Word: utopia
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...your author's note that this book is not a novel. And yet it's not nonfiction. So what is it? In the literary world, it's either called a work of speculation - "What if something happened?" "What if somebody did this?" - or a practical utopia. We haven't had many practical utopias. Russell Jacoby, a professor out in California, wrote a book called The End of Utopia in 1999, which argues that the idea of imagining better futures has diminished, as we wallow more and more in our desperate state of societal and governmental decay. So I tried...
...that your goal in writing the book? To create a practical utopia? No. As you go through year after year, as many civic advocates do, being overwhelmed by the corporate lobbies and their allies in government, you say to yourself, 'If we only had more media, if we only had more money, if we only had more field organizers, if we only had better ideas and strategies.' That's what produced the book. What if we had a collection of superrich elderly, retired people who are very dismayed at the state of their beloved country, and what if they...
...city, looking at abandoned mansions, and wonder why they were like that or who lived there. And so, originally my work had to do with lamentations of things that were gone—erasures of places.I also had a big epiphany about this whole idea of Detroit as utopia. My work has a lot to do with utopia and dystopia.THC: What new projects are you developing?MZ: On display at the Carpenter Center are three watercolors that were based on depictions of Hawaiian women circa 1860. I was interested in what Hawaiian women looked like before races became mixed...
...also do work on existential risks to humanity: asteroids, full-scale nuclear war, etc. Do you feel that Utopia or eradication both seem to be plausible outcomes in the next century? The president of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, puts the chances of our civilization surviving at 50-50. That's in agreement with estimates from other scientists who look at existential risks. How we handle the challenges of this century could determine the future of humanity - and whether there will...
...anticipation of heavy-handed action by the authorities, the camp has been ringed by swiftly erected fencing and is guarded by volunteers perched on "tripods," vertiginous lookouts fashioned from scaffolding poles. It's unlikely, though, that these latter-day Wat Tylers will face a brutal expulsion from their temporary utopia. Climate campers promise "direct action," but any such activity will probably take place off site. And this time, the Met is determined to keep its policing low-key. (Read "A Case for Scotland Yard...