Uselessness: Humankind’s most valuable tool?

Is uselessness a tool? The acquisition of tools is the secret to humankind’s success and what distinguishes us from animals. However, we also use tools to tell stories and produce objects that are perplexingly useless. Uselessness rarely meets our expectations, but can also be fascinating and liberating, because it eludes the logic of the use = value equation.

In the Modern Age usefulness became a priority: with reference to space, production or training. Yet futurologists today predict that one product of artificial intelligence will be a useless future. If the future makes us useless, it will be necessary to reconsider our attitude toward uselessness. The texts in this interdisciplinary reader illuminate the potential creativity the future can bring in light of this development.