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 understand a future in which AI is as normal, ordinary, and everyday as jogging and luggage with wheels.
It is a prototyping-based research program that explores the potential of artificial intelligence in the context of everyday life. The focus is on rapid ideation and prototyping, creating small, functional artifacts that help ground possibilities in materiality and interaction. The prototypes are designed to be playful windows into possible future opportunities, exhibiting characteristics and qualities of a possible future.
This Studio is relevant to you if your work addresses AI and the systemic, technical, and institutional challenges it introduces. You want your impact to scale. To do so, you must move through culture. Near Future Laboratory specializes in crafting memetic artifacts and experiential futures that make complex ideas legible, tangible, and viral. This partnership would help your ideas circulate, not just exist on paper or as talking points.
Sponsoring this Research Studio adds a new, complementary layer to the technological or policy work you already do: speculative design, narrative prototyping, and media artifacts. This gives you a memetic non-traditional comms arm that helps reach audiences not via summaries, but via symbols, feelings, and embodied scenarios.
We have a proven methodology for creating artifacts that resonate with people, making complex ideas accessible and engaging. Many teams and organizations employ the techniques developed here and described in our Manual of Design Fiction and other materials. These techniques are widely cited in the research literature and have been used by teams at Google, Microsoft, Meta, and many others to explore the implications of AI in their work. The artifacts we create are not just theoretical concepts, but tangible objects that can be experienced and interacted with, making them powerful tools for understanding and engaging with the future of AI.
The AI+DF Research Studio strengthens an ethos of prototyping, exploration, and experimentation. This ethos is absolutely essential for the vanguard we stand at. We need to explore, experiment, and prototype our way into this new territory, and the AI+DF Research Studio is a key part of that process.
I’ve been running an independent AI futures speculative design research program for a couple of months now.
The objective is to explore the potential of artificial intelligence in the context of quotidian contexts — everyday life and its contingent interfaces with the pursuit of our hopes, contending with our fears, aspiring to our dreams, and avoiding the things we dread.
The focus is on rapid ideation and prototyping. Rather than spending months or years on a single project, the goal is to create a series of small, functional prototypes that help ground possibilities in materiality and interaction. Think of it like a “functional futures” approach, where the prototypes are not just concepts but actual working artifacts that can be used and experienced.
The prototypes are designed to be playful windows into possible future opportunities. They are meant to be generative and thought-provoking. Like an exhibition of found artifacts from a near future, they are not just about the technology itself, but about the interactions, services, and experiences that AI technology can enable. And very much like Designed Fictions, these prototypes exhibit characteristics and qualities of a possible future. As such, they also represent cultural, social, economic, policy and governance qualities of a possible future.
In true Design Fiction style, there is the prototype of the artifact itself, but also the worldbuilding material that surrounds it.
Artifacts that compliment the functional speculative prototypes include such things as:
Clippings from newspapers. Magazine articles. Tourists guides. Social media posts. Receipts. The contents of a found wallet. Movie tickets. Advertisements from streetware brands. Paperback self-help books. Podcast episodes. Oracular card games. Etcetera.
The artifacts are memetic objects that can be shared, propogated, dissiminated, and discussed. They serve as elements full of meanings, and openings for conversations about an inhabited near future world. They help teams and organizations imagine into possibilities in a rich and textured way. Each artifact tells stories about life lived in an AI world. From the meta to the grounded: culture, beliefs, rituals, religion, policy, news, music, museums, leisure, sports, jobs, furniture, friends, coffee shop, breakfast, insomnia, agentic addiction therapies
Because we make tangible artifacts and represent outcomes that can be experienced, felt, touched, and used, the program offers a unique perspective on the future and the future of an AI world. This is why Near Future Laboratory is actually a laboratory — not just a place for ideas on their own, but ideas put into practice, into the world, and into the hands of people like you understand the value of ideas you can experience.
Let’s discuss how we can work together to explore the potential of artificial intelligence in the context of everyday life. If you’re interested in collaborating, prototyping, or just want to chat about the possibilities, please get in touch.
We want to address systemic, technical, and institutional challenges introduced by AI. But for our impact to scale, it must also move through culture not just a press release, blog post, or policy position paper. Near Future Laboratory specializes in crafting memetic artifacts and experiential futures that make complex ideas legible, tangible, and viral.
Expanding ‘AI Comms’ ModalityGoing beyond traditional communications is vital in this peculiar moment in which memetics and virality are patterns for the circulation of ideas. A collaboration with NFL adds a new, complementary layer: speculative design, narrative prototyping, and media artifacts. This offers a kind of non-traditional comms facility that matches ambitions of reaching broader audiences not via summaries, white papers, research reports, press conferences and so forth, but through symbols, feelings, emotion, and embodied scenarios.
A Prototyping EthosWe believe in building things, not just theorizing.
Less yammering; more hammering is what I have been saying for ages.
Near Future Laboratory brings a proven methodology of making futures real through design, fiction, and engineering.
Experimentation is key to exploring new terrains. Doing so makes it easier to demonstrate, test, and share what it could feel like to inhabit an AI world.
It also allows one to convey that normatively: what is a pluralistic, democratic AI future versus a dystopian, authoritarian, existentially failed one that ignores any notion of human thriving?
How do we make the former feel more real than the latter? How do we make it feel like something we want to inhabit, rather than something we fear?
Narrative Infrastructure as Strategic InfrastructureAI governance isn’t just about technical alignment. It’s about who tells the story of the future, and how that story gets adopted.
Near Future Laboratory brings narrative tools that help shape perception, not just policy. A partnership like this provides a long game strategy: cultural legitimacy and institutional imagination.
Enabling Rapid, Low-Risk ExperimentationNear Future Laboratory has always operated in an agile, studio-like way, developing early prototypes, microsites, comms tools, and artifacts without requiring deep organizational overhaul. This lets us experiment at the edges, pilot new modes, and evaluate impact.
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