I'm not generally a fan of scenario-building as a method of futurism (my feeling is, if you're going to predict, do that, instead of watering it down with a list of possibilities). This paper though offers interesting reading not only through discussion of the possibilities but also in some (overly contrived) 'micro-fictions'. In the end, the authors write, "Speculative methods offer a space in which it is possible to discuss hope, but such hope needs to be active, strenuous and able to maintain itself in the face of the radical unknowability of our futures... In the context of such cultural devastation and historical rupture, the issue of hope becomes, for Lear, 'critical for an ethical inquiry into life at the horizons of one's understanding'. This maintenance of hope in the context of an unknowable future is what Lear calls 'radical hope', a 'daunting form of commitment: to a goodness in the world that transcends one's current ability to grasp what it is'."
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