Reckons

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Next year is going to be big. Well, I personally don't think it'll be big, but if you ask the AI industry, here's the things that will happen by the end of 2026: * According to the Financial Times, OpenAI's Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas will be "fully operational," and

Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington told me that they believe generative AI can help millions of suffering people. I’m not so sure.

A global deep dive into what's driving demand, derailing budgets, and defining the tech stack of tomorrow, straight from the frontlines of the AECO industry.

From Single‑Point Optimisation to Multi‑Value Design

The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

In this first half of my interview with Cameron Tonkinwise, we discuss design as a practice that necessarily takes place in an already-designed context, and what that practice has in common with worldbuilding.

Forging an effective ecological transition requires improving people's daily lives

Fragments of a rare Merlin manuscript from the 1200s discovered and digitised in a ground-breaking three-year project at Cambridge University Library.

By Luis Lozano-Paredes

What might we gather in looking and thinking more carefully? As we proceed with vital concerns for our planet, global and immediate communities, and the arts in all their forms, a critical engagement with AI may disclose ideas and practices for other causes that matter to us.

And LOTR is brain-rot for technologists

Issue #1: A new magazine of stories, studies, and science

The shift in the role of designers within organisations hit me as I sat at the back of a fancy conference room in Switzerland. In front of…

LAS VEGAS — There is something unstable at the most basic level about any space with too much capitalism happening in it. The air is all wrong, there’s simultaneously too much in it and not enough of it. Everyone I spoke to about the Consumer Electronics Show before I went to it earlier this month […]

FBI investigation under way as residents across US north-east report mysterious aircraft sightings for weeks

Aalto University launches the Nokia Design Archive, an online repository that charts the pioneering history of Finland’s legendary mobile phone manufacturer

by Delphi Carstens. Hyperstition is a neologism that combines the words 'hyper' and 'superstition' to describe the action of successful ideas in the arena of culture. Akin to neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins' concept of memes, hyperstitions work at the deeper evolutionary level of social organisation in that they influence the course taken by cultural evolution. Unlike memes, however, hyperstitions describe a specific category of ideas. Coined by renegade academics, the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), hyperstition describes both the effects and the mechanisms of apocalyptic postmodern 'phase out' or 'meltdown' culture.

“Decolonization” is a word we’re increasingly hearing at design events, often being used interchangeably with “diversity.” It’s important to emphasize that while the terms are linked, they shouldn’t be confused. Diversity is about bringing more people to the table. Decolonization is about changing t

An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.

Being Dogmatic about Defining Speculative Critical Design Future Fiction

Half a century ago, Lewis Mumford developed a concept that explains why we trade autonomy for convenience

The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people.

What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.

Malkovich. Malkovich. Malkovich?

Flirty, sexy, seductive, supportive. Your AI companion can be whatever you want her to be. And now a growing number of men are turning to bots to ease their loneliness or satisfy their kinks. The choices are endless. The emotions are real.

ITV’s Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia features undercover reporting on the ground in the nati...

ChatGPT, Claude and other language models have dominated the mainstream discussions and use. However the future of AI lies in models outside of language.

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.