New to the Future of Being Human? Start Here:
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If you’ve recently subscribed to the Future of Being Human Substack, or have just stumbled across it, this is a great place to start to get a sense of what the Substack is about, what it covers, and how it approaches tech, society & the future.
The Future of being Human Substack is:
Future‑centric and responsibility‑driven. Consistently treating the future as something we co‑create and owe duties to, not just something that “happens” — with humans as “architects of the future” who must close the gap between what we can do and what we should do.
Transdisciplinary and convergence‑focused. Moving between physics, complex systems, ethics, policy, social science, philosophy, communication, and more, with a strong eye on how converging technologies (AI, biotech, neurotech, materials, etc.) create qualitatively new kinds of transitions and risks.
Nuanced in its approach to risk and social value. Instead of treating “risk” as just probability×harm, reframing it around threats to what people value — identity, dignity, belonging, aspiration — and advocating for governance that is explicitly attentive to those less tangible but deeply important things.
Committed to inclusion and de‑marginalizing futures. Repeatedly asking who gets to design, benefit from, and be harmed by emerging technologies, and arguing that futures built only by the powerful are, by definition, unjust and unstable.
Story‑ and culture‑led. Using stories, metaphors and shared cultural objects as tools to help people think together about complex futures.
Willing to experiment with AI while interrogating it. Not writing about AI from the outside, but actively using it and then turning those experiments into occasions to probe risk, alignment, benefits, scholarship, labor, meaning, and more.