Your Futures Thinking Observatory

A carefully curated weekly newsletter finding signals of change and imagining better futures in technology, society, and culture.

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What is a “sentier”, anyway?

No.289 — Nov 26, 2023

Nate Hagens on the Dangers of Our Net Zero Obsession ⊗ Margaret Mead, Technocracy, and the Origins of AI’s Ideological Divide ⊗ Don’t Call Me an “Urbanist”

No.288 — Nov 19, 2023

Rapid Urbanisation Is Stoking Paranormal Anxieties in China ⊗ The Dragonfly Journey ⊗ We’re Sorry We Created the Torment Nexus

No.287 — Nov 12, 2023

Space Is Dead. Why Do We Keep Writing About It? ⊗ Work, Life, and Perennials ⊗ Sculpting Consciousness

No.286 — Nov 05, 2023

Seawater’s Teeming Life May Change Our Own ⊗ The Youth Boom in Africa Will Change the World ⊗ How to Think Computationally About AI, the Universe and Everything

No.285 — Oct 29, 2023

Unbundling AI ⊗ Why We Need Utopias ⊗ Freedom From Work

No.284 — Oct 22, 2023

An Ode to Living on the Grid ⊗ Why Can’t Our Tech Billionaires Learn Anything New? ⊗ A Case for the Polycrisis, Explained

No.283 — Oct 15, 2023

Fear of Oozification ⊗ Is the Web Eating Itself? LLMs versus Verifiability ⊗ Why Culture Has Come to a Standstill

No.282 — Oct 08, 2023

Against Scale ⊗ AI Data Training Companies Like Scale AI Are Hiring Poets ⊗ Daniel Schmachtenberger on the Metacrisis

No.281 — Oct 01, 2023

AI, Hardware, and Virtual Reality ⊗ From Synthetic Biology to AI ⊗ Capitalism Is Dead