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

Somewhere, in a Trump administration office, someone decided that architects aren’t all that and now they’re being de-professionalised and removed from public debate. At the same time, more and more research is telling us that architecture happens inside your head and we need to design that way. 

But what does this have to do with World War 2 battleships and the state of education? Radha thinks that the banning of architects from public discourse gives us an opportunity to reimagine what ways, for who and how the built environment is imagined and designed. 

Links

• Architecture no longer considered a "professional degree" in US, Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/11/24/architecture-degree-not-professional-usa/
• Making Federal Architecture Great Again, Whitehouse.gov: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/making-federal-architecture-beautiful-again/ 
• Could bad buildings damage your mental health? The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/16/bad-buildings-damage-mental-health-research-anxiety-depression
• Why Ugly Architecture Is Bad for Your Health, The Architectural Uprising: https://www.architecturaluprising.com/studies/why-ugly-architecture-is-bad-for-your-health/
• Cleo Valentine: We now know architecture can cause stress, Venetian Letter: https://venetianletter.com/2023/09/07/cleo-valentine-we-now-know-architecture-can-cause-stress/
• Trump doubles down on classical capital with "Arc de Trump" proposal, Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/10/16/trump-triumphal-arch-proposal/
• Dazzle Camouflage, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
• CV Dazzle, Adam Harvey: https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle

Futur-ish are taking a short hiatus from our bi-weekly release schedule for the holiday. We’ll be back in 2026!

The sun has been the biggest tech success story of the last quarter century. Solar panels are cheaper than fences, efficiency just keeps going up and people are installing them at rates that consistently exceed projections. 

A bottomless brunch of free photons might sound like the perfect gift, and for some, it is. However, for 250 years, we’ve built energy systems and grids around the core concept of scarcity and they’re fundamentally unequipped for the crisis of overabundance. Step in, friend of the pod, Australia, who are about to introduce a new plan to shock the system and drive a behaviour change that tells us more about what the future of energy might look like than you might think. 

Links

• Too Cheap to Meter, NRC: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/history-101/too-cheap-to-meter#:~:text=Strauss's%20optimism%20for%20fission%20continued,be%20metered%2C%20just%20as%20we
• Australians have been offered free solar power. How do I get mine and will it make my energy bill cheaper? The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/04/australia-free-solar-power-scheme-how-when-houshold-bills
• The Duck Curve, US Department of Energy: https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-how-address-over-generation-solar-energy
• Quotes, Hon. Chris Bowen: https://minister.dcceew.gov.au/bowen/media-releases/joint-media-release-more-victorian-communities-benefit-100-million-energy-upgrades#:~:text=%E2%80%9CGenerations%20of%20Australians%20have%20enjoyed,and%20keep%20their%20communities%20strong.
• Power to the people: the neighbours turning their London street into a solar power station, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/18/power-to-the-people-the-neighbours-turning-their-london-street-into-a-solar-power-station

It used to be that the plastic blocks most teens might be interested in were multicoloured and used for stacking on top of each other. Now they’re transparent and vaguely-phone shaped, designed as addiction aids and symbols of protest. 

Add in to this the growing popularity of Luddite movements across university campuses and charities, signals of democratic legislation banning phones and a proliferation of AI-powered gizmos that seem to distance themselves from the economy and interactions of social media and Radha has an idea that she’s on to something new. Maybe this does mark a new phase in our digital economies but, truly, nothing is new, and everything has happened before..

LInks

• PRX, The Teens Are Offline: https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/478234
• Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces through AI: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2424662122
• The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QkJkT3M-Us
• AskCatGPT, Social Experiments with Methaphones: https://www.tiktok.com/@askcatgpt/video/7504849538209860906
• Rabbit R1: https://www.rabbit.tech/rabbit-r1?srsltid=AfmBOopyARX2j2eXeBcZttRbOb7TyeQr00XRh8hzPQKfMuguf8TRyUfk
• Humane Inc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Inc.
• Terra Compass: https://modemworks.com/projects/terra/
• The Luddite Club: https://www.theludditeclub.org/about 
• Lamp Club, a Luddite Group, Has Come to Free the ‘IPad Babies’, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/style/lamp-club-luddites.html 
• The Gnomes are Taking Over New York City, The Blue and White: https://www.theblueandwhite.org/post/the-gnomes-are-taking-over-new-york-city
• AI is Reshaping Childhood in China, Rest of World: https://restofworld.org/2025/ai-china-childhood/
• Fighting the smartphone ‘invasion’: the French village that voted to ban scrolling in public, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/fighting-the-smartphone-invasion-the-french-village-that-voted-to-ban-scrolling-in-public
• Australia approves social media ban on under-16s, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89vjj0lxx9o
• Silicon Valley parents are raising their kids tech-free — and it should be a red flag, The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/tech-free-silicon-valley-parents-raising-children-red-flag-a8256166.html 
• TikTok’s enshitification, Pluralistic: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys 
• ‘It’s Hurting Like Hell’: AI Companion Users Are In Crisis, Reporting Sudden Sexual Rejection, VICE: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ai-companion-replika-erotic-roleplay-updates

The future comes at you at unexpected ways. If the bullish pronouncements of tech bros are to believed it’s in the gadgets, gizmos and gimmicks dominating our feeds. Meanwhile, the future is coming fast for a tiny town in the middle of England.

Flooding comes at a terrible cost but what are we willing to pay? As the water reaches up to swallow Middle England, more and more places with hundreds of years of history are going to face grim choices about what’s worth preserving and what should be taken by the waters.

Links

• MP's anger as flood defences cash deadline missed, BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c77zl24rm5eo
• The flood-prone Worcestershire town being abandoned by insurers, Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/14/tenbury-wells-flood-prone-worcestershire-town-abandoned-by-insurers
• Dramatic Moment North Carolina Homes COLLAPSE into Ocean from Hurricane Winds, YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3qplCLqppA
• ‘This is a wake-up call’: the villagers who could be Britain’s first climate refugees, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/18/this-is-a-wake-up-call-the-villagers-who-could-be-britains-first-climate-refugees
  

The next time you’re desperately casting heal on your paladin, spare a moment to think about the young revolutionaries using your dress-up-and-pretend world to overthrow their governments. Reddit threads, discord servers and game worlds are increasingly taking on the shape of unions, guilds and cadres as these relatively flexible, heterogenous structures feature more and more heavily in the political organising of the day. 

Whether it’s K-Pop stans driving consumer shocks, reddit communities playing the market or discord servers electing leaders it’s increasingly likely that these things become the new political institutions and we’re here to talk about what that means.

Links

• BTS's Jungkook Runs Into Unexpected Consequence From Mention Of Fabric Softener, Soompi: https://www.soompi.com/article/1296197wpp/btss-jungkook-runs-unexpected-consequence-mention-fabric-softener
• BTS’s Endorsement Was So Powerful That Hyundai Is Literally Struggling To Keep Up With Demand, Koreaboo: https://www.koreaboo.com/news/bts-hyundai-palisades-demand-struggle/
• Kpop Stans Trump Prank Rachets p the Internet Wars, Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-23/k-pop-stans-trump-prank-ratchets-up-the-internet-wars-kbrsyl17
• Black Lives Matter meets Animal Crossing: how protesters take their activism into video games, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/aug/07/black-lives-matter-meets-animal-crossing-how-protesters-take-their-activism-into-video-games
• Kids are attending pro-Palestinian protests on Roblox, CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/kids-are-attending-pro-palestinian-protests-on-roblox.html
• Stop playing politics or face a ban, Nintendo warns Animal Crossing gamers, HKFP: https://hongkongfp.com/2020/11/21/stop-playing-politics-or-face-a-wan-nintendo-warns-animal-crossing-gamers/
• A Staggering Number Of People Saw Fortnite’s Travis Scott ‘Astronomical’ Event, Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2020/04/28/a-staggering-number-of-people-saw-fortnites-travis-scott-astronomical-event/
• Fortnite's Travis Scott virtual concert watched by millions, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52410647
• Joe Biden’s campaign made a custom Fortnite map, Polygon: https://www.polygon.com/2020/11/2/21545771/joe-biden-fortnite-campaign-creative-map/
• Joe Biden has his own island on ‘Animal Crossing’ where you can learn about his campaign, CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/18/business/biden-animal-crossing-island-trnd
• Youths Against Corruption: https://youthagainstcorruption.com/
• Nepal’s Social Media Ban Backfires as Politics Moves to a Chat Room, The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/world/asia/nepal-protest-genz-discord.html
• Sushila Karki: How Gen Z protestors chose Nepal’s first woman prime minister on Discord, The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/nepal-sushila-karki-new-prime-minister-discord-protests-b2826473.html
• GameStop’s wild ride: how Reddit traders sparked a ‘short squeeze’, The Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/47e3eaad-e087-4250-97fd-e428bac4b5e9
• Taiwan's digital revolution: Healing polarization and strengthening democracy, Harvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/bigs/taiwans-digital-revolution-audrey-tang