The future is not a chrome-plated room that beeps and whirs. At least not if you ask us. The future doesn't actually look all that different from what we are used to in the present. And yet the functions that lie beneath the surface are subject to manifest change. To paraphrase Roy Charles Amara, most people tend to overestimate change in the short term but underestimate its impact in the long term. We dream of flying cars, hoverboards and androids that visibly make our everyday working lives easier. What we are getting, however, are new time recording tools, computer programs that can communicate like pirates and fridges that communicate confidently with toasters. All changes – sure – but these innovations only seem to make a difference on a small scale – and even here only for those who explicitly engage with them - and who are also willing to look at the bigger picture...

The fact that the foundation of what we so succinctly call society is gradually transforming into a source of inestimable value escapes most of us. The datafication of society as a whole is perhaps the most enormous value creation project of recent times. Everywhere, dormant potential is waiting to be pressed into a usable structure; a truly ground-breaking insight all too often only comes retrospectively, but then has an impact on almost every aspect of our individual existence.

The truly revolutionary change therefore unfolds relatively quietly in the background: if you pay less attention to individual data points than to the collective context that they are able to depict from a bird's eye view, you are, roughly speaking, on the right track.

The problem with the future is that it rarely presents itself as a radical break. Instead, it seeps into everyday life almost unnoticed and blends in with traditional routines. What looms on the horizon often goes unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of everyday life: Technologies that were once considered revolutionary lose their luster as soon as they find their way into ordinary life – a phenomenon that technology historian Melvin Kranzberg once aptly described as the “law of the banality of progress”.
What was celebrated as disruptive yesterday remains merely an infrastructural reality today – hardly noticed, hardly questioned. Smartphones were once such a symbol of the new, now they are little more than the prerequisite for being able to participate in social and economic life at all. Artificial intelligence, for its part, was for a long time something like the Holy Grail of technology research, the embodiment of a bold vision; today it regulates which advertising is displayed where and helps us to formulate emails to our landlords. Sustainable change is not a matter of individual innovations, but of the network they form with and among each other. Ergo: True change happens on a different level of observation than one that could be approached purely phenomenologically.

Meanwhile, what is particularly striking is that we believe we can shape this future without really realizing how much it is shaping us. Decisions that are made in the boardrooms of large tech companies or the corresponding R&D labs not only change products, but also and especially the way we live, work, think – and ultimately act.
We install software without understanding its mechanisms. We accept new business models and corresponding terms and conditions without batting an eyelid, without fully weighing up the implications. We get used to a new level of automation without questioning what it might mean for the notion of value-adding work. All too often, the future happens to us – not as a consciously designed process, but as a series of decisions that only in retrospect turn out to have set the course for something that would be a real feat to undo. In order to maintain balance and control in an accelerating world and not be degraded to a plaything of circumstances, cool heads are needed who boldly and professionally enter the maelstrom of the present in order to give the future a speculative form.

The real challenge lies in such an action: in a society that sees itself as rational and enlightened, how can the subliminal (technologically based) mechanisms of its own progress be sustainably penetrated? It would be a mistake to believe that we generally think too little about the future. On the contrary – we think about it incessantly, albeit often in images that have more to do with science fiction than reality. While we dream of humanoid robots and flying cars, we overlook the fact that the real change is already happening - in the form of algorithmic systems, data monopolies and subtle shifts in the rules and norms of what we tend to describe as civilization.

So the question is not whether we are collectively shaping the future, but whether we understand how we are doing this – and whether we are able to ask the right questions before the answers have long been given.

This is precisely what we consider to be our primary task. Of course, it is about showing our customers new ways to increase efficiency and productivity. However, such a task is never detached from the holistic view of a present that appears to be almost completely changeable and at the same time presents itself as a veritable enigma. In order to provide sustainable help, we are deeply convinced that we must first understand the underlying problems and conditions. If you are fully committed to the future, as we are, you can provide advice and act as a strategic partner to players who are committed to Hic et Nunc.

When we turn our attention to the tasks and challenges ahead of us, we may generally ask ourselves from which direction we tend to look at them. It seems logical to speak of things or circumstances that we are moving towards. Such framing grants us a creative role; we are the authors of our own history, endowed with a great deal of agency and able to set the course in a self-determined way.
The concept of hyperstition, which has its origins in the theoretical arsenal of the accelerationists, offers a somewhat different perspective. Hyperstitions are potentials that remain (as yet) unactualized, but which are able to influence us in the here and now. In them, fiction and reality blur into a strangely effective melange. A powerful example of a hyperstitional context can be found in space travel: The idea of traveling to the stars has, by and large, been part of the human repertoire of longing since time immemorial: it runs through fiction, science and folk tales. The temporal progression of these hyperstitions has a quality all of its own: contrary to popular belief, the future of this highly speculative theory has the quality of forcing its actualization. We are thus drawn towards such a future: The future is paradoxically assumed to be more real than could be said of the present.
Why are we interested in such remote intellectual territories? Well, it is in the nature of things that, as a researching border crosser, you have to put yourself in proverbial danger: To be one step ahead at all times, to open up new perspectives, to change perceptual routines. Venturing on this randonné always implies the risk of getting lost in search of new, untrodden paths - but the view makes up for it.

What would eccentric research be worth if it found no interested parties? In order to always remain grounded despite all their freewheeling ambitions, it is a declared goal of the taikonauts to conduct R&D in such a way that such an endeavor generates opportunities for connection. Just as a truly successful fiction thrives on the “willing suspension of disbelief” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), i.e. on the emotional attachment of the recipients to the content, who are prepared to accept it as “reality”, at least prototypically, for the duration of the fiction, we are also dependent on treading a path that enables the public to fully immerse themselves in the world of tomorrow or beyond that we anticipate. Passionate storytelling and methodologically driven research go hand in hand and invite us to a rendezvous.

So if you are inclined to follow the path we are trying to outline, indeed, if you sometimes even want to take a critical look at it, you will really enjoy reading our articles on a regular basis. However, those of you who are primarily interested in quickly graspable insights, who find excessive prose a thorn in the side, or at least meet it with an annoyed roll of the eyes, will also get their proverbial money's worth in future: It is simply the case that Research & Development (R&D) takes place in a blurred area; for better or worse. What we are aiming for is the attempt to open up a world; more precisely, a “world of (beyond) tomorrow” from today's perspective. And, how could it be otherwise, we are concerned with the interweaving of technological reality with an ever-changing sociosphere.