In the Age of Enlightenment, a linear perception of time opened up the possibility of thinking about a future different from the present. To act in the desired direction, the desired future nevertheless had to be configured. The idea of progress therefore implied the design of a credible and desirable future. Innovation was rare and ad hoc. What can we do today in the face of the increasingly pressing problems facing our societies: climate change, energy supply, scarcity of resources or the consequences of demographic change? How to improve health and safety, even security, and ensure the sustainable availability of high quality and affordable water and food for all? Innovation is for Western countries the only answer to all these questions. But what innovation are we talking about? How to rethink the idea of the future with regard to a discourse on the world characterized by multitude and overflow, where everything circulates more and more quickly and more and more intensely? How, at the same time, can we take into account the stories of extinction that postulate the great tear or the great collapse to come in our world? Nothing is linear anymore and everything is invaded by complexity! Should we constrain research or, on the contrary, liberate it?
The earth was considered as a supplier of matter and energy of almost infinite size, with the possibility of using it to eliminate its nuisances and waste, without aspects of finitude being expressed…
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