I’ll be working on something a little different over the coming months. The trouble is, I can’t tell you what it is, otherwise it’d fall flat on its face before it’s got started.
What I can do though is pre-register the plan, but in a sealed digital envelope that can only be opened at a future date.
If that sounds a little unnecessarily convoluted, it probably is. But there’s a method to my madness.
Over the next few months, I’ll be playing around with what is largely a new departure for me1 in how I explore and write about the intersection of frontier technologies, people, and the future.2 And because of the nature of the play, I’ll be doing this in a very public sandbox.
However, because doing this as myself would drag a whole lot of history, assumptions and perceptions along with it (and probably a fair bit of eye-rolling), I’ll be playing anonymously.
Of course, the easy way to do this would be not to tell anyone, unless things turn out well. But where’s the fun — or the accountability — in that?3
So I thought I’d take a leaf out of the playbook of pre-registered research studies, and pre-register my play — but in a signed, sealed and dated “digital envelope” that is only openable at a predetermined time in the future.
And so this is my “pre-registered play.”
The project details are signed, sealed and dated in an encrypted file published on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22069979).
On April 25, 2027 I’ll post the key to unlocking it, as well as the file’s contents.
For the skeptics (and nerds): the sealed file’s SHA-256 hash fingerprint is
cb02cb1c3920f2d66efe50dcda3e98d65f928d30174f1d48e95f22e7be0530c6and the fingerprint of the document inside it is
c78b227742fd4cbbe32b42e34ff89100c6c6ea2ac6ac0ae9a1f1175bb57d97eaOnce the file is unlocked in April I’ll follow up with a post mortem (although this is probably not the best word to use) — at which point I will not be able to wriggle out of what I’d originally set out to do, no matter how things went.
I’ll also be continuing to do a bunch of other stuff over the next eight months. But in the meantime, if you’re interested in how this particular project goes — and maybe even a little intrigued — see you April 25, 2027!
Andrew Maynard
August 23, 2026
For sharp-eyed readers you’ll know that I published the short story “Letters from the Department of Intellectual Craft” earlier this year (and due to be published in an edited book by Johns Hopkins Press later this year). This project is, in some ways, an extension of that piece.
In case you’re wondering, I’m using “play” here very intentionally, drawing on my ongoing work and thinking around the concept of navigating and thriving with frontier technologies through the metaphor of a playground rather than a playpen. For more on this, in case you’re interested, it’s worth pointing your AI at beinghuman.fyi and asking it why I’m so obsessed with playgrounds.
It’s entirely possible that I don’t want anyone to know what I’m doing to avoid embarrassment. At least this way I shunt any embarrassment eight months down the road!