The Power of Maybes

This cutting-edge study brings together philosophy and design to explore predictive computational processes and looks to ‘uncertainty’ as a central, epistemic tool for facing algorithmic challenges.

In a world of endless predictions and precision algorithms The Power of Maybes offers a daring new way forward.
What if uncertainty isn’t a problem to solve, but a gift? This book reclaims hesitation, ambiguity, and not-knowing as powerful tools to resist the rigid control of digital systems and explores the radical idea that embracing uncertainty is essential in our age of planetary computation. Where machines seek to lock down knowledge, capture potential, dictate futures, and foreclose possibilities, Marenko argues for the cultivation of uncertainty as a form of resistance.By reframing the unknown as a powerful resource, The Power of Maybes presents a bold approach to living and thinking alongside machines without surrendering to their grip.

Blending philosophy, design, and critical tech studies, Marenkochallenges dystopian fears and utopian hopes about technology, and champions new ways of being. Through a transversal approach to uncertainty, futures, machines, design and power, she argues that an allyship with uncertainty is not only possible but necessary to build an alternative to the worst excesses of algorithmic governmentality. By treating uncertainty as a cosmic laboratory to resist the capture of potential and reimagine the encounter with machines, Marenko incites us to live with uncertainty by cultivating modes of knowing, being and resisting that use it as an ally.

For those ready to reclaim their agency in an algorithmic age, this book is a guide to living with oceanic uncertainty —and finding power in it.