week 50 / 2025: ancient of days
Reading round-up: Auger disowns design-as-augury; a return to Turnton Docklands; a potted history of futurology; and an anarchist's analysis of utopian bureaucracy.
history
week 45 / 2025: ten theses on “the future”
The moment to change a mental model is the moment at which it becomes an obstacle to understanding rather than a scaffold for it.
week 41 / 2025: stuck in the middle with you
In which I channel my inner Inigo Montoya in an attempt to explain why talking about "technology" robs us of the sense of our own agency...
week 31 / 2025: churches of futurity
What can we learn about futures from thinking about them as if they were faiths or fandoms? Quite a lot, if you ask me...
worldbuilding from the shoulder: an interview with Bruce Sterling (part 2)
It's finally here! The keenly anticipated second part of the Worldbuilding Agency interview with pioneering cyperpunk ideologue turned design critic and tech-art curator, the one and only Bruno Argento...
deliberate oxymorons: an interview with Bruce Sterling (part 1)
In the first part of this two-part interview, OG cyberpunk Bruce Sterling discusses the pursuit of deliberate oxymorons as a creative strategy, worldbuilding in the context of history and futurity, Berlusconi on the moon, and much, much more.