Whenever futurists sketched daily life after the robots, they drew silver jumpsuits, food pills, and homes that looked like airport lounges. But the more I think about it, the less likely that seems. The real future is not about speeding up everything until it’s frictionless. It’s about slowing down, because suddenly we can afford to. Not financially – temporally.
Continue reading “Forward to the Past”
Month: September 2025
I wish I could speak Akkadian
Imagine saying to a machine: I wish I could speak Akkadian. And instead of a blank stare, it nods politely and begins surrounding you with a world in which Akkadian is normal. Cartoons chatter in it, bedtime stories arrive in it, recipes explain themselves in it. Before long, you’re dreaming in the tongue of Babylon.
Soil and Labour
Eight months ago I wrote here about the future of food – from robot foragers bringing wild garlic to your door to decentralised swaps of apples for eggs. That vision was about what ends up on our plates. But behind the cuisine lies the soil, and if the soil fails, so does every other dream.