A Palm Springs tech conference couldn’t decide if the future was awesome or terrible but either way, the goal of PS/NExT was to pull the conversation out of chatbot fantasy and back into the physical realities of, you know — land, water, power, and the way tech changes daily life. Watching Coachella residents fight a hyperscale data center made it clear that “digital” decisions always end up local. Hearing more and more of these sorts of conversations, particularly as data centers get poured into places where there was no permission, really.

Curiously, at the same event, some Coachella Valley teams took up some messy, real-world workflows and turned them into working prototypes with AI-assisted development and did so fast enough to ship them in under 24 hours. Stuff from a wind-tour Q&A app that can handle guest myths with authoritative answers, to automation for meditation publishing that used to require juggling six tools. There was also an invoicing-to-dashboard system for zoo waste tracking, mockup-brochure automation for custom t-shirts, and a Basecamp intelligence dashboard that finally makes overdue work easy to understand. It felt like the best kind of maker energy: practical, urgent, and immediately useful.

The new 2026 issue of the Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice treats science fiction as a tool for thinking about real, emerging technologies. Its standout thread is how stories shape what future technologies might look like and who they might serve. An interview with Arne Sönnichsen examines why space’s future depends on the stories we tell, alongside a focus on technology assessment meeting anthropology and the question of “the human.”

Anthropic’s new 90-second ad starts with burning homes and gravestones which is, you know — weird for an aspirational ad? But I'm not ad guy, but still..I'm an Anthropic “customer” so I gotta wonder.

The ad asks whether AI can be trusted, then switches to whales, hugs, and a hopeful “Keep thinking” which I can only see as a peculiar index to Apple's old “Think different” without the conclusiveness..sounds a bit like..“keep doing whatev..”

So the message is basically “we don’t know,” while the visuals feel more like a light, slow, apocolyptic panic than considered caution.

Seems like AI companies' marketing and comms folks are struggling to turn real fears into messaging without making everything feel like a strange semi-lucid anxiety dream.

The /friends page revives the best part of the old web: a personal address for linking to people you genuinely like, with a short note that makes each connection feel human. A simple yourdomain.com/friends page becomes an act of generosity and helps search engines understand who you trust as AI search becomes more “fan-out” and citation-heavy.

There was a fantastic radio show I listened to weekly on my hometown college radio station called “Desert Cruising”. It was proper college radio. A PhD history student DJ'ing an entire genre that nudged up against metal meets psychedelia meets Eurasian folk rock..I guess?

And then PhD student finally finishes the dissertation and the radio show ends. Hurrah! for finishing the diss — but, then, like...where's my show?

Well, a bit of digging found archives of the playlist and even some tape of some of the shows. With a bit more jiujitsu with Claude and Codex, I fashioned an oddly shaped contrivance that spent some time putting the show back together — and then I shoved it on my OG iPod. Quite satisfying.

I say all of that to say that a renewed interest in “analog” living includes older digital devices that make choices harder and distractions quieter. Celeste Stange’s iPod Nano is a perfect example — she is avoiding musical FOMO by listening to what is already on the device. People are buying CDs, using older MP3 players, and setting weekly rituals around downloads because restriction turns listening back into something to savor.

The Dais report “The Art in Artificial Intelligence” offers a Canada-focused look at what generative AI is doing to creative work and the people doing it. It connects AI tools, shifting job realities, and the skills Canadians will need next. Written at Toronto Metropolitan University as part of the Future Skills Centre’s broader work, it draws on input from people already in the creative industries. Creative work is changing, and training and policy have to change with it.

How might ethnography shift when we stop relying only on what people can recall in interviews and start working with what they actually see and hear, captured in first person through wearables.

Meta’s Project Aria turns wearer-centered footage into the kind of data machines need to understand spaces like homes and campuses. By pairing egocentric video with heavy-duty tracking and sensing, Meta is aiming to generate digital twins that future humans and robots can actually live inside. It fits neatly with the company’s bigger pitch: if glasses are how you correct vision, AI glasses might soon be how you avoid a cognitive disadvantage.

Selected roles and opportunities in applied speculation, research, and the work around emerging technology.

Principal Applied Research Engineer/Generalist

Apple is seeking a senior applied research engineer/generalist to bridge prototypes and production: building end-to-end ML systems, iterating on model behavior, and translating research into product-ready engineering decisions that account for users, governance, and real product constraints.

Google — Principal, Applied Speculation

Google is looking for an experienced practitioner to research, investigate, prototype, and communicate how emerging technologies may change everyday participation, agency, institutions, and public life. The role spans product thinking, engineering, cultural research, design fiction, and storytelling.