We Are Surrounded by Technology, But What About Hope, Play, and Imagination?

This Op-ed was first published in Forskersonen.no, in Norwegian

In a time when technology is developing faster than our imagination, we are losing what the philosopher Ernst Bloch called the power of hope – the ability to create because something is missing.

“Something is missing,” said the philosopher Ernst Bloch in the 1960s. He believed that all progress begins with a sense of lack – the restlessness that drives us to create something new. When we feel something is missing, our ability to imagine another reality awakens. This, Bloch argued, is hope.

Today, his words are more relevant than ever.

The Prison of Creativity

We live in an era overflowing with technology but often lack this imagination. We talk about digital transformation, yet what we most often see is reproduction – the same ideas in a new format.

We see it in companies that call efficiency innovation, in schools that teach answers before questions, and in politics where digitalisation has become an end in itself. We build systems that keep the wheels turning – but also keep us in place.

All social systems – states, companies, organisations, universities – are products of the human ability to envision possibilities. But once they are established, they begin to behave as though they were laws of nature. We end up with an institutionalised imagination – the structures we created begin to think for us.

We quickly end up optimizing rather than exploring, managing rather than imagining. When pace and efficiency trump curiosity, creativity becomes a disruptive luxury. Technology becomes a tool for automating the old, not discovering the new.

The price is lost renewal: faster processes, but not necessarily new products, services, or experiences. Recovering radical imagination is a strategic necessity.

Without the ability to imagine alternatives, no organisation can change. It is the lack of courage to envision something different that slows innovation – not technology itself.

Technological Imagination

Technological competence is not the same as technological imagination. Many developers and leaders are trained to solve problems in fixed ways, not to ask new questions. They build on existing frameworks and standards, and end up recreating the world as it already is – just a bit more efficiently.

But creativity is not just about improvement. It is about shifting the very framework for what is considered possible.

Cursive, Singulars and Zeros

To break out of habitual thinking, perhaps some technologists should learn more from artists and philosophers. Learn to question the self-evident. Use doubt as a method, and see systems as hypotheses – not truths.

We need to train ourselves to find ideas that have not yet taken form, but which can grow through creativity, play, and hope. Technological creativity does not begin with coding, but with the ability to see that today’s digital systems are only provisional expressions of human imagination.

In a time when the humanities are being pushed aside, we easily forget that linguistics and language research laid the groundwork for modern language models. It was calligraphy that put Steve Jobs on the path toward developing computers with fonts and a focus on usability.

When art and the human sciences disappear, technology loses the ability to ask the big questions.

Everyone talks about artificial intelligence. Few talk about digital imagination. Perhaps that is where the next technological leap lies – in our ability to imagine what does not yet exist. If we can manage that, there is still hope.