Near Future Laboratory Newsletter

Date: June 12, 2026

Summary: This edition explores the evolving landscape of work and labor in the age of AI, emphasizing the role of human supervision in algorithm-driven tasks. It investigates the implications of personal intelligence devices as potential witnesses in legal contexts, highlighting the importance of speculative prototyping in understanding the social dynamics of technology. The newsletter features innovations like Scape's neurotinctures and cognitive resonance adaptagens, discusses the emergence of "delivery stewards" in autonomous delivery systems, and examines the legal ramifications of AI companions as witnesses. Additionally, it promotes a special summer sale on design fiction books and introduces Apple's Divergence Research Systems, aimed at fostering unconventional research methods. The Anticipatory & Prophetic Policy Lab is also spotlighted for its commitment to speculative and anticipatory research.

Essentially: Speculative prototyping is essential for understanding the future of work and technology, enabling organizations to navigate complex social dynamics and innovate effectively.

But why? Organizations that embrace speculative prototyping and anticipate societal shifts will be better equipped to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of technology and labor, ensuring they remain competitive and relevant.

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From the Editor

Good morning. Here is the latest news from one of your many possible plausible near futures.

Logistics and automation have been intertwined in ways that have shaped work and labor for centuries. When we think about the future of work in the age of AI, we often imagine a world where the work is just done by an algorithm. But what if instead, the work is done by an algorithm but supervised by a human?

And the legal and regulatory landscape that surrounds personal intelligence devices has been evolving rapidly, and in some cases, unpredictably. Now our always-listening “Friends” are not just companions, but also potential witnesses in legal cases.

Speculative prototyping of these possible near futures helps us notice the social “shape” of these technologies and the way they shape the worlds we inhabit in a way that plain research “implications” cannot. The speculative prototyping augments the research and signals, and the research and signals ground the speculative prototyping. Together they help us see more clearly.

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Tomorrow's News Today

Jobs in the Age of AI

Delivery Stewards Reduce Chaos of Autonomous Delivery

California's AI & Automation Workforce Response labor rules have created a new kind of job: “delivery stewards”. The task? Accompany autonomously delivered cargo through the awkward, chaotic and exposed last fifty feet.

Do you want to know more?

A delivery steward walking near an autonomous delivery vehicle at the curb.

Listening Witness

“Friend” testimony concludes

A wearable companion mistook a heist movie for a confession. Now a court is deciding whether an always-listening intelligence can be a loyal friend and a witness for the state.

Do you want to know more?

Courtroom sketch of an AI-enabled pendant testifying against its owner.

Books for the Beach

All the design fiction that's fit to read. Get all of the books at a special summer discount.

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The Four Design Fiction Books

Big Books Big Pre-Summer Sale. Available now, the full collection of Design Fiction books. Get the whole set and save. Four books for $49.99. Crazy, right?

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Tomorrow's Jobs Today

Apple

Senior VP, Divergence Research Systems

Divergence Research Systems is a new executive unit inside Apple created to expand the terrain and approach of innovation and inquiry. The group is designed to support cognitive range, unconventional research methods, non-linear prototyping, and exploratory making practices that do not fit neatly inside the trad shape of conventional research, product, or innovation templates.

Do you want to know more?

Anticipatory & Prophetic Policy Lab

Director of Prophetic Research & Scenario Lab

The Anticipatory & Prophetic Policy Lab is committed to exploring the implications of emerging technologies and societal shifts through speculative prototyping, policy prototyping, anticipatory research and expeditionary research methods. The Director of the Prophetic Research Scenario Lab will build and lead a studio and team of practitioners with inter- and multi-disciplinary skillsets and experiences in order to craft detailed, experiential, and transitional futures that help our clients inform their strategic decision-making and policy development.

Do you want to know more?

It's Not All Bad News

Observed Signal

Sorry, I'm OoO. Talk to the AI ME

AI stand-ins are answering when the human is unavailable — the signal that was amplified by our Meta Renames Itself “Mark” fiction: speculation and the world, richly and complexly plaited as product logic, executive mythology, and the strange new etiquette of synthetic presence.

Do you want to know more?

New York Times article image for a story about AI digital twins standing in for unavailable people.

Speculative Fiction

Meta Renames Itself “Mark”

This dispatch from a couple weeks back imagines the world the NYT piece now reports: AI stand-ins for a CEO who wants to be across everything, everywhere, all at once.
That is the value of speculative prototyping. It gives us a place where we can enter a possible-plausible tiny corner of a future world, and walk around a bit before the roads are paved and the concrete is poured. That's invaluable.

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Speculative prototyping of our possible near futures brought to you by Near Future Laboratory™.

These explorations are intended to help teams and organization wander into the expansive terrains they are exploring. Organizations get really good at reproducing the world they already understand. Near Future Laboratory helps teams surface their unspoken inherited assumptions and explore alternative possibilities through artifacts from possible futures. If you’re looking to get out of that loop, let’s talk.

Tomorrow’s News Today is part of The Adjacency, a Speculative Prototyping & Design Fiction Research Initiative by Near Future Laboratory.
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