The Power of Maybes: Machines, Uncertainty and Design Futures

By Betti Marenko

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1350377279
• ISBN13: 9781350377271
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.5" x 9.3"