The possibility paradox: How technology both expands and contracts possibilities

Abstract

As we turn more and more to technology to solve the problems it has created – from misinformation to climate change – it is crucial to understand how innovations can both expand the possible and contract it. In this editorial, I first outline how technological advances increase what is possible, probable and feasible, and our sense of it, through four main processes: (1) Expanding what is possible, (2) broadening our sense of what could be, (3) making the possible reachable and (4) freeing up resources to explore new possibilities. I then look at six processes through which technology reduces them and narrows our horizon: (1) by destroying possibilities, (2) forcefully replacing tasks and jobs, (3) leading to a loss of skills, (4) bringing social and environmental destruction, (5) making existing systems obsolete and (6) creating possibility tunnels. This nomenclature is not meant to be exhaustive. It is instead an invitation to fellow researchers interested in possibilities, technologies and their intersection, to explore how novel tools affect our perceptions of what could be and as well as our actual actions.