A (very) preliminary theory of futuring ⊗ The decade of discontent ⊗ Our relational futures with AI

Good thing I was sitting last Sunday when I had a look at LinkedIn, because at the top of my feed was the crushing news that, on new year’s eve while out on a hike in Oman, Nicolas Nova passed away. Years back, I titled this newsletter Sentiers, in part to use hiking trails as a metaphor for walking across domains, discovering new territories of thinking, new perspectives. You could hardly find a better example of someone doing just that, metaphorically and truly, hiking up and down the alps, than Nicolas.

Over the last few years he dropped by Montréal a number of times, for various collaborations with academic researchers in town or the odd panel appearance. He’d drop me an email and we’d grab a coffee or a drink. Illuminating conversations always emerged from spending time with him. Although, I never did manage to read his books as fast as he wrote them. It’s a huge understatement to say he will be missed, and if there’s anything like a unifying field of research that draws a line around everything you read here, that field is much poorer now. I encourage you to read Julian’s touching tribute, as well as the many others on this memorial site.

A (very) preliminary theory of futuring

Paul Graham Raven proposes a preliminary theory of futuring, suggesting that viewing futures as narratives allows for meaningful comparisons based on the media and narrative strategies used. He introduces a “2x2 matrix which has, for reasons fair and foul alike, become a cliché of futures work” to analyse different approaches to futuring, placed along the axes of objective vs subjective perspectives, and macro vs micro scales. Paul shows that all forms of futures narratives, including experiential futures, design fictions, or movies, can incorporate various narrative modes, enhancing their ability to depict potential futures.

Although it might at first glance feel a bit too specific to futures practices if you don’t work in the field, consider any vision of the future (a political vision, scenarios for the climate crisis, a strategic plan, etc.) and his framework might bring a useful perspective.

Raven mentions that “one medium is thus capable of ranging all across the map.” This reminded me of John V Willshire’s Zenko mapping, which I revisited recently through his Do The Next Right Thing talk. Using these maps, the path circulates horizontally and vertically, following a process of discovery and documenting. I could easily see some version of this where a movie or novel is mapped in the same fashion on Paul’s matrix.

All modes of futuring produce things that can be understood as narratives—not just experiential and narrative forms, but also foresight reports and projected-profit graphs and architectural maquettes and consumer electronics advertisements, all of which, knowingly or not, manifest futurity. […]

The voice of reportage journalism, which purport to portray events ‘as they really happened’. Though this claim is often made sincerely, the scare quotes emphasise that this objectivity is inevitably false. […]

The most “narrative” form of futuring has a variety of modal tricks in its toolbox. Other media are more restricted in their range of modes and affordances, but can access advantages and capacities beyond those of text.

The decade of discontent

Joan Westenberg explores the growing discontent in society, driven by economic inequality and the disconnect between the elite and the general populace. As technology and globalization’s promises have largely failed to materialise for many, a significant divide has emerged, leading to resentment and a sense of injustice among the masses. The younger generation, increasingly aware of urgent social and environmental issues, is calling for change, yet feels thwarted by the complacency of those in power. She warns that if the status quo persists, we may witness a powerful backlash against the elites, potentially igniting revolutionary movements and a reordering of societal structures.

I go back and forth on the level of bleakness to expect / discuss / consider. Olivier Niquet said [fr] that he’d “be surprised if, collectively, 2025 is good, but individually it might be!” Which I might amend to “I’d be surprised if, collectively, 2025 is good, but in some places and by some metrics it might be!” Doesn’t have the same zing but I think that’s where we’re at.

Westenberg’s piece had me wondering if (one of) the new political divide(s) is between “we can build something new” and “let’s go back to before”? The latter being impossible but the easiest to imagine and the former not necessarily being the traditional left, as it’s also often part of the elites and not particularly progressive regarding the climate crisis, not in actual actions anyway. Put another way: “faster existential action centered on the planet vs going back in time” replacing the old “social progress vs social conservatism“?

The effects of climate change are already being felt around the world. Extreme weather events, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and droughts have become more frequent and severe, causing widespread devastation and displacement. The loss of biodiversity, the melting of polar ice caps, and the rising sea levels are no longer distant threats but observable realities. And all we get in response are missed opportunities, half-measures, and broken promises. […]

The trajectory set by current global dynamics points towards a period of seismic upheaval that could irrevocably alter the social order. The looming years will be a time of change, marked by dramatic confrontations between the masses and the elite, particularly in technology, economics, and environmental policy. […]

The potential for large-scale upheaval and the reordering of societal structures is significant. We are already witnessing the dismantling of long-standing institutions and the rise of new paradigms.

For more hopeful takes → An interview with Ada Palmer, A History of Saving the World. Can’t remember a specific quote, but Palmer is brilliant and I loved listening to this discussion just before the holidays. Or how about looking at The Power of Beautiful Solutions?

Our relational futures with AI

This article by Dylan Hendricks at the IFTF discusses their concept of “relational computing,” proposing that AI entities will become integral to our lives, fostering various relationships similar to those we have with people. Rather than fearing an AI takeover, we should prepare for a future filled with intelligent bots that will assist us in achieving our goals, making clarity of purpose more essential than technical skills. He also suggests that as these AI interactions evolve, we may, for a time, prefer signing agreements in-person for important matters, reflecting a cautious approach to synthetic relationships.

Weird framing that came to mind reading the piece; synthetic “intelligences” will be somewhat like if there was a second population on the planet, like aliens dropped down and just started living alongside us.

But many will have faces, and voices, and we will speak with them like they’re intelligent. Some will be photorealistic, beautiful, and impossibly charming. Others will be magical cartoonish beings summoned from children’s imaginations. Some will just look exactly like you, regardless of whether you want them to or not. […]

We will think of them less like complicated machines, and more like an expanded set of relationships that we’re continuously cultivating, managing, and shaping to translate the ideas in our heads into actions in the world.

§ Did OpenAI just solve abstract reasoning? A bit more advanced tech talk then usual, this one by Melanie Mitchell is worth a read, looking at the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC), OpenAI’s o3, inference, compute, and more.

§ Had a fun chat with ComCODE’s Sean Mann this week and he mentioned kind and wicked learning environments, a concept well explained in this video he sent me.

Futures, Fictions & Fabulations

• Do yourself a favour and check out some of Nicolas Nova’s writing. “Using ethnographic approaches, Nicolas investigates everyday cultures to tell stories, and employs design approaches such as Design Fiction to explore the implications of such mutations.”
• Foresight Timeline. “Navigating the cultural, political, and consumer shifts shaping tomorrow's world.”
• Symposium 2025 — Indigenous Futures Research Centre. “Will feature meaningful discussions centred around Indigenous perspectives, methodologies, and research practices that actively engage Indigenous knowledge systems and communities.”

Algorithms, Automations & Augmentations

• DeepSeek-V3: How a Chinese AI startup outpaces tech giants in cost and performance. “The model was trained on an extensive dataset of 14.8 trillion high-quality tokens over approximately 2.788 million GPU hours on Nvidia H800 GPUs. This training process was completed at a total cost of around $5.57 million, a fraction of the expenses incurred by its counterparts. For instance, OpenAI's GPT-4o reportedly required over $100 million for training.”
• OpenAI is losing money on its pricey ChatGPT Pro plan “because people are using it more than the company expected. ‘I personally chose the price,’ Altman wrote in a series of posts on X, ‘and thought we would make some money.’”
• Mozilla’s Common Voice. “Most of the data used by large companies isn’t available to the majority of people. We think that stifles innovation. So we’ve launched Common Voice, a project to help make voice recognition open and accessible to everyone.”

Built, Biosphere & Breakthroughs

• Dutch suburb where residents must grow food on at least half of their property. “In the suburb of Oosterwold, a living experiment in urban agriculture, the 5,000 inhabitants find different creative ways to fulfil the unique stipulation”
• The Augmented City. “Augmented reality (AR) is poised to reshape cities in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago. This report, The Augmented City, by 2023 Urban Tech Fellow Greg Lindsay, examines both the exciting potential and the grave challenges posed by the integration of AR into urban life.”
• Congestion pricing tracker. Compares traffic data before and after congestion pricing began on January 5th, 2025.

Asides

• 86 stories of progress from 2024. “Multiple countries declared victory over age-old afflictions like malaria, leprosy and trachoma, the global campaign against cervical cancer reached a turning point, with widespread HPV vaccination putting humanity on track to eliminate a cancer for the first time, and in places like Gaza and Sudan, health workers achieved the near-impossible, vaccinating millions.”
• biocubes: an inventory of biomass and technomass. The creators takes us step by step on a visual review of the incredible scale of each type of biomass and then the insane amount of “technomass” we’ve created. (Via Kottke.)
• The Honorable Parts.. “Payne will apparently return to the same factory dozens of times, waiting for the moment when a production run lines up just right, or the material being processed is just the right color, or — I don’t know — his subject finally lifts their hand in a particularly elegant way. Payne is an artist, and his art documents, explains, and valorizes manufacturing, fabrication, and maintenance work.”