“If global governance comprises not just formal institutions and regulations but the ‘mood music’ of the world, what part do we all have to play in shaping that mood today and taking responsibility for the future which transpires? Will leaders take collective action and contribute to digital civil society? Will digital platforms embrace a duty of care towards the most vulnerable users? Or will competitive opportunity be sought in the cracks, if tectonic shifts occur in the management of the global internet?”
One of my contributions to the 2025 Global Youth Climate Summit, hosted by the University of Oxford, has just gone online at the Oxford Climate Change Challenge site.
enables people not to say, “Which future do I think I want, from the limits of my perception and understanding today”, but instead to ask “How would people in each different future judge the decision which I currently think to be so wise?”
This is the true benefit of manufactured hindsight: a kind of epistemic humility in the face of uncertainty, where instead of presuming we know what’s best for times which haven’t arrived yet, we enter into dialogue with potential futures and see beyond the received wisdom which may limit as well as reassure us.
If we simply ask ourselves, as we head into a new year, how this moment will be remembered, it tells us something about our understanding of the here-and-now – but also our beliefs about the future which is ahead of us.
The answers we come up with provide us with assumptions to explore, test, and challenge. What if a different future awaits, perhaps one that will judge us by different values and standards to those we hold today? What if hindsight will teach us a lesson we hadn’t yet imagined?
By exploring this question and different potential answers, we can reach for wisdom, rather than simply pointing at the future we think we want, on the basis of where we stand in the uncertain present.
We explore how the structures, dynamics, and value of internet governance may play out in different scenarios – and the implications for the situations and decisions we face today.
I’m speaking at the UCL Languages of the Future conference on 6th June, presenting a paper titled “Are we even talking about tomorrow? Uncertainty, agency, and the encounter with the sublime”.
The event brings together contributors from across academia and broader society to think through the complex relationships between languages and times to come. We’ve been given a few big questions to chew on, like: How can “languages of the future” encapsulate specific individual disciplines, embrace diverse knowledge systems, convey the urgency of problems that are yet to arise, and honour the voices of the more-than-human world?
I’ll be standing on the shoulders of thinkers like UCL’s Richard Sandford to explore uncertainty, agency, and the “thick present”: an understanding of the here-and-now encompassing remembrance and anticipation. As Rafael Ramírez and Angela Wilkinson have it,
The future is always an aspect of the present. The future has not “taken place,” but the present always “holds” the future, and holds it as potential. Indeed, the future is never “later,” is it always (experienced, imagined) “now.”
I’m pleased to be presenting at the University of Oxford’s Human-Algorithm Interaction Workshop 2025, on “Governing the futures you didn’t see coming: artificial intelligence scenarios“.
Do join us in Oxford, 5-8 July, for an interdisciplinary event delving into the complex and evolving relationship between humans and algorithms.
The annual workshop is a gathering of industry leaders, AI pioneers, and leading researchers who will explore the evolving role of AI in business, governance, and society. This year’s theme is “Shaping the future of AI: innovation, ethics and impact.”
I’m pleased to be delivering two sessions as part of the University of Oxford’s contribution to the Right Here Right Now Global Youth Climate Summit, a 24-hour virtual event presented by UN Human Rights and the Saïd Business School.
The online gathering brings together students and educators from across the world to share ideas about embedding climate action at the heart of education systems.
This Friday, the Foresight Club of the European Parliamentary Research Service hosts a presentation from Sophie Mitchell, Chief Communications Officer of Australia’s domain name regulator auDA.
It feels somehow timely that “The Ghosts We See From the Mountains“, a chapter co-written with the University of Galway’s Marie Mahon for the Routledge volume Crisis and Body Politics in Twenty-First Century Production, is now live online and open access.
The chapter explores the useful intersection of Oxford-style scenario planning with issues of spatial justice and Verónica Gago’s concept of the “body-territory”.
Thanks to volume editors Charlotte Spear and Maddie Sinclair for bringing everything together.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 