Near Future Laboratory Blog

Rehearsing Deterrence and Peace through Design Fiction

Feb 26, 2026 (ref Mar 05, 2026)

Imagine rehearsing peace like we rehearse for a play or a sports game. That is,through Design Fiction so as to bring the everyday one might inhabit that world into focus. This is the spirit of Design Fiction for Peace, an initiative exploring how speculative design can make conflict reduction and mitigation (deterrence) visible, discussable, and shareable. I’m excited to be giving the opening keynote and mentoring alongside incredible collaborators at Design Factory Manchester and Aalto University. Curious to hear your thoughts on where imagination is essential in peace work—and where it risks becoming too tidy or distant. (Photo by Sunyu on Unsplash)

peacedeterrenceconflict reductiondesign fictionspeculative designdiplomacypeacebuildingfutures

General Seminar S07 E03: The Agentic Future

After Action Report

Feb 25, 2026

In the seminar we found all kinds of ways to talk about the moment we are inhabiting, and the one we are rushing into. We talked about the difference between agents that follow instructions and agents that make choices. We talked about the uneasy slider between convenience and consent. We prototyped physical objects that could help us navigate the swarm of agentic AI that is arriving. We imagined a chair that filters interruptions like a physical boundary you can sit inside. We found ourselves talking about active decision making cancellation, and how to keep it on when you want to ask an agent to do something for you, but not have it do too much for you.

Office Hours N°299

Feb 23, 2026 (ref Feb 20, 2026)

A funny one. Looking around at the latest developments in generative AI, we got into ethical considerations, design fiction applications, and the evolving landscape of human-AI collaboration. There was a continuing discussion of tabletop gaming as futures simulation, which got a little bit weird in a slightly aggrevating way. Hard to describe. Didn't really come out in the notes, but there was a slightly funky vibe it seemed to me? I don't think it's a “just me” sort of thing so much as a sensitivity to how I can sometimes bring something into a room out of excitement, only to see it leveraged to advantage that is not so much a leveraging in the spirit of reciprocity (as we've been saying) but wanting to win the game. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But it was a little bit of a vibe, and it made me feel a little bit weird, and I think it was worth noting.

office hoursaigenerative aiethicsdesign fiction

Office Hours N°300

Feb 20, 2026

This edition of Office Hours got itself all into the latest developments in generative AI, exploring ethical considerations, design fiction applications, and the evolving landscape of human-AI collaboration. We also share updates on our ongoing projects and discuss upcoming events in the design fiction community.

A man interviews another man in front of a screen with a diagram of a laptop, a phone, a bottle, and a brain.

Why Science Fiction Was a Nice Idea

But maybe not the best idea

Feb 18, 2026

Although we can be quite optimistic about the future of technology, we often use science fiction as a way to explore the potential consequences of emerging technologies, to warn us about the dangers of certain paths, and to inspire us toward better outcomes. But these stories are also little fascinating tales that somehow effect the ways the technologists’ mindset absorbs and processes the possibilities of the future. They can be read as blueprints for what to build, rather than just cautionary tales about what to avoid.

While I appreciate the literary value of science fiction as a form of a kind of mirror onto the present, we should be careful about our expectations that it will be read in that way. We should also be careful about the ways in which we use it as a tool for thinking about the future. It can be a powerful tool for imagining possible futures, but it can also be a trap that...

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Office hours N°298

Plus After Action Report

Feb 18, 2026 (ref Feb 13, 2026)

Weekly Office Hours are held every Friday at 9am PST / 5pm UTC. Sign up for the newsletter to get notified so you can join us for open discussion on design fiction, speculative design, critical futures, and near future laboratory projects. This week we some of the discussions included the latest developments in generative AI, exploring ethical considerations, design fiction applications, and the evolving landscape of human-AI collaboration. We also shared updates on our ongoing projects and discussed upcoming events in the design fiction community.

office hoursaigenerative aiethicsdesign fiction

The Agentic Logic of (Late) Late Capitalism

The future is right in front of us.

Feb 14, 2026

When the logic of the future is already here, but not quite, we find ourselves in a strange liminal space where the fictional and the real are intertwined. This is the agentic logic of late capitalism, where the seeds of the future are already being sown in the present, and where the future is already shaping our present in ways that are both exciting and unsettling.

The “Hub” is a repository of agentic "skills" that represent the hopes, fears, dreams, desires, and dreads of the present. It is a cultural artifact that reflects back the agentic logic of late capitalism in all its glory and antagonizing contradictions. Finding evidence of the future in the present is a practice that connects the dots between the present and possible futures, allowing us to see how the seeds of the future are already being sown in the present and how the future is already shaping our present.

agenticaifuturesspeculative design

The Inference Storm

A Design Fiction Dispatch

Feb 10, 2026

A Design Fiction Dispatch exploring the implications of a hypothetical 12% surge in global inference demand, revealing systemic fragility and the invisible supply chains of compute, data, and human attention that underpin our AI-driven world. The dispatch serves as a strategy artifact to help teams and leaders interrogate the ambiguity of why things happen, not just how to fix them, in the context of infrastructure debates and emerging sensor layers.

aiinferencedesign fictionstrategyinfrastructurecompute

General Seminar S07/E02

After Action Report!

Feb 09, 2026 (ref Feb 04, 2026)

A report out from General Seminar S07 E02, where we explored the idea that strategy is a form of science fiction — a way to prototype futures into existence through storytelling and rehearsal. We discussed ambiguity as a feature, strategy as a spell, and how the weirdness of prototypes can reveal hidden organizational truths.

general seminarstrategyscience fictiondesign fictionworkshopgeneral seminar