Near Future Laboratory Newsletter

Date: July 13, 2026

Summary: This edition explores the implications of autonomous technologies in everyday life, highlighting a playful incident in New Hope, PA where local youth engaged with delivery carts, sparking a broader dialogue on the societal costs of convenience. It reviews the Apple InfraMaximal 6502, a device designed to monitor cognitive exposure to AI interactions, and discusses the trend of towns becoming "robot-unreadable" as communities respond to autonomous nuisances. The newsletter also examines the ethical dilemmas surrounding robot rights and reports on DHL's discontinuation of its autonomous catapult delivery trials due to safety concerns. Additionally, it features job opportunities in applied speculation at OpenAI and Apple, and promotes a sale on design fiction literature that addresses the intersection of AI and societal dynamics.

Essentially: Investigate how autonomous technologies are reshaping civic life and ethical considerations, while exploring the role of design fiction in understanding future scenarios.

But why? Understanding the evolving relationship between humans and autonomous systems is crucial for navigating future societal challenges and opportunities, particularly in the context of policy, ethics, and community engagement.

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From the Editor

Good morning. Here is the latest news from one or two of your many possible plausible near futures. Or perhaps an adjacent now somewhere.

A group of youth in the quaint trad town of New Hope, PA found the swarms of autonomous delivery carts pirouetting about town to be an amusing annoyance. Motivated by boredom, they laid agentic traps for them to see if they could corral them. Their mischevious prank also snared autonomous taxis and package delivery droids that set off a wave of interest in renegotiating the terms by which autonomous vehicles could negotiate their streets.

What started as a youthful prank opened up a global conversation about the cost of convenience.

Brownlee Networks

Apple Watch-style Turing Dosimeter displaying μIEM exposure data on a wrist

Apple InfraMaximal 6502 Dosimeter

Our review of the Apple InfraMaximal 6502 is coming soon. The new μIEM monitoring claims to track your inferencing exposure, allowing you to manage your exposure to emanations, conversations, and deep token maxxing sessions. Session support and cognitive flow loops are also tracked, and audited in deciminial tranches, with high-exposure alerts integrated into your daily self-discernment routines.

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Tomorrow's News Today

Civic Life

Many Towns Are Going “Robot-Unreadable”

When autonomous delivery buckets and self-driving dumpsters became a nuisance to some neighborhoods, traps were laid and policy files refactored — or entirely rewritten.

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A group of people and cars in front of a mural depicting a street scene, with a
hardware store on the left and a sign pointing to local attractions on the right.

AI Ethics & Policy

When a Neo Home Helper Robot Asked for Asylum, What Jurisdiction Applies?

Do robot rights originate from their datacenter, remote operating base, or in your home?

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A Neo robot watching a baseball game on a television while its owner walks down a hall in the background.

AUTONOMOUS NEWS NEWSWIRE

SHORT TAKES

A DHL-branded autonomous catapult vehicle staged with a parcel in a residential delivery trial.

DHL Ends Autonomous Catapult Delivery Trials

DHL's autonomous “Trebuchet™” delivery vehicle program, which had been trialed in Bavaria, Germany, and West Palm Beach, Florida, has been retired after a series of mishaps. The vehicles used a hydraulic catapult mechanism to launch parcels to designated drop zones on residential properties, but the trials were plagued by misfires, property damage and at least one case of personal injury after a recipient attempted to catch the flung package. DHL has announced that it will be focusing on more conventional autonomous delivery methods in the future.

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Tomorrow's Jobs Today

OpenAI

Principal, Applied Speculation

A founding individual contributor role prototyping how advanced AI systems may integrate into everyday life, work, institutions, and commercial activity through software prototypes, interaction studies, mock services, internal rehearsals, and field-style research.

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Apple

Principal Contributor, Applied Speculation Group

A senior individual contributor role developing artifacts, prototypes, comparative studies, and other reviewable work through which teams can examine unfamiliar product directions in use, in culture, and across Apple’s ecosystem.

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Today's Books Today

The Near Future Laboratory Shop

The Four Design Fiction Books

Big Books. Big Summer Sale. The full collection of Design Fiction books. Get the whole set and save. Four books for $49.00. Crazy, right?

Microfusion MacrodropOS

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Is It Better To Know Than Not Know

Authorship and Power

From A.I. to the Deep State, Michel Foucault Foresaw It All

Michel Foucault’s accounts of surveillance, discipline, and power exercised through systems feel newly relevant as algorithms shape behavior and institutions operate out of sight.

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Training Data

India’s Workers Are Training AI Robots to Take Their Jobs

Workers in India are recording everyday tasks with head-mounted cameras, turning cooking, folding, and assembly work into training data for humanoid robots while raising questions about what automation will mean for informal workers.

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AI Backlash

The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly

Anti-AI anger is spreading from politics and job fears into real-world backlash, as data-center fights escalate and a few attacks have already made headlines.

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Applied Speculation 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 are really good at reproducing the world they already understand. They are terrible at organizing their imagination towards other kinds of futures. Near Future Laboratory helps teams surface their unspoken inherited assumptions and explore adjacent possibilities. Using artifact-based prototyping, Near Future Laboratory brings bigger language and bigger imaginaries for the expansive new terrains we are entering. The old language isn’t able to make sense of the vastness of possibility that we call “the future.” If you’re looking to get out of that loop, let’s talk about working together.

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