Good morning. Here is the latest news from one or two of your many possible plausible near futures. This news — artifacts from those plausible near futures — are not predictions, but rather explorations of what might be. Think of this work of applied speculation as a kind of policy laboratory with cultural R&D attached: where need artifacts to carry the things that follow-on from a strategic decision an organization might make.

You may look at today's news and even this newsletter and think that doing an artifact like this, taking the time to think it through, conjure the presentation, etc., to be a luxury. I do this because the value sits in the things that the speculative artifacts carry for us and the range of the consequences that this kind of work makes available for examination, or for studying, or for finding the previously unknown angles or opportunities.

Rich probes into possibility are not a luxury. They are evolutionary advantage. They are existential hedges against an uncertain future.

Some will see this as anti-technology satire, which is like saying that Honey Nut Cheerios are only a breakfast cereal and one mustn't ever enjoy it as a snack or late-night dessert.

I've come to realize that humor and satire are an especially useful idiom through which to do sense-making around emerging technologies. You can tell fun stories that are there to make productive, meaningful insights more accessible — and less finger-pointer-y.

So — in this issue, we explore what gets carried into a near future where synthetic selves — agents we dispatch to do our bidding — interact with autonomous systems.

Our lead story: SameSame® digitwins were built to preserve a person’s preferences and habits. Owners are now discovering that those systems can act on an inferred personality in ways they did not authorize.