Book review: Designing Hope, by Sarah Housley In 2021 a survey asked 10,000 young people in ten countries how they felt about climate change. 75% said the future was frightening and 55% thought humanity was doomed. "People are not excited about the future any more," notes design futurist Sarah…

New for @dezeen.com - “the idea of designing for virtual worlds is just getting started” www.dezeen.com/2025/09/25/m...

Utopia, with solar panels: me on solarpunk for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social www.thenewworld.co.uk/sarah-housle...

Far from reducing reliance on fossil fuels, many nations are planning higher levels of fossil fuel production for the coming decades than they did in 2023 #productiongap #climatecrisis Story by @fionahandley.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Some findings of note: ChatGPT has a global and diverse user base, with usage growing faster in poorer countries than in wealthy ones. And people are increasingly using it in their personal lives rather than for help at work. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Only the rich are gaining. Women across the board are loosing

"...it is notable that no major, forward-looking future visions have taken root in our collective imagination since smartphones came to dominate our way of communicating." (@sarahhousley.bsky.social)

"I look at four future visions being developed today: more-than-human futures reimagines our relationship with nature; degrowth redesigns the role of the economy; solarpunk recharges cultural innovation; and the metaverse immerses us in vivid digital worlds." www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

@sarahhousley.bsky.social author of Designing Hope names solarpunk among the top positive visions to shape better tomorrows #BooksForChange #FutureVisions www.bigissue.com/life/the-way...

There’s a word in modern Swedish slang, smygflyga, which describes not admitting to taking a flight because of shame about carbon footprints. It literally means “sneak flying.”   And the word tågskryta describes when you proudly tell everyone that you took the train instead (literally “train brag”).

“This, without a doubt, is neoliberalism’s single most damaging legacy: the realization of its bleak vision has isolated us enough from one another that it became possible to convince us that we are not just incapable of self-preservation but fundamentally not worth saving.” - Naomi Klein

I’m thrilled to be speaking at this year’s #CheltLitFest (10-19 October 2025) 📚🍂 My session Hope for the Future, with Emily Buchanan, is on the 14th October: www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/hope-... Tickets go on sale 4 September

“This is nature only as spectacle.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This has always been clear: plant-based meat alternatives are better for the planet and, at least compared to red meat, better for your health. That this is not widely accepted is the product of meat industry disinfo, science illiteracy, and some very stupid journalists. www.cnn.com/2025/07/21/h...

I wrote about how Geoff Lewis, one of OpenAI’s long running investors, has sparked concern among peers who believe he may be facing a public mental health episode brought on by ChatGPT. futurism.com/openai-inves...

Among all the big bad things happening on our planet, there's one Big Good Thing, the sudden, startling rise of solar energy. It changes the power dynamic, in every sense of the word 'power.' www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

New research predicts global warming will reduce farm yields enough to, in effect, cost all humans their breakfast open.substack.com/pub/billmcki...

i wonder if there's a parallel between inter-generational access to the job and housing markets... i.e. will AI wipe out gen z's access to the bottom of the job market, the way inflated prices wiped out millennials access to housing? if so, the value of inherited wealth will increase once more

I have come to hate the term "techno-optimism," because it has been used to brand extreme techno-utopianism, but it's too powerful a concept to cede to the bros. Technology has made life better across history, but it's done so largely due to the kind of thoughtful implementation they want eliminated

Amazon’s merger with the carceral state means the same robot that delivers your package will come back later to kick in your door and detain you.

This month in Design Intelligence: LARPing the future - how fiction and imagination are influencing futures thinking designintelligence.substack.com/p/design-int...

“It is very dangerous to leave the fate of the world to engineers.” Joe Zadeh on digital twins, mirror worlds, and the dangers of seeing the future simulated too clearly www.noemamag.com/a-digital-tw...

Important new project from @coveringclimatenow.org centers on the fact that most people on earth want climate action now! 89percent.org

"Even low metal levels in nectar can hinder bees’ learning and memory, which degrades their foraging abilities."

Always a great read 👌🏼

Curtailing people’s ability to read widely and carefully, to locate, assess, and compare different sources for themselves, and to write in their own voice about what they find and what it means, is arguably more effective than censorship. It is also one of the most obvious effects of generative AI.

1. Whenever you see really vicious and widespread "spontaneous" attacks on scientific findings that challenge powerful economic interests, you can be assured that corporate lobbyists have been busy behind the scenes. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“They’re going to be so beautiful, they’re going to be the sort of technology neighbourhoods are going to want to have in their back yards.” Filing this under solarpunk #DesigningHope www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

New great piece from @emilymbender.bsky.social explaining the problem with "AI" framing. "If what you are doing is sensible and grounded science, there is...a more precise way to describe it that bolsters rather than undermines the interest and value of your research." buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...

Today in Luxury Surveillance ht @webrant.bsky.social

This is no #AprilFools - the Environment Agency has agreed to a review. Incredible. fightingdirty.org/major-victor...

It has long been clear that this was X’s final destination … as the data generation arm of a slop factory

My new book Designing Hope: Visions to Shape Our Future will be published by The Indigo Press in September! It’s available for preorder at @waterstones.bsky.social here: www.waterstones.com/book/designi... #Booksky #BookAnnouncement

“The future is always being managed, always being optimized, always being innovated, but never fundamentally changed.” Pascal Wicht on how “AI isn’t disrupting the narrative—it’s reinforcing it” www.whispersandgiants.com/2025/02/12/s...

Well worth listening to this frank assessment by @kevinclimate.bsky.social on the mismatch between remaining carbon budgets and our stated climate goals—why 1.5°C looks effectively gone, and even 2°C requires radical change. No fake techno-fixes, just the maths. www.youtube.com/watch?v=barR...

These deeply beautiful maps show the migration patterns of––respectively––Curlew, Kittiwake & Blackcap. From this interactive migration atlas recording migrations of 300 bird species: migrationatlas.org Birds both tether us to places & stitch the world together.

“The corollary of a centre that lacks the incentive to imagine something different is a periphery that has no choice but to do so.” Good article by Onion Collective explaining change processes, transitions and horizons models, and their own petal model medium.com/onioncollect...

Ok, we're doing this. Outside The Lines is live! Call it a soft launch: outsidethelines.pub/call-it-a-so...

"Is this desire for ecological simulation also a kind of capture?" Fabulous essay by Alice Bucknell what it means when the same computing platforms are powering next-gen immersive gaming, long-range climate forecasting and the evaluation of geo-engieneering proposals. www.sum.si/journal-arti...

Short presentation (< 15mins) on just how vanishingly small are our remaining carbon budgets for 1.5 & 2°C - both globally & when downscaled to wealthy industrialised nations. In a handful of years our Paris 2°C commitment will go the way same way as has 1.5°C. climateuncensored.com/irelands-cli...

“The future being offered by the predominant world order is no future at all.” Writer Doug Bierend on how, one way or another, [we are] headed for a degrowth future medium.com/@dougbierend...

What will the future of the warming stripes be? 2024 could be the start of a stabilisation of global temperatures, or it might appear to be a cool year. Which one of these stories becomes reality depends on our choices today, and every day until then. We are likely to regret not acting sooner.

The data is in. 2024 was the warmest year on record, and probably in the whole of human history – about 1.6°C warmer than the pre-industrial period. More than 1 billion individual thermometer measurements, made by thousands of people over many decades, have been condensed into a single number.

*Well, that assertion is rather well-framed

The Eco Jurisprudence monitor is a fascinating & hopeful resource: an interactive database of Earth-centred legal initiatives (eg river-rights) as their number & consequences grow & grow. Cartography as imagining otherwise; a glimpse of a geography of hope. Here: ecojurisprudence.org/dashboard/?m...

*Largest Ever Datacenter Powered by Fossil Fuels www.theregister.com/2024/12/05/m...

gitched sign + one of those pointless TikTok-style ads = unintentional cyberpunk at the Whole Foods

I believe some people can be comforted and helped by AI companions, but it seems clear that the companies making them are not acting responsibly. Excellent from Josh Dzieza www.theverge.com/c/24300623/a...

"Dockless bikes" are the perfect example of the asymmetries created by convenience tech. Incredibly useful and empowering for those who can and do use them, but making a new - potentially dangerous - impediment for everyone who relies on the pavement to get around www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024...

“We’re all haunted by the Hyper Reality video,” says Meta VP in @fastcompany.com ‘s hands-on preview of upcoming AR glasses Orion. They have seen my film, but didn’t understand it. You can’t fix surveillance capitalism by improving its UX. www.fastcompany.com/91229358/ins...