“Bifo is a master of global activism in the age of depression. His mission is understanding real existing capitalism. Sense the despair of the revolt, enjoy this brilliant ‘labor of the negative!’” —Geert Lovink, Dutch/Australian net critic
“In this surprising book the concept of future, which supported the modern history of culture, politics, and economy, is revised, reverted, cancelled and finally revived in a totally unexpected way. From Futurism to post-futurism, Bifo takes us on a journey through and beyond the century that trusted in the future.” —Christian Marazzi, author of The Violence of Financial Capitalism
The century-long obsession with the concept of the future has, at last, come to an end. Beginning with F. T. Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto" and the worldwide race toward a new and highly mechanized society that defined the "Century of Progress," Italian media activist Franco “Bifo” Berardi traces the genesis of future-oriented thought through the punk movement of the early ’70s and into the media revolution of the ’90s. Cyberculture, the last truly utopian vision of the future, has ended in a clash, and left behind an ever-growing system of virtual life and actual death, of virtual knowledge and actual war.
The future, Bifo argues, has failed us. Our responsibility now is to decide what comes next.
Franco “Bifo” Berardi is an Italian critic and media activist. One of the founders of the notorious Radio Alice, a pirate radio station that became the voice of the autonomous youth movement of Bologna in the late 1970s, Bifo is the author of multiple works of theory, including The Soul at Work, Precarious Rhapsody, and "The Post-Futurist Manifesto."
