Futur-ish

It's all just a little bit too much. With Tobias running headlong into a thesis submission in September it's time to take a summer break and come back even stronger.

Only Radha could find the glorious spectacle of space flight ‘meh.’ Luckily for Tobias, I write these blurbs. Artemis II went round the moon and back and only one year off plan. Is this the kick-off for a new space race?

If it is, it’s a very different flavour than the last one. Gone are the cultural politics preceding the ‘end of history.’ This race is all about who gets to set the terms of the coming cislunar economy that the world’s largest economies are setting their clocks to. 

Links:

• Great Britain households to be urged to use more power this summer as renewables soar, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/14/uk-households-power-renewables-soar
• France investigates suspected tampering with weather sensors after Polymarket bets, CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/23/europe/france-weather-sensor-polymarket-bet-intl-latam
• Waymo Has a Bike Lane Problem. Futurism: https://futurism.com/future-society/waymo-bike-lanes-traffic
• Maui County passes historic law to phase out thousands of vacation rentals, Hawai’i Public Radio: https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2025-12-16/maui-county-passes-historic-law-to-phase-out-thousands-of-vacation-rentals
• Artemis II mission was a triumph. Now comes the hard part, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0v119zp19o

If you expected four leading foresight professionals to come and deliver a grab-bag of incredible intel, you are sorely mistaken. Instead we’re joined by Dr. Bree Trevena and Charlie Warwick to talk about recent reflections on what it means to be a ‘good’ futurist in the time of systemic complexity, fracturing identities and AI. 

Links:

• Perspective A ‘Kill Switch’ Could Shutter Europe’s Access to US Tech. Here’s How. Tech Policy Press: https://www.techpolicy.press/washington-could-activate-a-kill-switch-to-terminate-european-access-to-us-tech-heres-how-it-could-work/ 
• UK bank bosses plan to set up Visa and Mastercard alternative amid Trump fears, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/16/uk-bank-bosses-plan-visa-mastercard-alternative
• Slight decrease in deaths on Dutch roads last year, NL Times: https://nltimes.nl/2025/04/17/slight-decrease-deaths-dutch-roads-last-year
• There Are No Cars in Wakanda, SPUR: https://www.spur.org/news/2020-02-20/there-are-no-cars-wakanda
• StudioCone’s Plurality Player Wants You to Feel the Planet, Imagine Magazine: https://imaginemagazine.co/news/studiocones-plurality-player-wants-you-to-feel-the-planet/
• APF Compass (What Makes a Futurist): https://www.apf.org/compass
• Mind the Gap Refisited, Nordmann & Rip: https://www.nature.com/articles/nnano.2009.26 
• Building Performance Reimagined, CIBSE: https://www.cibse.org/policy-advocacy/industry-initiatives/building-performance-reimagined/

There’s been a fair amount of coverage of maritime activities at Futur-ish and we’re pleased to bring you another episode where Radha was triggered by being targeted for luxury cruises. It seems hoteliers are pivoting from the land to the sea as insurance and sea levels rise to meet the warming climate. However, this is all triggering a doom loop where the increase in tourism to endangered places drives them into further endangerment. 

Perhaps the people of Croydon, South London hold the answer?

Links

• Four Seasons is launching a luxury yacht experience in 2026, and it's as glamorous as you'd expect, Conde Nast Trarveller: https://www.cntraveller.com/article/four-seasons-launching-luxury-yacht-experience-in-2026
• Four Seasons Yachts Unveils its 2027 Mediterranean Season Featuring 33 New Voyages and More Than 40 New Destinations: https://press.fourseasons.com/news-releases/2025/2027-mediterranean-itineraries/
• Heading to Sea: How the Ritz-Carlton and Four Season’s Entry to Sea Travel can Revolutionize Cruising Sustainability, McGill Business Review: https://mcgillbusinessreview.com/articles/heading-to-sea-how-the-ritz-carlton-and-four-seasons-entry-to-sea-travel-can-revolutionize-cruising-sustainability
• The vulnerability of Caribbean coastal tourism to scenarios of climate change related sea level rise: http://www.caribbeanhotelandtourism.com/wp-content/uploads/data_center/environmental/Journal-of-Sustainable-Toursim-2012.pdf
• Climate change could erase $1.4 trillion in real estate value: report, Axios: https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/climate-change-insurance-costs-real-estate
• Migration in the Mountains: Why “Progress” in Uttarakhand Is Pushing People Away, UN: https://www.un.org/en/un-chronicle/migration-mountains-why-progress-uttarakhand-is-pushing-people-away
• Hotter Summers and Overcrowdning Threaten Europe’s Tourist Economies, Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-08-20/climate-change-and-overtourism-put-southern-europe-s-economies-under-threat?embedded-checkout=true
• Canadian snowbirds say U.S. politics are ruffling feathers and changing their migration patterns, CBC News: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canadian-snowbirds-rethinking-us-travel-plans-9.6980001
• BIO-SEA ballast water treatment chosen for Ritz-Carlton newbuilds, SeatradeCruiseNews: https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/environmental-health/bio-sea-ballast-water-treatment-chosen-for-ritz-carlton-newbuilds
• Aman at Sea, Amangati: https://www.amanatsea.com/

As we’ve documented before (see; Kessler Syndrome), the infrastructures we rely on and take for granted are increasingly crumbling and under threat. Cue a surge of investment and interest in alternatives to the systems that have shaped the global economy for the last few decades.

It’s something we talk about all the time, throwing at the end of decks and workshops as a ‘things might get weird’ moment - but what actually is quantum sensing? And how might it reshape our relationship with physical reality?

Links

‘To live a normal life again, it’s a dream come true’: UK’s first climate evacuees can cast off their homes and trauma, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/09/to-live-a-normal-life-again-its-a-dream-come-true-uks-first-climate-evacuees-can-cast-off-their-homes-and-trauma

GPS jamming shows ships in "impossible" locations, Kuehne+Nagel: https://mykn.kuehne-nagel.com/news/article/gps-jamming-shows-ships-in-impossible-locatio-09-Apr-2024This Pokémon Go GPS hack is the most impressive yet, The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/7/28/12311290/pokemon-go-cheat-gps-signal-spoofing

Q-CTRL's New Maritime Quantum Navigation Solution Successfully Undergoes First Defense Trials at Sea, Q-Ctrl: https://q-ctrl.com/blog/q-ctrls-new-maritime-quantum-navigation-solution-successfully-undergoes-first-defense-trials-at-sea

Armed with quantum sensors, France eyes leaps in electronic warfare, DefenseNews: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/06/25/armed-with-quantum-sensors-france-eyes-leaps-in-electronic-warfare/

Earth’s Gravity Field, NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/earths-gravity-field-3666/

Magnetic Navigation at Scale: Advancing Resilient Flight Through Quantum Sensing, ACubed: https://acubed.airbus.com/blog/quantum/magnetic-navigation-at-scale-advancing-resilient-flight-through-quantum-sensing/

DIU’s Transition of Quantum Sensing (TQS) Field Testing To Begin Across Five Critical Areas, DIU: https://www.diu.mil/latest/dius-transition-of-quantum-sensing-tqs-field-testing-to-begin-across-five

Japan Boosts Semiconductor, Quantum R&D with Trillion-Yen Budget, Quantum Insides: https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/01/16/japan-boosts-semiconductor-quantum-rd-with-trillion-yen-budget/

Google claims 'quantum supremacy' for computer, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50154993

Quantum Sensing Will Test Legal Frameworks for Privacy, Tech Policy Press: https://www.techpolicy.press/quantum-sensing-will-test-legal-frameworks-for-privacy/

How much would you pay to be bored? Well, for the kids of Amsterdam it’s about 7 bucks to have their phones locked up and sit and read or do crosswords. Sure, you could just do this anyway without the fee but then would you really feel like you’re part of something, part of a movement? 

This week, we’re joined by Tracee Worley to talk about her work in experiential and analog futures and chew over more insights on the turn against tech from the youth of today. 

Links

• Radical Futures: https://radicalfutures.studio/
• How Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District is reimagining community ownership of real estate to restore Black Wall Street, Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-tulsa-oklahomas-greenwood-district-is-reimagining-community-ownership-of-real-estate-to-restore-black-wall-street/
• Letters from the Future: https://www.posthou.se/lettersfromthefuture
• Seneca Falls 2048: https://senecafalls2048.org/
• The Offline Club: https://www.theoffline-club.com/
• Americans Check Their Phones an Alarming Number of Times Per Day, PC Mag: https://uk.pcmag.com/mobile-phones/146917/americans-check-their-phones-an-alarming-number-of-times-per-day

While it’s generally agreed that the global population is continuing to expand (at least until flatlining at the end of the century) for some parts of the world it is falling dangerously precipitously with the potential for severe economic and security impacts. 

For the wealthy elite of Silicon Valley, this is an ideological failing, one that their blogs and op-eds are ready to tackle with shady conferences that have a whiff of something mid-century Europe about them, and not in the nice furniture way. For others, it’s an opportunity to throw (quite a lot) of money at the problem and see what sticks. 

Links:

• With new ordinance, Santa Fe becomes first city to tie minimum wage to rental costs, Albuquerque Journal: https://www.abqjournal.com/news/with-new-ordinance-santa-fe-becomes-first-city-to-tie-minimum-wage-to-rental-costs/2893470
• Fertility rate falls to lowest globally, Taipei Times: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2026/01/10/2003850357
• South Korea birthrate rises for the first time in nine years, AlJazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/26/south-korea-birthrate-rises-for-the-first-time-in-nine-years
• Does the U.S. Have a Fertility Crisis? Johns Hopkins: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/is-the-us-birth-rate-declining
• The Ultimate status symbol? A big family, Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/a4025e93-7552-4f8f-8ce2-e785a7d950a4
• The influencers who want the world to have more babies - and say the White House is on their side, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ypdy05jl9o
• Elon wants you to have more babies, Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-elon-musk-population-collapse-baby-push/
• The Far Right’s Plan to Explode the Population, Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/28/natalism-conference-austin-00150338
• Your baby could qualify for $1,000 with a Trump Account. Here’s what to know, Associated Press: https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2026/your-baby-could-qualify-for-1000-with-a-trump-account-heres-what-to-know/
• National child care policy 2.0 for ages 0-6, Executive Yuan: https://english.ey.gov.tw/News3/9E5540D592A5FECD/7b033800-d295-4a7a-8fba-dfbf617142d6
• What birth rate crisis? Here’s how one city in Taiwan is bucking the island’s worrying trend, Straits Times: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/chips-powerhouse-hsinchu-a-bright-spot-amid-taiwans-birth-rate-crisis
• The Impact of the Real Estate Market on Fertility, NBER: https://www.nber.org/digest/feb12/impact-real-estate-market-fertility?page=1&perPage=50
• A South Korean firm is offering to pay its workers $75,000 each time they have a baby, CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/06/business/south-korea-firm-child-cash-payout-intl-hnk
• Following Booyoung, Krafton to Offer 100 Mil. Won Childbirth Incentive to Employees, BusinessKorea: https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=235577
• It’s Me, Hi, I’m the Problem I’m 33, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/business/economy/33-year-olds-millennials.html

While you were counting down to 2026 on New Years, Tobias was counting down the last seconds of a future he very personally dreamed of; a future with less cars. You see, Zipcar, the UK’s biggest car sharing company were going out of business, ceasing operations for 2026. 

Almost simultaneously, the UK government accelerated the timeline on autonomous vehicle trials. Before we know it, LA’s Waymos are going to be hitting London streets. But this isn’t the future either, it’s just a different version of the same car-fuelled nightmare. What if, instead, we already had the perfect technology and just didn’t realise it? 

LInks:

• Car-sharing company ZipCar to end UK operations, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8zv1gr0z9o
• Autonomous Vehicle Market Surges with 34.84% CAGR as MaaS, ADAS, and AI Adoption Accelerate, Newswire: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/01/19/3221004/0/en/Autonomous-Vehicle-Market-Surges-with-34-84-CAGR-as-MaaS-ADAS-and-AI-Adoption-Accelerate.html
• Road traffic injuries, WHO: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries
• Autonomous Vehicle Accidents: NHTSA Crash Data (2019-2025). Craft Law: https://www.craftlawfirm.com/autonomous-vehicle-accidents-2019-2024-crash-data/
• Cyclist 'jumped red light and killed pedestrian Peter McCombie', BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56320121
• Does cycle commuting reduce the risk of mental ill-health? An instrumental variable analysis using distance to nearest cycle path: https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/53/1/dyad153/7529101
• Association of Cycling With All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality Among Persons With Diabetes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8290339/
• Potential for reduced premature mortality by current and increased bicycle commuting: a health impact assessment using registry data on home and work addresses in Stockholm, Sweden: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7849870/
• Get on your bike: Study shows walking, cycling and e-biking make a significant impact on carbon emissions, Oxford: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-02-02-get-your-bike-study-shows-walking-cycling-and-e-biking-make-significant-impact
• Bicycle Technology, Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bicycle-technology/
• A Classic Graphic Reveals Nature’s Most Efficient Traveler, Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-human-on-a-bicycle-is-among-the-most-efficient-forms-of-travel-in-the/
  Energy and Equity, Ivan Illich: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1683220.Energy_and_Equity

All over the world, healthcare systems are straining under the weight of ageing populations, crippling costs and overheads and new and novel conditions exacerbated by the biodiversity crisis. 

A spate of new gadgets promises to give us more control over our health but if the social problems that underpin failing healthcare aren’t solved, how much can they do? Could we instead use seismic sensors in our feet, colour sensors on our heads and piezoelectric patches on our skin to talk to the planet? To hang out with rivers? 

LInks:

• Anonymous crypto gambler made $436,000 on Maduro capture, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gn93292do
• Gambling platform Polymarket not paying bets on US invasion of Venezuela, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/wager-platform-polymarket-will-not-pay-out-on-bets-on-us-invasion-of-venezuela
• Roxana Chicas designs wearable patch for early detection of heat exposure, Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/09/28/roxana-chicas-designs-wearable-patch-for-early-detection-of-heat-exposure/REFILE: Atlanta scientist creates biopatch to protect farmers from the heat and heat-related deaths, Reuters: https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/refile-atlanta-scientist-creates-biopatch-to-protect-farmers-from-the-heat-and-heat-related-deaths
• Inxects vest lets architects "feel" the health of a site like a sixth sense, Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/21/gaia-communication-system-wearable-inxects/Cyborg artist Moon Ribas feels earthquakes, Next Nature: https://nextnature.org/en/magazine/story/2020/moon-ribas
• Nobody Told Me Rivers Dream, Superflux: https://superflux.in/index.php/work/nobody-told-me-rivers-dream/#
• The Americans Who Stick Gadgets Under Their Skin, VICE: https://www.vice.com/en/article/hannes-wiedemann-american-grinders-biohacking-photo-book/
• A 3-in-1 wearable and implantable biopatch for integrated in-body energy harvesting, sensing, and self-powered diabetic wound treatments: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211285525001028

There’s been enough warning from fiction and indeed reality that people should really know better than to reduce the horror of conflict to gaming, petty bets and the chaos of chance. But perhaps ‘leaders’ really do think the gods play dice and now, as global institutions become increasingly unreliable, they want in.

Things look pretty ‘yucky’ if you, for instance, respect the dignity of human life and though this isn’t anywhere near the first time finance has been tied up in geopolitics, the incentives are all backwards now, fuelling misinformation, deception and misappropriation in the name of a quick crypto-buck. 

Links:

• 'Unauthorized' Edit to Ukraine's Frontline Maps Point to Polymarket's War Betting, 404 Media: https://www.404media.co/unauthorized-edit-to-ukraines-frontline-maps-point-to-polymarkets-war-betting/
• Institute for The Study of War: https://understandingwar.org/ 
• The Polymarket Effect: How Prediction Markets Are Beating The Experts, Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonwingard/2025/11/19/the-polymarket-effect-how-prediction-markets-are-beating-the-experts/
• How the Trump Whale and Prediction Markets Beat the Pollsters in 2024, Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/how-the-trump-whale-and-prediction-markets-beat-the-pollsters-in-2024-dd11ec4e?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeH1TI6Po6c_Ztr0l0voyhPfeAozcF_RHfJiu9zSQXT5KxGQFR_lYDXAzE0Cw8%3D&gaa_ts=694649c3&gaa_sig=ap1q4d4NOKg-UohvdZv-8fI_BySV6y0o1O_HI8iDwa0TtkNG50snxiApdJ1viRVncs1hQWDI28kjzDrZuCDjDQ%3D%3D
• Disaster Map Foundation: https://info.petabencana.id/ypb
• New App Lets Users Bet on Deadly Conflicts in Real Time, Futurism: https://futurism.com/future-society/polymarket-polyglobe-gambling
• Deep State Live: https://deepstatemap.live/en#6/49.4383200/32.0526800
  
• Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake