For Creatives Seeking Emergent and Regenerative Future Foresight

Thought this week

Transformation design means to imagine and create better and new futures that are enduring and differentiated.

- Brian Collins

How's your week unfolding? Hit reply and let me know.

Mine? I'm in the liminal space between phases of my Biomimicry training—just completing Scoping with its deep dive into 1-2-1 interviews, and now plunging into Discovery. The next two months will be a pure research lab: exploring how Nature's principles can rewire our approach to future foresight. More on that soon.

Meanwhile, today's dispatch is a scaffolding of insights —from hype anatomy to speculative futures:

The Anatomy of Hype report by Ben Culpin for Majesty — a perspective on how hype shapes (and distorts) our collective horizon
Pioneers sharing radical visions for 2025's Digital Transformation — the finale of my 2-part Spur series.
Speculative Thinking and Fashion's Future — Ricardo Nascimento's pitch-perfect recap of our Source session mapping fashion's possible 2035 retail
Cross-pollination — curated inspirations to spark your work, nourish your thinking, and expand your explorations
Parting provocation — connecting past insights to our precarious present

Thank you for being here,

The Anatomy of Hype

To truly grasp the anatomy of hype, Ben Culpin at Majesty explored 'the pervasive role of hype across industries by interviewing a diverse range of people with lived experience across sectors ranging from Blockchain, 3D printing, Real Estate, Foresight, Sneakers, and the Creator Economy. The in-depth article draws insights from 13 guest contributors including myself and around these edges:

The Duality of Hype
Emotional Impact of Hype
Navigating The Hype Cycle
The Future of Hype

Read the Anatomy of Hype here

Pioneers share their vision for Digital Transformation in 2025

Following last month’s column on Regeneration, we dive into 2025's focus on Digital Transformation with our set of pioneers sharing their perspectives on new technological ecosystems and their imperatives: technologies centred around the user's benefit, combining artificial intelligence, ethical oversight, inclusivity, personal expression and authenticity. In the last of our 2-part series, I have also included my take on emergent technology.

Here are the visionary voices who contributed their 2025 insights:

On Inclusivity within Artificial Intelligence in the fashion industry by Stephanie Thomas, Founder and CEO Cur8able A Fashion Tech Company
On Sustainability and Digital Fashion by Olga Chernysheva, DRESSX Chief Sustainability Officer
Evolved Digital ecosystem that place users at its core by Leanne Elliott Young, Multi-award-winning tech founder, 2023 “Number 1 Woman in Web3 Europe”, CEO and co-founder of the Institute of Digital Fashion (IoDF)

Read the full piece here

Speculative Thinking and Fashion’s Future

Passing the mic during our interactive debate and speculative Design session

Last week at Source Fashion, I ran a 1-hour Speculative Design interactive session and debate where we mapped out four possible futures for fashion retail in 2035.

Instead of rehashing it all myself, check out Ricardo O'Nascimento's spot-on write-up that captures exactly what we accomplished in that power-packed hour. His take on our session is worth the read and outlines the 4 scenarios (accompanied with AI generated illustrations):

Conscious Constraint
Optimised Everything
Machine Mastery
Zero New Normal

Thank you Ricardo! I couldn't have written better about the session outcomes and steal here a snippet from your article's intro:

A Departure from the Predictable
The premise of the session was simple and profound: suspend disbelief. For an hour, we were asked to step out of our present-day knowledge of fashion’s limitations — whether economic, cultural, or technological — and enter speculative scenarios designed to provoke thought, discussion, and, perhaps, unease.

Read Speculative Thinking and Fashion’s Future here

Cross-pollination

Enlightening:

5 Insights on how Neuroscience of Futures-Thinking by Ewa Lombard. Thank you Alessandra Gallo for sharing!
Entering the Neo-Natural - Leadership in an emerging era - Thank you Cato Hunt of Space Doctors for sharing!

Nurturing:

Write a letter to your future self and receive it later. Loved doing this with Communitree this week.
Play the New metaphors game if you need to reframe problems.
Are you an Interstitionary? Find out here, if you operate through a variety of lenses as a hyper-connector - be it ideas, people, resources. Based on the discovery of the Interstitium.

Convening:

The Living Future conference - May 6–8, 2025 Portland, Oregon
TBD conference - April 3 Online (catch me there too)
The Biomimicry Confluence - A two-day conference where nature-inspired ideas, innovations and innovators flow together. This has an amazing program which includes talks about the latest innovations in biomaterials, so a great one for design forecasters as well.
Leading change: skills for transformation - March 26, at the RSA London
The Possibility Studies Network: a vibrant community of academics, researchers, and practitioners dedicated to exploring the vast realm of human and more-than-human possibilities.

Supporting:

Urgent call for donations. Two-thirds of Accra's Kantamanto Market - West Africa's largest secondhand clothing market and crucial circular economy hub - have been devastated by fire, impacting thousands of livelihoods and families. THE REVIVAL and AfroDistrict, have organised a GoFundMe here, every contribution matters.

Parting Thoughts

This week I connected with the very inspiring Theo Erasmus. As we discussed approaches to action and examined the roots of today's democracy-threatening global chaos, I found myself revisiting a piece I published on March 22nd, 2017, just months into Trump's 1st term. Titled "Narcissism the New Normal" this piece remains disturbingly relevant eight years later—with anger now outweighing frustration. Among the many references and topics explored, Plato's prediction stands out:

In the BBC's News Night piece "What can Plato teach us about Trump?', Plato is quoted from the first book ever published on politics "Plato's Republic" where he predicted tyranny would probably be established out of no other regime than democracy.