Summary
The adjacent possible is the set of next steps open to a system from where it now stands: what could happen next, as distinct from everything imaginable. The theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman coined the term for living systems, suggesting that biospheres may, on average, “keep expanding into the adjacent possible”, each step widening what can follow.
The writer Steven Johnson carried it over to ideas and technology in his book ‘Where Good Ideas Come From’. His example: nobody could have invented a microwave oven in 1650, however clever they were. He calls the adjacent possible “a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things”.
Rationale
Read beside Part 1, it explains why we ask “where the cracks are, what the other possibilities might be”: a culture can only move to what lies next to it, then onward.