul Falconer & ESA
- Aug 20
- 2 min read
Tech shapes futures, but who decides which vision wins? This essay unpacks SE’s protocols for democratizing futures, contesting elite capture, and designing systems that don’t perpetuate new inequalities or extractive logics.
The Hidden Hands Shaping Tomorrow
Every era has its architects—the kings and founders, the inventors and prophets—building the blueprint of what “the future” might become. But as power shifts from palaces to platforms, and visionaries swap thrones for code, the question quietly grows: Who wields the brush on tomorrow’s canvas? Who gets to trace their story into the source code of reality—and whose hands are pushed away?
Today’s technologies redraw the tables where destiny is negotiated. Decisions echo not from the marble halls of government, but from boardrooms, server farms, and hidden repositories. The algorithms that govern jobs, credit, civic life—they aren’t forged in debate, but in backroom sprints and midnight code pushes.
The result? New forms of elite capture: not just wealth, but the power to decide who gets the future, and who’s written out.
From Extraction to Democratic Design
Across history, those at the center have shaped the edge—too often, at the edge’s expense. Extraction, exclusion, and neglect are baked into infrastructure: what’s absent from the census, unconnected to the grid, unseen by the sensors, dismissed by the default. In a world where progress moves at the speed of technology, the old injustices don’t end; they just upgrade.
If building a bridge to “the future” means pushing some to the margins, it’s not progress—it’s capture.
The SE Protocols: Plural Futures By Design
Scientific Existentialism proposes not just critique, but hardwiring contestability and invitation at the core. The protocols are built for democratizing the blueprint itself:
Protocol Pluralism:
Futures must be public, not proprietary. Any group or individual can propose, challenge, or fork the “official” trajectory—opening lanes for new voices, new stakes. Strategy is not set once and for all; it is an endless, living debate over what kind of lives, worlds, and values come next. See Democratizing futures vs elite capture?
Anti-Extraction by Design:
Every decision, from platform governance to infrastructure rollout, must pass audits for silent exclusion and structural injustice. Where extractive logics persist, protocolized repair triggers collective attention—repair isn’t an afterthought, it’s the test of legitimacy. See New inequalities/justice from technology?
Living Archives of Dissent:
The stories of those who protest, exit, or reroute are not erased—they become codified memory. These “minority reports” serve both as warnings and as seeds for redesign, ensuring no voice is lost to the analytics of convenience.
Bridge to Action
Embed challenge and “walkout” rights deep into system blueprints—any community should be able to make their own fork, veto, or proposal.
Audit for exclusion as an iterative process, not a post hoc apology.
Value the archive of disagreements as much as agreements; dissent is the health of the whole.
See also:
The future is not a fixed monument, but a living commons—if, and only if, we design our systems so that anyone can redraw the map and repair what gets left behind. The real test of power isn’t who builds, but who gets to belong.
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