From the age of 14/15, when an awesome GCSE history teacher taught us how we could use counterfactual explanations to hypnotise examiners like chickens with chalk, I've always been a sucker for a good alternate history.

From the semaphore towers and steam-powered traction engines of Keith Roberts' Weberian nightmare, Pavane (1968); a yellowing paperback discovered among the stacks of Sussex University's library when I should have been beefing up on international political economy (yawn) ...

... right through to Gibson & Sterling's The Difference Engine (1990), in which the combined power of computing pioneer Charles Babbage and a non-malarial Lord Byron is enough to deliver 19th-century Britain into the hands of a decidedly techno-progressive, union-backed, 'Industrial Radical Party' ...

... and Martin J. Gidron's The Severed Wing, in which a third-term President Roosevelt brings the United States into WW1 two years early, as retaliation for the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

With earlier US support, the war ends sooner, and a gentler treaty forestalls any revanchism on the part of the Central Powers. Although the 20th century unfolds with no Nazis, no Holocaust, and no Second World War, Gidron shows us a world with its own problems; where – as in Pavane – technological (and social) progress lags far behind that of our own timeline.

And then there's a twist, of sufficient magnitude that I'd feel bad including spoilers, but which turns this novel into something entirely more significant, and emotionally unsettling, than the cosy thought experiments found elsewhere on this list. Quite a good showing, then – particularly for a work of fiction published by the University of West Alabama, and sporting one of the single worst (and thematically inappropriate) covers I've ever seen. Hmm.

So that's a representative sample of where I'm coming from in a literary sense.

I've also been a member of a web discussion board for these kind of topics since 2005, where, for a couple of years, I channelled the bulk of my teenage/student cognitive surplus. Other kids made Airfix models, wrestling with sprues and that glue that melts plastic, but I was off debating the feasibility of all kinds of things-that-didn't-happen with history geeks scattered across the surface of the earth (everyone I now don't recognize on Facebook).

This is why I have a nemesis in Singapore, and why 2007 saw me trying – and failing – to write a novel about an ethnic Russian pulp/folk heroine fighting alt-communists in the mountains of Yakutia; the Siberian puppet state of a victorious Republic of China. (Note: Plot B of the novel was set 80 years later, and involved the planned adaptation of Plot A for a TV audience, something in the mould of Relic Hunter. Go figure.)

It is why, a year later, I started work on an epic medieval timeline, in which (1) a personal union between Poland and Bohemia, and (2) the discovery of alchemical mirrors, converge in a sprawling central European empire, sustained by a messianic proto-Protestantism, a sprawling bureacracy, and the technological dynamism of a heliograph-based internet. Essentially, a combination of Imperial China and the Republic of Letters; arriving 400-years late/early, speaking some weird dialect of Czech-infused Polish, and probably on acid.

It was also the main reason I tried to design a boardgame about Ukranian anarchists. But, well, the less said about that, the better.
(Also blame: China Miéville, Hakim Bey, Guy Debord, Settlers of Catan)

So, you can imagine my enthusiasm when, all these years later, the following is published in The Guardian:

Here, Jemima posited a counterfactual scenario in which Viacom's Tom Freston misses a flight to Hawaii, returning to negotiations and beating News Corp to a buyout of Intermix – the owners of MySpace.

Basically, the integration of MTV and MySpace proves far more successful than News Corp's top-down meddling, birthing a social media behemoth. This MTV/Myspace hybrid ploughs its resources into the R&D of a balanced micropayment platform; swallows the embryonic Twitter – repurposing it as a backchannel for TV - and, later, SoundCloud.

With its initial niche (college students) already occupied, Facebook dies in the womb. Mark Zuckerberg stays in school, Jessie Eisenberg is never nominated for an Oscar (at least, not yet), Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross never win one (or, not for this), and the following strains never touch our ears ...

... and I never try to express that on the Facebook wall of media theorist Jussi Parikka as:

'Bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu (dddldlldlldllldllldllldll) bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu-bwu (nts nts nts nts nts nts) bum-bum // bum-bum ... bum.'

Like I did this morning. *cough*

And that's not just because the film wouldn't have existed, but – perhaps more importantly – because Facebook wouldn't have existed and, without Twitter, it's unlikely I'd even know who Jussi was. Or is.

Summary: everything is contingent. There may be larger forces at play, hell, there are always larger forces at play, but nothing was inevitable.

To delve into this notion a bit deeper, take a look at this interview with philosopher Jane Bennett:

"And what is an assemblage?"

In an era of unprecedented complexity and mediation, it can be hard to unpick the various strands of causality at a play in any given situation. It is my contention that counterfactuals and alternate history give us a tool for doing just that.

If, as Bennett suggests ...

... I can think of no better way of opening up the possibility space than through speculation and counterfactuals.

Today, the scale of the challenges we face as a species are truly, startlingly vast. It is, I would argue, only by thinking our way out of the 'normal' and questioning the otherwise unquestioned that we'll be able to rise to meet them.

So, counter every news story with a scenario; a 'what if' question. Trace the assemblages – those entwined networks of people and things – back to their origins. Did things have to turn out this way? Hunt for frictions, noise, the surprising and the unexpected; and do it because if you don't, nobody else will.