This seminar series examined how technology becomes a means to establishing regimes of complete and satisfying presence and control, and how this presents itself as a desirable, a positive. Technology and technocratic rule become binding for the future, as what can make the future “better”. We will then ask what “better” means: what are the limitations of technology and technocratic rule? What happens when technology fails, both in specific ways and more generally, and when failure becomes “acceptable”? What sort of world is pursued in the name of utopia, and how far short of utopia is acceptable?