A friend who was at HackIT 2026 in Firenze sent me a photograph of a printed handout. Two pages, a bit creased, a faint smear of something on the second one. It was the material for a workshop called Imagining collectivity under oppression, run on the Friday afternoon in Sala M by two people going by Alecs and webbie. …
As AI systems gallop into the mainstream, humanity is left staggering somewhere behind, still deciding whether it is riding a horse or being trampled by one. The outcomes are not fixed. But the trajectories are becoming harder to ignore. We explored some speculative futures within the box, Human-AI symbiosis, Turbulent…
It is fashionable to believe that technological progress is inevitable, and that artificial intelligence will, barring catastrophe, continue its relentless march forward. But there is a future, quietly lurking just beyond the smug grins of Silicon Valley keynote speeches, where AI does not progress much further at all.…
Elena remembered when the world still made some sort of sense. Not much, admittedly, it had always teetered somewhere between absurd and unbearable, but at least back then, she could lie to herself about having a job, a future, or a say in how things turned out. Now, her morning routine involved checking two things: wh…
Elijah never quite knew how to answer the question, “So, what do you do?” He could say AI liaison, but that sounded pompous and vaguely sinister. He could say digital compliance coordinator, but even his mother snorted at that one. In truth, he spent most of his days arguing with regulatory software about whether the h…
Pau was late, again, thanks to the AI-run tram that insisted on pausing for precisely 12.4 seconds at each station “for optimal urban harmony.” “Urban harmony my arse,” he muttered, stepping out into Barcelona’s midday sun, which was now neatly moderated by micro-reflective paint and smart algae rooftops. Somewhere, a …
Premise: Functional by design By 2040, BRICS+ emerges as the world’s most effective climate alliance, not through luck, but through shrewd strategy, sovereign solidarity, and an uncanny ability to turn adversity into opportunity. What begins as a pushback against western hypocrisy evolves into a multipolar green order,…
Premise: Dysfunctional by design By 2035, BRICS+ doesn’t collapse under its own contradictions, nor does it morph into a cohesive challenger to the G7. Instead, it stumbles into superpower status by a series of messy accidents, economic disasters, and geopolitical farces. Less deliberate empire, more Frankenstein with …
The BRICS alliance began life as something between a Goldman Sachs marketing gimmick and a drunken bet among emerging market traders. “I’ll wager you a case of champagne these four economies will dominate by 2050!” Fast-forward two decades, and what started as an investment banker’s acronym has somehow morphed into a g…
The received wisdom, trotted out at Davos panels, EU Commission summits, and in the more sentimental columns of the Financial Times, is that Europe, having learned its lessons from two world wars, has spent the past eight decades basking in a glow of enlightened tranquillity. No more trenches, no more blitzes. Just a p…
Scenario Planning, 2013. Observable Misery, 2022. Obliviousness and congruence Let’s start with the obvious: all scenario planning is fantasy. Dressed up, data-driven fantasy, but fantasy nonetheless. No crystal balls involved, just a lot of graphs, jargon, and people nodding solemnly in conference rooms. And what most…