Lots of people pretend they’ve got tomorrow figured out: tech gurus, politicians, CEOs and (yes) journalists. But we’re if honest with ourselves, the view ahead of us has never been murkier. That’s because the problems that haunt our world today – climate change and pollution, inequality and war – are problems for which technology, long our spur to envisioning better futures, looks more like a cause than a solution. Our future is hard to imagine because we have trouble imagining how we can possibly act to improve it.

– from the introductory material to “The Future Issue” section of The New York Times Magazine, November 15, 2015