Inverted utopians, smaller than ourselves

This is one of my favourite quotes from Günther Anders:

So this is the basic dilemma of our age: we are smaller than ourselves. In other words, we are incapable of creating an image of something that we ourselves have made. To this extent we are inverted Utopians: whereas Utopians are unable to make the things they imagine, we are unable to imagine the things we make.

Being “unable to imagine the things we make” seems so counter intuitive at a time of such abundant technological imagination, yet that we are indeed “smaller than ourselves” is what makes philosophical anthropology – the questioning of togetherness and personhood – so necessary, so essential.