The capacity to distribute hope among the citizens has guaranteed the ability of the nation-state to provide the enduring framework for capitalist accumulation in the midst of massive social inequality. Ghassan Wage looks at the relationship between utopia and hope and asks how utopia can be both an emancipating, enabling force, and a disabling force. A crucial question he asks is whether people in the First World can create positive, enabling utopian practices without connecting those to the persisting colonial conditions of existence in the Third World. Introducing Wage, media theorist Geert Lovink talks about the utopian dimension of independent media practice. Ghassan Hage is a Professor for Anthropology at the University of Sydney. He is also an associate researcher at the Centre for Behavioural Research at the American University of Beirut. Geert Lovink is a media theorist and Net critic, co-founder of numerous Internet projects such as www.nettime.org and www. fibreculture. org.