Near Future Laboratory Newsletter

Date: July 13, 2025

Summary: As part of the A.I. + Designed Fictions Research Studio, I've been exploring the concept of morning pages and daily writing rituals in an era of AI. This led me to create Vibewriter, a tool that combines generative writing with ludic exercises, allowing users to write under pressure from AI-generated prompts.

Essentially: This email explores the intersection of AI and creative writing, specifically through the development of Vibewriter, a tool that blurs the line between human and machine creativity. By incorporating ludic features like Vibe Mode, where AI generates a passage and then takes over as the user writes in response, Vibewriter offers a unique approach to the traditional writing process.

But why? The rise of AI-generated content raises questions about the future of writing and human creativity. This email highlights the importance of understanding how humans interact with AI tools, such as Vibewriter, which can facilitate new forms of creative expression and collaboration between humans and machines.

Over 10 years ago I did what everyone said I shouldn't.

I created a hardware startup.

"Dude. Don't do it. Hardware is hard!"

But, I did it.

Maybe it's because I went to Montessori School and was instilled with a different set of decision making muscles.

It was hard, no doubt. They were not wrong about that.

But "hard is as hard does" to refactor Forrest Gump's turn of phrase.

On reflection, I do think I had something to prove to myself, and I knew that particularly something had to be truly hard.

Ironically, proving to myself that I could make a beautiful bit of industrial designed product was easier than proving to others that I could do whatever it takes to get any job done, with grace and commitment.

Having done that, and now at the cusp of the product's relaunch by its new (fantastic) owners I am wandering in that liminal in-between space where I wonder what I want to do next. What shape do I want the next 10 year chapter to take, and doing what, with what organization?

This has come to mind reflectively as I gathered all of my weeknotes, photos — everything, really — and started binding it all together in various ways.

The first binding of stuff is a two volume compedium misnamed "260 Weeks of a Hardware Startup", which was the original name before the number of weeks grew and I figured the didactic title was more metaphorical than anything else.

When I asked a friend how I could I possibly represent the range of capabilities I could bring to a future organization they told me I should first tell them what their world would look like with me in it — leading a team, or a studio, or a lab — and then put these two volumes in front of them.

Volume 1 — Notes from a successful hardware startup.

Side Projects

Office Hours N°267 & 3 Side Projects

Office Hours Side Projects Edition is an evolution of the Open Office Hours series. In this variation, projects are shared in short, sharp 10 minute presentations, followed by a 20 minute discussion. The goal is to share ideas, get feedback, and explore the potential of these projects in a collaborative environment.
In this episode side projects shared by Anushka, Julian, and Karis in the Office Hours Side Projects Edition N°267. Anushka explores sketchnoting, Julian introduces Vibe Writer for creative writing, and Karis presents a futuristic narrative set in Gabon.

Read More ⇒

Vibewriter Web Edition

Project 2 of the A.I. + Designed Fictions Research Studio

TL;DR — Open Beta at vibewriter.nearfuturelaboratory.com

The A.I.+ Designed Fictions Research Studio creates functional futures artifacts to research everyday futures in a world where A.I. is as normal as wheels on luggage.

All my handwritten notebooks are in a bin at the moment.

Things are temporarily packed away while some workers work in the studio.

I grabbed one of the notebooks. It was labelled 1994.

Page after page, recto to verso, top to bottom was filled with a somewhat legible scrawl.

That was when a daily writing ritual was the norm.

At the moment, there's lots of hand-wringing about the future of writing in the era of AI.

It's a good question to wonder into.

What's the use of morning pages or daily writing rituals when the value of writing is under question?

If there was a morning writing ritual in an era of AI, what might it look like?

For the first two projects of the A.I. + Designed Fictions Research Studio, this was the focus.

This is the motivation behind Ghostwriter and Vibewriter, but particularly today, I want to focus on Vibewriter.

While I was doing a month of beta testing for Ghostwriter with some normal humans, they honed in on one feature that was like an afterthought.

I was focused on building a robust, generative writing muse that would help people write more, and better, and with more joy.

But people liked this ludic feature I had tossed in on a whim: Vibe Mode.

Vibe Mode was a simple button that would generate a short passage in the genre of, say — a Hardboiled Detective Novel.

You know..like..Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, vibes.

And then a timer would start, and you (the user) would write under the pressure of this timer. 30 seconds or whatever, and then the AI would turn off your keyboard and it would pick up again, continuing the story, vibing on the semantic turns you had contributed.

I was surprised by the feedback: people liked the ludic exercise. In fact, that's all they wanted to play with.

“Can you put in a screenwriting genre?”, one person asked.

“Solarpunk would be cool. I wonder what that would be like?”, another said.

“What about song lyrics?” Then they wanted a "Free Writing" mode where you started the text, and then the AI contributed.

This is what Vibewriter has become.

I feel like it is genuinely a kind of adjacent consideration as to the AI writing tools that are out there.

Open beta for the moment over at vibewriter.nearfuturelaboratory.com