Cory Doctorow on Utopia

It's not how well the system works, it's what happens when it fails that distinguishes a utopia from a dystopia.

“UTOPIA” WILL HIT SHELVES IN 2017 "Of all the novels I’ve written, I’m most proud of Utopia. In it, I finally found a way to express all my fears about where we’re heading and all my hopes for how we might head it off. Everyone I know feels that inchoate dread that Occupy shorthanded as ‘things are fucked up and shit’, and that feeling’s given me the cold grue for most of a decade. Finally, I’m managed to get that feeling and where it comes from into an orderly narrative that — I hope — transfers it from my brain to yours. I want to make a world that works even when it’s broken down, a world where we see ourselves with a common destiny, where every person is owed a debt to, and owes a debt to, every other person.I want to make the world where our coming disasters are attended by outpourings of cooperation and empathy. Not because I find this aesthetically pleasing: because I want to live through those disasters, and I want my child to live through them. I want you to live through them, too, and your children."

Another argument to use when people say dreaming of Utopia always ends badly. It's No Place to reach, it's a way to get by.