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From ancient utopias to cyber utopias

From glossaLAB

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Collection glossaLAB.edu
Coordinator José María Díaz Nafría
Context From Ancient Utopias to Cyberutopias. An Introduction to Political Philosophy
Start date April 6, 2026
End date June 13, 2026

Concept clarification activity

This clarification activity is attached to the teaching or scientific context indicated in the infobox. The goal is contributing to the conceptual clarification to which glossaLAB is devoted to, namely the understanding of information and systems from multiple perspectives, and at the same time contributing to the contextual objectives referred below. In any case, the purpose is enriching the conceptual network by clarifyng the meaning of concepts in the interplay with the understanting of other concepts.

Methodology: The activity starts reading the list of articles proposed, though the search tool may help you to find other concepts of interest. In a second step, the list of proposed voices (terms) provides an offer of concepts to be clarified. The list indicates whether the voice is free (because is either empty or needs some improvement), is already under edition (in which case somebody is working on it and eventually you could organise with them to work together), or is already under review (in which case it is in the hands of the activity coordinator).

Guidelines

Before you start to make your contributions, please read and follow the guidelines carefully: Help with clarification activities

Contextual objectives

One may ask, what has this purpose to do with the historical study of utopias and its manifestation in current cyberutopias, as an introduction to political philosophy. Well, the relation is probably much stronger than what one would think in first sight.

One needs first bearing in mind that a system is the result of interacting parts whose cooperative activity makes the system to endure (preserving some kind of identity) and that creates some functionality for the system itself and for the environment where it happens to exist. At the same time, it is clear that any utopia is devised, first of all, to fulfil some wishful characteristics and, second, to endure. Since, in addition, it is composed by parts whose interaction suppose to be responsible for the wishful objectives, then a utopia is nothing but a system, indeed a social system. However it is not as any other social system we may be willing to study, it is a system proposed as a goal that suppose to be worth being pursued, i.e., a goal we may strive to achieve, and even sometimes the target of a programme we may carefully plan. The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano puts it very nicely in the following words:

"Utopia is on the horizon. I walk two steps, it takes two steps away, and the horizon runs ten steps further. So, for what does the utopia works? For that, it serves to walk."
—E.Galeano

And when we speak of walking for a social system (particularly if it requires decision making) that's nothing but politics. From that perspective, political action always involves some utopia, be it more or less explicit. And when we want to delve into the different political approaches to understand them better, then we need to focus on the utopias which are moving the political action, and that is doing political philosophy. And what about dystopias? That's something we dislike, we wish to avoid them. That's clearly not a model to fulfil, but rather a model to scape from. Therefore, it is also a reason to walk for the social system, though in the sense of walking away.

Indeed the study of systems enables us to preview the space of possibilities in which the system may move. And we may see that if we set the (social) system in a particular way, the space of possibilities often displays areas which are better to avoid. A saylor needs to mark in the navigation chart not only the seaports but also the pitfalls to avoid. All in all when we analyse any utopia from its utopic and dystopic sides, we are clarifying the ultimate meanings of political approaches which is a way of doing political philosophy and even assesing the value of political proposals.

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Proposed voices


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