Abstract
We live in strange times. We all know it. Some of us celebrate and play with the sense of vertigo being experienced whilst others tremble and attempt to limit the turbulence through various kinds of self-absorption. This contested space is very much alive and creative. Those choosing to play in this space are consciously seeking to realise preferred futures. Even the ‘bad guys’ have their preferred futures and often they have very powerful technologies at their disposal to help realise these. Yet even the solitary has cultural power. No being is an island and we are all in a rush to stamp the future with our particular brand. As Fred Polak argued “No man, not even the suicide, can leave tomorrow alone. The suicide but hastens tomorrow in his impatience” (1973, p. 4). I argue that each cultural actor is a cultural hacker generating new possibilities within the cultural genome, exploring new pathways by reconfiguring old elements, inserting new ‘code’, and out of this creative work generating alternative futures.