Think like a commoner ⊗ Governing unthinkable futures ⊗ Why we need new future archetypes

I’m not on vacation yet, but Sentiers is. Back August 17th. In the mean time, this one is a largely positive set of featured articles, giving you some good reading for the summer. Also, a reminder that there were another couple of those “think them through during your vacation” pieces in No.363, linked below.

Think like a commoner

One challenge writing a weekly curated newsletter is that I mostly end up sharing things that are new, new-to-me, or a change in something already covered. Hence more futures pieces when I was earlier in my discovery of futures and foresight, and a lot of AI now because it’s so fast-moving. The commons, as much as I love the concept, is not a new or fast-moving field. If I dug deeper, I could find a lot of new-to-me things, and if I followed it closely there would be a number of angles to cover. I’m doing neither, so I don’t share articles on the topic all that often.

All of that to share a bit of the process, but mostly to say that I think it’s a very rich history and possibility space, but I don’t talk about it often enough. This interview with David Bollier about the second edition of his book Think Like a Commoner, is in two parts. First a series of excerpts, and then the Q&A itself. Both are worth your time, but if you want to breeze through, the excerpts provide an excellent overview of the concept and, perhaps more importantly, show the great variety of things we can think of as commons.

The book itself explores how commons are diverse systems of shared resources and social practices that foster cooperation and community stewardship, offering practical alternatives to capitalist enclosure and individualism. Commons exist at many levels—from traditional natural resources to digital networks and urban public spaces—and rely on collective rules and mutual care to prevent overexploitation. Bollier highlights how enclosures, historically and today, privatise shared wealth for capitalist gain, while commons movements create parallel economies that challenge market and state dominance. By recognising commons as relational and social organisms rather than mere resources, Bollier emphasises their potential to nurture more humane, fair, and sustainable ways of living.

In the political dimensions of Solarpunk, shared in No.363, ADH wrote that “Solarpunk could be the philosophy of those who fill in the gaps, the aesthetic of the assemblies that coalesce where government fails to show up.” The commons, in practice if not in name, were there before capitalism, but they are rising again, and can/should also play a roll in filling those gaps.

These movements — for degrowth, the social solidarity economy, cooperatives, transition towns, agroecology, relocalization, peer production, alternative currencies, racial justice, decolonization, Indigenous cultures, the Wellbeing Economy movement, and many others — are in effect creating a new type of “parallel polis,” one that will eventually force a reckoning with the market/state leviathan. This is no ideological pipe dream. It is a piecemeal revolution of real, functional alternatives being built by savvy, pragmatic innovators working largely beyond the gaze of mainstream institutions. […]

I came to understand that the commons was not simply an ideological or notional idea. There were lots of people who were doing “commoning” through social practices without names — the way indigenous peoples, open source communities or academic knowledge communities do, to take only a few examples. […]

This is a recurrent phenomena of how capitalism works. It likes to embrace the idea of a sharing economy, which they touted 10 years ago, but in fact, it was a micro-rental economy for individuals. So, there’s a struggle going on here between collective affirmations of identity, aspiration, meeting needs, and individual market versions of that. […]

The range of enclosures of nature is vast and expanding. They extend from the global (the atmosphere, the oceans, outer space) to the regional (groundwater, aquifers, fisheries, forests) to the local (native foods, hometown traditions, independent businesses). Enclosures also include living things (cell lines, genes, genetically engineered mammals) and infinitesimally small things (microorganisms, synthetic substances, or nanomatter).

Governing unthinkable futures

During and after Future Days 2025, the talk that kept popping up in my feeds was Governing unthinkable futures by Simon Höher. After reading Beyond the binary and sharing it in No.358, I started understanding why. Now that I’ve watched the talk on Youtube. I know why. Lots of insights, gorgeous slides, great projects (from himself and others at Dark Matter Labs), unusual and solid thinking.

Höher’s talk explores why radical futures might be “unthinkable” before they emerge, using Haiti’s first black monarchy as an example of a future no one could have anticipated. He argues that truly transformative futures exist outside our current frames of reference, beyond the binary thinking (from/to, desirable/undesirable) that typically structures futuring work.

He proposes five entry points for engaging with unthinkable futures: developing new sensing mechanisms to make the invisible visible (like Trees AI that quantifies trees’ hidden benefits); hosting “benevolent parasites,” creating infrastructures for emergence; creating coordination systems that allow autonomous actors to align toward shared goals while respecting diverse priorities; moving from “silver bullet” solutions to portfolio approaches that embrace complexity and interdependencies; and fostering systemic learning that balances variation (newness) with retention (stability). He argues that we must act to increase possibilities rather than plan fixed outcomes, creating conditions for unimagined futures to emerge through collective action and community engagement.

So if you really treat portfolios as something that we want to work with, we have to unlock and really leverage the computational capacity that is in the ecosystem rather than us trying to compute for it. We have to leverage the entire system to self-govern rather than have a master plan. So this kind of systemic or third- second-generation portfolios are basically looking like a network. It's not multiples; it's multiplicities. […]

What is the new that we consider relevant? What is the old that we consider safe? Um, that we consider valuable to save? And how do we make that selection in our democratic institutions, in our cities, in our lives, in our organizations? When do we know when to select the new? […]

If you don’t know where the future is, open up the option space. Make things possible. Build the infrastructure for the future to emerge, for the parasites to sit in your frames. Feed them. See where it goes.

Why we need new future archetypes

This is part one of two by N O R M A L S, explaining why we need new future archetypes. The article argues that many current visions of the future are repetitive and rely on familiar tropes, which limits creativity and usefulness. The authors propose the concept of New Future Archetypes (NFAs) as immersive, emotionally resonant frameworks to explore alternative futures more imaginatively and strategically. NFAs would serve as dynamic tools that help individuals and organisations challenge assumptions, generate innovative ideas, and engage deeply with possible futures. Connecting these archetypes to real challenges, they could become powerful aids for shaping meaningful and actionable futures. I’m not sure I see exactly what that looks like—there’s a part two, after all. But even just the diagnosis of futures scenarios being too repetitive and their recommendation of changing that, is worth pondering.

In contrast, whenever we aim to shape something new—be it a strategy, a product, a social vision, or a policy—new futures become essential. Not because novelty is a virtue in itself, but because thinking creatively about what could be is a way to break out of inherited constraints. It’s the difference between preparing for what might happen and preparing to make something happen. […]

Uncertainty, then, is not a regrettable gap to be controlled through prediction, but quite the opposite: a force that tickles existing power structures. The future’s not set; make it your own. […]

The diversity of futures we hold shapes our capacity to respond to complex and shifting realities. And that’s why updating and expanding this reservoir isn’t just useful—it’s essential.

§ Prompting is managing. I love Venkatesh Rao’s angle here about supposed cognitive decline related to AI use. Using LLMs needs to be compared to managing, not to thinking on one’s own. “As long as models write like competent interns, the mental load they lift—and the blind spots they introduce—match classic management psychology, not cognitive decline.”

Futures, Fictions & Fabulations

• From futurephobia to futuretopia: What Brazilian youths reveal about imagining tomorrow. “Far from offering ready-made answers or linear forecasts, the study proposes listening, disruption, and symbolic reconstruction. It is grounded in the premise that imagination is a human right and a collective capability, systematically denied to younger generations, especially in contexts marked by inequality, urgency, and instability.”
• Inviting a decolonial praxis for future imaginaries of nature: Introducing the Entangled Time Tree. “The practice of envisioning the future has deep roots in the past. Across the continent of Africa, there are traditions of oral storytelling, griots, folklore, and indigenous speculation that offer guidance on how to live in the present and orient towards better futures. Whilst these traditions can act as navigational compasses, they are not prevalent in conventional futuring methodologies.”

Algorithms, Automations & Augmentations

• Aaron Bastani interviews Karen Hao about her new book. Bastani kind of got on my nerves with his Brit/Euro inferiority complex v the US, but Hao was brilliant, as ever. Very much worth your time. “This week’s guest has been both a worker in, and reporter on the tech industry and is uniquely poised to present a nuanced and informed analysis of this rapidly expanding industry. In her new book, Empire of AI, Karen Hao debunks myths that surround AI and exposes us to the full breadth of this global industry, from it’s cult leader-like CEOs to the workers that power the technology.”
• Computing, life, and intelligence. Sometimes you’ll think he made an improbable connection soaked in Koolaid, but often times you might also wonder if he’s on the road to a Nobel. Fascinating talk either way. “In this lecture, Agüera y Arcas will describe how symbiosis explains both life’s origins and its increasing complexity. He’ll also draw connections to social intelligence theories, which suggest that similar symbioses have powered intelligence explosions in humanity’s lineage and those of other big-brained species. Finally, he’ll argue that both modern human intelligence and AI are best understood through this symbiotic lens.”
• AI Models and parents don’t understand ‘Let Him Cook’. “LLMs are not familiar with ‘ate that up,’ ‘secure the bag,’ and ‘sigma,’ showing that training data is not yet updated to Gen Alpha terminology.”

Built, Biosphere & Breakthroughs

• Shanghai: robots walk historic Shikumen building complex. “Engineers used 3D scanning, self-guided drilling robots, thousands of feet of conveyor belts to haul away dirt and debris, and AI that could distinguish between soil structures. The kicker was the 432 tiny hydraulic ‘walking’ robots that suspended the entire city block above them as they clocked a scampering pace of about three ten-thousandths of a mile per hour – or about 33 feet (10 meters) per day.”
• This breakthrough sponge could change how the world gets clean water. “A team of scientists has developed a groundbreaking sponge-like aerogel that can turn seawater into clean drinking water using only sunlight.”
• Introducing The Maintainers Study Guide: a guide to grounding your practice in principles of maintenance, repair, and care. “This Study Guide reflects nearly a decade of work across The Maintainers’ conference era, The Maintainers Movement Fellowships, network partnerships, network-wide research, global maintenance practices, and events we’ve hosted.”

Asides

• The wild within the walls. “From antiquity to modern times, Rome has been entangled with the wild animals who creep, slither, scurry, and nest among its pillars and palaces.”
• Why Canada is riddled with wildfires that burn year-round. “When the snow melted in early May, these smouldering fires, often called ‘zombie’ fires, came to life again and began to feed on dry trees and brush. The plumes of smoke north of Fort Nelson became a conflagration of 700 sq km (270 sq miles). ”
• The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins. “When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not everyone was convinced – and the bitter argument that followed has consumed the lives of scholars ever since”
• Exceptionally, I didn’t have to work very hard for this section, I simply picked from many other links in Jodi Ettenberg’s The Curious About Everything Newsletter #52.