Join me at the LA Design Festival for a hands-on introduction to futuring through Design Fiction. In this compact workshop, you'll explore how to prototype possible futures using artifacts rather than predictions. We’ll step beyond traditional storytelling to create tangible glimpses into what could be—using props, products, and everyday ephemera from worlds just around the corner. Come and stretch your imagination with us as we explore the near future in a playful, practical way. We'll be working in small groups on guided, hands-on exercises designed to spark imagination and make futures feel real. Prizes from the Future for the most imaginative and creative futures will be awarded at the end of the workshop!

Ghostwriter is a speculative functional prototype that is meant to explore the possibilities of a more collaborative and conversational interaction with AI. It is not a product, but rather a design fiction that imagines how we might work — or in this case, write — with AI in the near future. This is a kidn of UX mode that I'm calling Streaming Completion that felt quite like a different kind of interaction with a collaborating intelligence: rather than asking it stuff, it waits for you to pause for awhile and then offers some completion suggestions. A bit like traditional autocomplete but entire sentences or even more can be configured.

I wanted to see what this would feel like, especially with the ability to consume context from a corpus my own documents, blog posts, and other writing. The idea is that the AI can suggest completions that are relevant to my own work, which might help me to think about what I'm working...

A conversation with Steve Fisher that gets into my personal history with futures, design, science-fiction, engineering and how all of that led to instantiating design fiction as a practice. We talk about the artifacts of imagination, how we can use design fiction to think about the future, and how we can create a more imaginative future.

We get into the importance of imagination as an evolutionary advantage and how we can exercise our imaginative muscles to navigate the rapidly changing world we live in. I also share some early days experiences with technology, building my first computer and why that was so important to me. It was a Xerox 820 — a popular single board computer that you could find at amateur radio fairs and the like.

You'd have to find a case, get a power supply, all the cables and find a monitor and disk drive (8-inch floppy drive!) to make it work. It was fun to build and finally...

In my book ‘It's time to imagine harder’, my hypothesis was that bringing the creative consciousness back to work is a clear path to unlocking the unexpected and unanticipated, the unseen. The creative consciousness - which has a proclivity or impulse to operate comfortably even enthusiastically with the unknown — can breath in the warm oceans of ambiguity.
The creative consciouness ambles around in the new territories and terrains for which the old ways of knowing and being do not fit — they are not big enough to make sense of the territory. They are old. The new is new.
The creative consciousness is the thing that fosters the accidental discoveries, and that fosters unintended breakthroughs that challenge conventional boundaries. The creative consciousness is a catalyst for organic evolution within any effort for which uncertainty looms large.
When we embrace uncertainty, we open that new terrain, providing avenues for originality that rigid idation frameworks often obscure.
This episode of the podcast gets into...

Wow. That felt really alive.
Elysia, Emily, Rahmin and I hosted a workshop last Friday.
It was one of several workshops at San Francisco Design Week.
The context was to consider the obvious but easily repressed fact: we are all aging.
Every day.
Is longevity about living longer? About finding the way to extend biological life?
Suppose it is not about length of life so much as fullness of purpose?
What happens if we make aging about longevity rather than life extension?
How does the semantic shift adjust the way we design for more purposeful lives?
Can we find the way to think of aging as a continuing path towards a sense of purpose and value?

The languages and apparatuses for sense-making we have today are insufficient for the territory we are entering with AI.

When those who conjured AI into existence willingly express their bewilderment at the ‘how’ of the machinic contrivances they created, we are truly at the edges of a new territory; a new land where ways of being and ways of knowing feel different.

Our existing notions of self, purpose, value, ways of knowing and ways of being are insufficient for the task of making sense of this new terrain.

AI stands not as a tool, but as the entry point to this new territory. Those who probe the boundaries and edges of this new territory are the vanguard of sense-making. We need to explore, experiment and prototype our way in order to make it make sense.

The Artificial Intelligence Designed Fictions Research Studio is a sense-making lab, configured to help introduce new idioms, patterns, rituals, language and embodiments that help us...

Ghostwriter TUI is a speculative prototype for a collaborative writing experience that uses AI to suggest next sentences or paragraphs. This is an test of the UX mechanic in a terminal-based interface. This post explores the mechanics of this TUI interface and its potential for low-friction writing experiences.

Vibewriter and Ghostwriter are part of my Artificial Intelligence & Designed Fictions Research Studio. This research program is open to discuss commercial support, corporate or organizational sponsors, and incubation opportunities.

Our thesis is that speculative prototyping in an expansive and experimental fashion is the way to discover new opportunities for this next phase of human consciousness. We will explore new kinds of interactions, services, artifacts, and objects as if we are entering a new territory for which the old modalities and assumptions are like ancient epistemologies and ontologies ill-suited for this new land.

First things first: this is a ‘less yammering, more hammering’ post where I emphasize the value of speculative prototyping to augment the thinking. You know..theory + practice. I say that because it contains a study in using AI in a creative writing context. I do this because, well — I can't help wonder about the possibilities of what could be and I'm convinced that the best way to explore the possibilities is to prototype and experiment with the tools at hand. And that also may mean doing some tool making, too. That is part of the prototyping. You build new tools to understand the newness of the what-could-be. Or, you know — what could become. Now, I deliver this caveat to you because some people are going to read this and think that I am advocating for AI to write stories. I am not. I am not saying that AI should write...

​Futurespaces and Near Future Laboratory bring you SideShow on June 12th, 2025 at 6:00 PM at the Proper Hotel in Santa Monica, CA.

​One night. A room full of artists, designers, filmmakers, and creative people sharing the work they’re making outside the brief. Sound experiments. Illegible interfaces. Broken narratives. Tools bent into new shapes. Ideas with no client, no deadline, no plan—just the need to try something no one asked for. A rare glimpse into experimental ventures headed straight into unknown territory.

​Sideshow is a space for work that’s personal, unruly, and unfinished—kept alive in spite of economic pressure and the pull of everything more urgent. It’s a chance to share what’s taking shape, spark something new, and help each other keep going. Not by scaling up. Just by showing up. To keep alive the side that keeps us going.

Stop using ChatGPT. I made a better tool for writers. It's speculative, and futuristic — but it's here now and it works!

It’s called Vibewriter.

It's like trading fours with your muse to get your writers brain 🧠 in flow.

It’s a functional software prototype that anticipates new modes of interaction, interface, and engagement with AI. It’s not just about asking questions and getting answers. It’s about creating a communal and collaborative interaction and engagement that is more like call and response, or a dance with your collaborative writing partner — which just happens to be AI 🤖.

The artist who plays with the future, for whom the future is a medium and material, and casts a dark pall over what could be, is playing into the hands of the very forces that are at work to make the world a less habitable place. It is antagonistic. It is like taking the bait of the bully who is trying to pick a fight because they only know how to fight.

The trouble with staying with the trouble when the future is in trouble is that those responsible or who can possibly take responsibility for imagining a more habitable future are doing less of it or, even worse, are imagining a future that is antagonistic to the very forces that are at work to make the world a less habitable place. It is like taking the bait of the bully who is trying to pick a fight because they only know how to fight.

We are in the midst of a longevity revolution. This isn’t just about longer lifespans; it’s about living those years more fully. The number of people over 80 globally is projected to triple between 2020 and 2050. As this population expands, so does the diversity of their preferences, interests, passions, and ambitions. They are not a monolithic group defined solely by age, but a vibrant tapestry of individuals.

A workshop at SF Design Week 2025 in collaboration with my good friends at AGE OF_.

Yesterday was the first session of General Seminar Season 06, Episode 05. Good fun. Great group. We made some artifacts from an agentic future, and I put some up in the Dispatches from the Near Future section of the site, including this one, Faraday's Cage: A Bar and Grill and Dré's Agentic & Digital Twin Decommissioning Service Kiosk

Imagining into the future through generative artifacts and design fiction is a way to explore the implications of agentic AI and digital twins in our lives. The value of doing this kind of work is to venture into these new and unfamiliar territories with a sense of both playfulness and practicality. The actions and activities can lead to new insights, prototypes, concept development, and even new business models.

This post showcases some of the artifacts created during General Seminar, including "Faraday's Cage: A Bar and Grill" and "Dré's Agentic & Digital Twin Decommissioning Service Kiosk."

We use diegetic prototypes as a kind of production design from the future. These are like objects that have fallen into our laps that implications of possibility — whether from the future, some adjacent now, or some other timeline. They could even be thought of as things that are contemporary, but from a different perspective, culture, or context. They are not predictions, but rather invitations to think about the future in a different way.

The OMATA One is an exemplar of a hybrid mode of futuring — one that moves quickly from speculation to making to commercial product. It started with a simple idea: to create a cycling computer that was easy to use, accurate, and beautiful. I wanted to feel what it was like to create a product that effervesced the analog-mechanical feel of what it is to ride a bicycle, but did not require a smartphone, nor was over-indexed on the visual semantics of the already overclocked digital world.

TL;DR:

Less yammering. More hammering.

If there’s one thing getting in the way of Imagining better futures, it’s not capitalism or collapse — it’s us. The self-proclaimed futurists. The critics of self-proclaimed futurists. The endless theorizing, posturing, and purity tests.

Let’s collaborate more. Make more. Imagine harder.

The hustle may stink, but most of us are in this because we sense something worth doing — something that might help. If it gets even one person to see “the future” differently and helps pay rent? That’s a win.

Thanks to @Silvio Lorusso for sparking this.

Strategy isn’t a plan. It’s a provocation. A story about a future you’re willing to bet on. It’s not prediction. It’s preparation. Slide decks don’t move people. Artifacts do. Prototypes do. Narratives that you can see, touch, and test do.

When I try to make sense of an idea I have, one that is liminal and something I felt more than I could articulate, I make a prototype, a piece of software that feels plausible, that functions, yet is mostly here to give some structure to an thought, a feeling, an instinct.

I make a prototype to help me think, to help me see into an idea, to help me make sense.

We often think of strategy as something cold, analytical, spreadsheet-driven. But more and more, I’m convinced that strategy is fundamentally a form of fiction—a way of telling a story about the future, then organizing people and resources to make that story real.

It’s not just about goals or roadmaps or five-year plans. It’s about imagination.

Strategy asks: What kind of world are we trying to bring into being? And perhaps more importantly: How do we evoke a sense of that place such that we can obtain alignment from our stakeholders, our community, our audience? How do we tell a rich, evocative story that our people can feel into a possible near future?

Tobias and I wrote an essay for Michael Shamiyeh's edited compilation of essays and stories for the book 'Practices of Future Casting'. We got together on the horn to discuss the book, the event surrounding the book's creation, speculative writing/thinking/creating as a form of strategic foresight, and how important it is to have the book close to hand before you go on talking about the book, and the essays therein.

What if your career had a shadow version of you — always learning, always optimizing, always on?
Welcome to a world where Digital Twins aren’t just for jet engines and hospitals.
They’re becoming the proxy professionals of the AI era — a second self trained on your CV, your habits, your values.
They attend interviews. They negotiate gigs. They monitor your skills gaps and suggest micro-credentials. Maybe they even decide what you should be doing — and for whom.

There is an evolving shift in strategic thinking. Things are moving away from rigid, top-down approaches and moving towards embracing what we might call “vivid institutional imaginaries” as the new foundation of business and innovation strategy. This shift is well-supported by research that suggests that strategy isn’t simply about predicting the future but actively constructing it through discourse and storytelling, cf Stackelberg & McDowell (2015) Hardy and Thomas (2012). The use of tools like Design Fiction and speculative scenarios – as demonstrated by companies utilizing “future visions” internally (Michaud, 2023) – allows organizations to explore potential outcomes, test assumptions, and even shape public perception cf Gonzatto et al., 2013. As Glaser (1994) argued, strategic imagination is crucial for navigating uncertainty. Furthermore, the concept of “strategy as discourse” emphasizes that narratives play a key role in establishing power dynamics and influencing organizational behavior cf...

Thinking about AI as a tool to increase efficiencies and productivity is a losing strategy for any organization that wants to thrive in the long term. Imagining into a near future beyond the next 6-18 months requires thinking about AI as a non-human intelligence that is not a tool, but something as of yet little understood. Using speculative design and design fiction techniques it is possible to explore the unexpected and unanticipated opportunities that will transform what value creation even is.

A salon-style discussion about the role of science fiction in shaping our future. Entrepreneurs are using science fiction as a strategy for decision-making and strategic thinking. What if we could use science fiction to create habitable worlds rather than agonizing over the other guys' futures?

Next week I'll be giving a talk to students and faculty at Princeton University's Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education. The talk is titled “Imagination in the era of AI” in which I will be talking about the relationship of Imagination and Innovation, and how the two are always productively entangled in the work I do at Near Future Laboratory.
My hypothesis in this context is that the intersection of Imagination and Innovation is not only essential for navigating the complexities of a rapidly evolving technological landscape but also serves as a catalyst for transformative solutions that address pressing global challenges.

A talk at USC's Iovine and Young Academy for their Master of Science in Integrated Design, Business and Technology program at a Future of Work workshop hosted by Yihyun Lim.
I shared how I used design fiction and speculative design to find a more expansive canvas to describe my company OMATA to prospective investors.

This discussion explores the concept of Design Fiction as a methodology for creating tangible and evocative prototypes of possible near futures to understand the consequences of decision-making. Julian Bleecker, who coined the term with Bruce Sterling, elaborates on his interdisciplinary approach combining engineering, design, and speculative storytelling. The conversation delves into the origins and practices of Design Fiction, its application in corporate settings, and its importance in nurturing imaginative thinking. Highlighting the value of imagination as a crucial skill, Bleecker emphasizes the need to encourage students and professionals alike to envision and create innovative futures through material culture, thereby making abstract futures concrete.

”Twenty years ago, here at South By Southwest, I was on a panel where the term “design fiction” was made public. Before Julian Bleecker invented and deployed that term, there were many things going on that resembled “design fiction.” But nobody knew “how to do design fiction.” The ideas and approaches were diffuse, they weren’t crystallised.” — Bruce Sterling

A photo of Nicolas Nova with Maywa Denki I took at SxSW 2012.

Episode 095 of the podcast is up! A coffee table conversation with futures guy, author, creative leader, and all-around good guy Phil Balagtas. We discuss his new book “Making Futures Work” and the challenges and triumphs of writing an all-encompassing book on futures practice, exploring the evolution of speculative design and the importance of imagination as a critical element in futures work.

There are curious opportunities for using Design Fiction in branding and marketing contexts to help companies explore possible futures through speculative storytelling and prototype-driven narratives. Unlike traditional advertising, which focuses on present-day products, Design Fiction immerses audiences in “what if” scenarios that engage, challenge, and open up conversations. Brands leveraging this approach can disrupt industry norms, refine long-term strategies, and align with shifting consumer values. By embracing speculative storytelling, companies can reimagine their role in the world and position themselves as cultural pioneers.

I recently had the pleasure of joining Radha Mistry on the Future Feelings podcast to discuss Imagination, world-building and designing more habitable futures. We explored the tensions between creativity and structure, and shared inspiring examples of imagination in action. A great discussion with Radha that I hope you'll enjoy.

"A Digital Tomorrow" is a design fiction video produced for Curious Rituals, a research project conducted in July-August 2012 by Nicolas Nova (The Near Future Laboratory / HEAD-Genève), Katherine Miyake, Nancy Kwon and Walton Chiu from the media design program.
This research project was about gestures, postures and digital rituals that typically emerged with the use of digital technologies (computers, mobile phones, sensors, robots, etc.): gestures such as recalibrating your smartphone doing an horizontal 8 sign with your hand, the swiping of wallet with RFID cards in public transports, etc.
The aim of the project was to envision the future of gestures and rituals based on:
1. A documentation of current digital gestures,
2. The making of design fiction films that speculate about their evolution “Curious Rituals” was produced as part of a research residency in the Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

A rememberance of Nicolas Nova, whose bewilderingly untimely passing has left a hole in the fabric of the internet-era collaborators who knew him. Nicolas was a gentle man in an era in which human interaction became less than gentle. He was one of my first and most consistent internet-era collaborators. I remember quite clearly where I was standing when I first received an email message from him — it was at the first house I lived in in Venice Beach. I had an office room in the front of the house and a stand-up desk. It was early in the morning, probably winter as I remember there being a kind of twilight outside. In reflection, at that time, email was still a bit special and to get an email of substance from a stranger was like getting a letter in the mail from an IRL human.