This issue opens from Dubai, where I’m split between the Dubai Future Forum and MBZUAI’s “The Future of Being Human” symposium, and uses Hal Foster’s *The Anti-Aesthetic* and DOGMA 95 as lenses on generative AI. The lead essay argues for an AI Anti-Aesthetic: a way of working with machine image-making that keeps the seams visible, foregrounds intention and judgment, and restores the interval between prompt and picture as the place where thinking happens. From there, the newsletter moves...

A visit to Harvard-Westlake’s student-run “NextGen” Future Day becomes the anchor of this issue. I was invited to sit on a panel about AI — but the real story wasn’t the panel at all; it was the students themselves. Their earnestness, curiosity, and initiative offered a welcome reminder that hope often comes from the people actually building the future, not the ones forecasting it. From there the issue wanders outward: the Dubai Future Forum; ComfyUI meetups and the...

This week’s issue reflects on how Hello, Skater Girl — Julian Bleecker’s 2011–2012 photo project documenting women’s skateboarding is an exemplar of his broader practice: noticing the overlooked and making emerging futures tangible. From photographing Amelia Brodka and Lizzie Armanto before they became Olympians to building OMATA as an analog counterpoint in a digital market, Julian traces the throughline between observation, imagination, and action. The issue also features the new podcast Futurish by Radha Mistry and Tobias Revell,...

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In this reflection from the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, Julian Bleecker revisits Fredric Jameson’s analysis of postmodern architecture as a metaphor for disorientation and “systemic subjectlessness.” Wandering through the building’s mirrored corridors, he connects Jameson’s insights to our present digital labyrinths — the invisible architectures of data, algorithms, and AI that now shape our perception and agency. What once was a physical loss of orientation has become a cognitive and existential one, mediated by code and platforms....

How can speculative design can make imagination tangible within organizations. Through Hala Auf’s thesis on Object-Oriented Ontology — viewing objects as cultural verbs rather than inert things — the newsletter reflects on how design shapes meaning and community. Julian Bleecker connects this to his experience building OMATA and proposes an R&D for culture, where “functional fictions” and rapid prototypes help teams explore and define futures before they arrive. The piece closes with whimsical notes on “Largely Languid Models”...