The future has never been this much fun!
If you ever find yourself desperately seeking nuanced perspectives on tech and the future that make you think while bringing a smile to your face — and need a break from AI slop — this may be for you!
One of the many challenges of making sense of today’s technologically complex and fast-paced world is the preponderance of loud voices telling you what to think — whether they’re pushing visions of a tech utopia or impending apocalypse.
These voices get traction because simple ideas ideas repeated often work — especially when they seem to reinforce what your gut tells you is true. But this does mean that more nuanced perspectives and voices often get drowned out.
Which is a problem where thriving in a complex future is all about nuance.
I’d like to think that we bring some of that nuance to thinking about tech and the future in the Modem Futura podcast. Plus, in a world that’s increasingly hungry for human authenticity, we have that in spades!
And so this week, rather than write a long post, I thought I’d simply embed our latest podcast episode and let you decide for yourself.
The Futures Cone: Preposterous to Plausible
Episode 74 of Modem Futura:
No intro, no explanation, no exposition.
Just an suggestion that, if you are desperate for content that invites you to think in creative ways about the future, that opens up possibilities rather that closes them down, that makes you smile — or even laugh out loud, that is not AI generated, and that makes you feel a little smarter and your day a little better, you might want to check us out:
And if you like what you hear here, we’d love you to join us on our journey to explore the intersection between tech, society and the future with a good dose of humor each week. (You can find is wherever you get your podcasts including Apple, Spotify and YouTube).
Cheers!
Andrew
Andrew, this hit home—particularly the call for human authenticity in a landscape increasingly defined by 'optimized' noise.
Sitting here on my lanai in Cape Coral, watching the turkey buzzards circle a thermal, I’m struck by the 'still points' in nature that no algorithm ever quite captures. There is a specific, low-frequency hiss when the wind whips through a porch screen or the way a burrowing owl clicks that feels essentially, stubbornly human to witness.
In my own work, I’m exploring that 'Velocity Gap'—the distance between the hyper-speed of tech projections and the grounded, sensory reality of a manatee in a canal or the physical weight of a construction site. Your 'Futures Cone' is a vital tool, but I think we also need to keep a 'Sensory Anchor'—those messy, unpolished details that remind us we aren't just data points in a plausible future, but living, breathing observers of the present.
Thanks for keeping the nuance alive. It’s the imperfections that make the future worth visiting