Futur-ish

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

Truly, nothing is new and everything has happened before and so we find ourselves, amidst a collapsing geopolitical order with some very fancy gadgets (an expensive plane and some chips) going wanting and going missing. What connects them? A rumour that, coincidentally, started about the same time that JD Vance turned up in Munich to shake the NATO tree. 

To some it might be conspiracy, but never mistake for malice what is better attributed to complacency. Instead what we have here is a great example of one of the most interesting phenomena in futures and the fact that truly, nothing is new, and everything has happened before. 

Links:

• The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man
• Spain, Switzerland Cancel F35 Jet Order Over Trump’s Europe Policy, Defense Mirror: https://www.defensemirror.com/news/40014
• Three reasons Canada and Portugal may cancel order for US-made fighter jets. The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/europe-canada-portugal-f35-fighter-jets-trump-eurofighter-b2718770.html
• India rules out F-35s as defense ties with US face new turbulence. AeroTime: https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/india-rules-out-f-35s-as-defense-ties-with-us-face-new-turbulence
• The F-35 ‘Kill Switch’: Separating Myth from Reality, The Aviationist: https://theaviationist.com/2025/03/10/f-35-kill-switch-myth/
• DIY Tractor Repair Runs Afoul Of Copyright Law, NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/17/432601480/diy-tractor-repair-runs-afoul-of-copyright-law
• US farmers win right to repair John Deere equipment, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64206913
• Inside the Biden Administration's Gamble to Freeze China’s AI Future, WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/chips-china-artificial-intelligence-controls
• Cotton Introduces Bill to Prevent Diversion of Advanced Chips to America’s Adversaries and Protect U.S. Product Integrity, Tom Cotton: https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-introduces-bill-to-prevent-diversion-of-advanced-chips-to-americas-adversaries-and-protect-us-product-integrity
• Can “Location Verification” Stop AI Chip Smuggling?, AI Frontiers: https://ai-frontiers.org/articles/location-verification-ai-chips
• Killing machines: how Russia and Ukraine’s race to perfect deadly pilotless drones could harm us all, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/ukraine-russia-autonomous-drones-ai
• U.S. Army Tests Robotic Vehicle near Russia, Defense Blog: https://defence-blog.com/u-s-army-tests-robotic-vehicle-near-russia/
• 1966: Children Imagine Life in the Year 2000, BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8xX3usi4c 
• Ghosts of My Life, Mark Fisher: https://burleyfisherbooks.com/products/9781780992266

We’ve all wanted our own patch of land to do what we want, right? Little bit of crypto? Pharmaceutical experiments? Human cloning? Well the manifest destiny trolley has come back around again and they’re serving up ‘freedom cities.’ Now your little slice of paradise comes with a big helping of deregulation fantasies and a promise to build, build, build! 

If you can even get it off the ground, that is. This isn’t the first, second or third time that starry-eyed men have grabbed an island, called it home and installed a server farm and a crypto conference to the chagrin of the state that actually claims dominion. Will this time be any different for these plucky micronations? 

Links:

• Prospera: https://www.prospera.co/en
• ‘Startup City’ Groups Say They’re Meeting Trump Officials to Push for Deregulated ‘Freedom Cities,’ WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/startup-cities-donald-trump-legislation/
• California Forever: https://californiaforever.com/
• Trump’s “Freedom Cities” Are a Devious Scam, The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/192741/trump-freedom-cities-company-towns 
• Let’s Buy An Island: https://letsbuyanisland.com/
• The Principality of Sealand: https://sealandgov.org/
• Seeing Like A State, James C. Scott: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State
• Careless People, Sarah Wynne-Williams: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People
• Peckham Outer-Space Initiative: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/peckham-outer-space-initiative
• The Dawn of Everything. David Graeber & David Wengrow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything

While you're being relentlessly bombarded with multi-trillion dollar projections, promises and prognostications for the latest gizmo a quiet giant has been gobbling up a market share that in real, right-now life is three times the size of the entirety of AR and VR. And it's right at your feet. This mundane product doesn't usually get a look-in with futurists and our first guest, luminary designer Nick Foster, reckons that's a reflection of the subpar quality of the profession. 

Hey but don't sweat it, because Nick's new book 'Could, Should, Might, Don't; How We Think About the Future' is here to help you pay attention to what's important. Pull focus form the foolishness and chicanery of performing futurists and look at what really matters, the future that's all around us, quietly going about its business shaping the real experience of people's lives.

Links

• Could Should Might Don’t, Nick Foster: https://canongate.co.uk/books/5387-could-should-might-dont-how-we-think-about-the-future/ 
• You’re Probably Thinking About The Future Wrong, Nick Foster: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/business/dealbook/future-nick-foster.html
• The Future Mundane, Nick Foster: https://www.core77.com/posts/25678/the-future-mundane-25678
• AR and VR Headsets Market Size, Share, and Trends 2025 to 2034, Precedence Research: https://www.precedenceresearch.com/ar-and-vr-headsets-market
• Socks Market Size, Share, and Trends 2025 to 2034, Precedence Research: https://www.precedenceresearch.com/socks-market
• Value Creation in the Metaverse, McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/value-creation-in-the-metaverse

If the apocalypse was around the corner, would you want to know? Well good news for you, we may already be in it, but because it's hard to pin things down or look beyond the present it's hard to really know for sure. 

In the 1960s, states were sending things into space with reckless abandon and now it might be coming back round to bite them. Almost literally. And it doesn't help that billionaires are now rolling the dice with a bet on global communications infrastructure. So what exactly is going on? And, is it even actually going on? And does it mean anything other than resigned acceptance of inevitable collapse at the hubristic hands of billionaires?

Links:

• Collision frequency of artificial satellites: The creation of a debris belt, Journal of Geophysical Research: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JA083iA06p02637