Imagination is a superpower
When Star Trek first aired in 1966, much of the technology it showed was pure science fiction. Mobile communicators, talking computers, video calls, automatic doors and devices that translated between languages belonged to an imagined future.
Sixty years later, much of this technology is ordinary. We carry communication devices in our pockets, talk to computers, meet on screens and use tools that translate between languages in seconds.
Where was the magic? The series showed us a possible world that engineers, designers, scientists and entrepreneurs could see, discuss and consider.
Before we can begin making the impossible possible, the impossible must become thinkable. Imagination gives form to what does not yet exist and can turn an empty space into a goal.
This is why imagination is perhaps the most important force driving and changing reality. Every theory, structure, tool and way of life was imagined before it became real.
If we cannot imagine that society, home or our relationships with nature, our surroundings and other people could be different, we remain trapped within the assumptions of the present.
Science fiction often acts as a laboratory of possibilities. It gives ideas form, language and an image long before the necessary knowledge or engineering exists.
Once that image enters a culture as a possibility, people from different fields can work together to make it real. What began in a writer's imagination can become a hypothesis for scientists, designers and entrepreneurs: could this actually be done?
The same principle applies elsewhere. We also need images of inclusive communities, regenerative economies, caring cities, lives and homes. These can awaken our imagination and help us envisage alternatives to a reality that does not adequately serve life.
Imagination is a superpower because, without it, change never becomes a possibility. Imagining alone cannot change the world, but it makes a different world thinkable.
The first step towards another world may be as simple, and as difficult, as awakening the imagination.