This is a conversation about the intersection of AI and creativity that took place in Office Hours N°273 where Kirby Ferguson showed up and shared his latest video project, "Infinite Remix." I took that tape and turned it into this episode of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast. So..it's two things at once: Office Hours N°273 and Episode 101 of the Near Future Laboratory Podcast. Talk about reuse and remixing! Kirby Ferguson's "Infinite Remix" challenges us to rethink the role of AI in creativity. By viewing AI as a collaborator rather than a replacement, we can harness its potential to enhance our creative processes while maintaining the human touch that makes art meaningful.

We often think of documentation as an obligation, or as a technical artifact — notes for the next person, crumbs for debugging. But I’ve come to believe that process documentation can be something else entirely. It can be reflective. Even beautiful. Especially when it’s made tangible. When the digital exhaust of our work is transformed into a physical artifact, it becomes a testament to our journey. It captures not just the outcome, but the process — the late nights, the brainstorming sessions, the moments of doubt and discovery. It becomes a narrative, a story worth telling. While in the work I felt myself in the present and looking back on the work from the future. In the future, there was no sense of regret. I didn't want to be the guy, years down the road, queried about this chapter of life and not having a story to tell. A story I could be proud to tell, full of lessons I could share. These...

This workshop provided participants with the tools and frameworks to explore and create speculative Design Fictions for the future. Through hands-on activities and collaborative storytelling, participants were able to envision and prototype their ideas for a more hopeful and inclusive future. Participants left with a deeper understanding of the potential of Design Fiction as a tool for exploring and shaping the future.

Today I spoke at Hyper Island’s Vision Week 2025 about AI, resilience, and what it means to be human in the loop. But the real topic was deeper: how do we preserve and strengthen imagination in a world flooded with automation? The answer is to cultivate a mindset of curiosity and experimentation, to embrace the unknown and to see challenges as opportunities for growth. To find the ways to innovate and create value in this new landscape, we must be willing to take risks and learn from our failures — and even redefine what ‘failure’ might mean. What I've developed through my own practice is to look at AI as a collaboratory. A kind of co-creator or muse. I develop tools — like experiments that may or may not feel like they came from the future — that allow me to experiment with new forms of collaboration and co-creation. It's like making my own little science-fictional tools and to experiment with what...

Mercedes Barrera and Catalina Dib presented their strategic intelligence platform Katari Andes that gathers signals of change from Latin America with a focus on collective wellbeing. Katari Andes is an innovative platform—an exciting initiative aimed at transforming collective intelligence into strategic clarity, especially from the Global South's perspective. The session featured a presentation by the platform's co-founders, who showcased the potential of Katari Andes to redefine decision-making frameworks and address structural gaps in current intelligence systems. The platform's design emphasizes user-friendly interfaces and collaborative tools, enabling diverse stakeholders to engage with data meaningfully. By prioritizing local knowledge and context, Katari Andes seeks to empower communities — particularly amongst the Global South — to shape visions of their futures actively.

Most commercial projects today barrel toward the same goals: scalability, virality, ROI. So what do we get? A flattening of imagination. Algorithms optimize for sameness. Brand voices blur into one. That’s why I created Office Hours, The Side Projects Edition. Because imagination isn't a luxury. It's existentially vital. Side projects are where we can explore the edges of ideas, possibility, and wander into the weird. It just doesn't matter if they "work" or not. Side projects are not about winning. Side projects are about exploring, experimenting, and expanding our sense of ‘what could be.’

We don’t suffer from a lack of imagination about the future. We suffer from too much of the same imagination. Every deck, every keynote, every speculative prototype, these things often always and still echo the same tropes: wet streets, noodles, chrome cities, self-driving pods, drone deliveries, network hacking, blue neon, cyberdecks, dystopian biotech. Our futures have been colonized by a lack of imagination. Our futures are flattened by repetition. They are excruciatingly Familiar. They have been market-tested. They have been production designed to be legible and, ultimately — boring. In episode 100 of my podcast, I get on the horn with N O R M A L S. We found ourselves circling this question: Why do so many futures feel interchangeable? And what would it take to build ones that aren’t?

A continuation of an explication of the relationship between Imagination and Structure, using a scene from John Carpenter's super important 1988 film "They Live" to illustrate the struggle of the artist to get others to see the world as they do. We see the dynamics of creative consciousness and rational consciousness and the passionate desire of the Creative Consciousness to help or have the Rational Consciousness see the aspects of the world that lurk below the surface; those that are not immediately visible or obvious. These notes underscore the importance of this relationship in the creative process and the challenges faced by artists in communicating their vision. Probably ideas for a longer essay or pamphlet on the subject.

In this Office Hours Side Projects session, we were presented with three Side Projects: Root Workers, focusing on environmental conservation through community engagement; ElderPunkt, a publication concept aimed at enhancing elder agency; and Communal Heirlooms, a project exploring ways by which community assets can be preserved. Each was presented for 10 minutes, followed by 20+ minutes of discussions and reflection as to the project's unique challenges and opportunities. An overall theme of these Side Projects was considerations as to the importance of emotional connections, community needs, and intergenerational perspectives. Sign up to my newsletter to get reminders for weekly Office Hours! And don't forget to support the work on Patreon! It helps keep the lights on and the ideas flowing.