Making things to augment or even surpass the discussion of ideas themselves without instantiating the ideas in material — without bringing them into the world of objects — is the way we combine the Engineer and the PhD in History of Consciousness. It’s the way we make things that matter, that have a kind of agency in the world, that can be used to think with and through. It’s the way we make things that are more than just ideas, but ideas that are made manifest in the world.

While we're in the present, dribbling over our shiny new iWhatevers and being amazed that an espresso maker can shit out coffee just from seeing a picture of a bean, Julian Bleecker and his fellow technologists are busy fucking around in the near future. He’s co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory. What’s that? Well, it’s a place where provocative concepts and ideas are materialized into non-profit conversation pieces.