The Power of Maybes

Machines, Uncertainty and Design Futures

Betti Marenko (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK)

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Hardback

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English

Bloomsbury Visual Arts
18 September 2025

Industrial: Commercial Art & Design; Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge

Series: Beyond the Modern

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. The Power of Maybes 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, The Power of Maybes argues for the cultivation of doubt, ambiguity, and un-knowing as forms 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, The Power of Maybes challenges dystopian fears and utopian hopes about technology, and champions new ways of being open, ungridded, unscaled. It’s a call to cultivate the unknown and nurture potential.

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.

By: Betti Marenko (Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 238mm, Width: 158mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 500g
ISBN: 9781350377271
ISBN 10: 1350377279
Series: Beyond the Modern
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 18 September 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface An Uncertain Introduction: (Un)setting the Scene 1. Algorithmic Subjects 2. Machines Work 3. Hybrid Futures 4. Unknowing Stratagems 5. Resistance to Reduction 6. Diagramming Metis: FutureCrafting Conclusion: The Power of Maybes

Betti Marenko is a transdisciplinary theorist working at the intersection of process philosophies, design theory and critical technologies studies. She has co-edited Deleuze and Design (2015) and Designing Smart Objects in Everyday Life (2021). Her work has been published in New Formations, Design and Culture, Design Studies, Digital Creativity and Technophany. She is Reader in Design and Techno-Digital Futures at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.