The first chapter to Speculative Everything starts off extremely bleak, discussing the loss of dreams and imaginary worlds replaced with just the hope that the world we live in will get better. This is something I see a lot in my peers; it seems as though we can see our own limitations and the problems we have created by trying to reach for the stars. However, problem solving is an area I feel very comfortable in; and it is one part of design that might help the world problems. Even if the world problems are too much for me, I will always create simple solutions to make everyday life a little easier. 

I liked the idea of "redefining our relationship to reality", too often we try to fix the outside world to fit our view while ignoring what shapes our viewed world. but in order for us to create a better world we need to be able to imagine a better one. It's a fine line to walk one but we have to know our limitations while being able to innovate more and more.

"future predictions have been proven wrong again and again", this is so true. People cannot predict the future, and why try to learn it when you can be apart of shaping it? This also goes back to the idea of imagining better futures which Speculative Everything refers to as "tools to better understand the present and to discuss the kind of future people want". - Debate and discussion are very important aspects of this process.

Speculative Everything advocates for speculative design, which is a perfect solution for trying to solve big world problems that might not be solved on the first try. However, this might be harder for people with dyslexia (especially like me who have a processing disorder and have trouble retaining a lot of information at once). A promising solution for this could be data/environmentally based VR to virtually design solutions to world problems without the use of any valuable resources. 

I liked this quote - "futures are not a destination or something to be strived for but a medium to aid imaginative thought—to speculate with".

A piece of design that Speculative Everything talks about and I find very valuable as a designer, is the use of design to empower your average person. I'm not a writer, a leader, a politician, or a businessman, so design is the only way for me to be apart of shaping the future, my future, and the world around all of us.

" by speculating more, at all levels of society, and exploring alternative scenarios, reality will become more malleable and, although the future cannot be predicted, we can help set in place today factors that will increase the probability of more desirable futures happening" - rigidity is probably the biggest problem in our society today. People don't speculate about what a better future could look like because we just assume nothing is going to change. That anti-progressive mentality is exactly what got us to the shit-hole (excuse my language) of a world we live in today, with climate change and the existence of 3rd world countries without clean water or enough resources to sustain the life there. As the book made clear at the beginning of the chapter with a quote from Fredric Jameson: "it is now easier for us to imagine the end of the world than an alternative to capitalism".

This book might not be the most positive one, but it gives me hope that designers like me can reform the messed up world we live in today by becoming catalysts for change in our ideology, values, and social systems.