Fasicnating breakdown of how spectacularly wrong these forecasts were. The contrast between predicted moon colonies and actual workslop epidemic really underlines the gap between hype cycles and engineering realities. I've been tracking AI adoption in mid-size companies for like 2 years now, and the 95% pilot failure rate tracks exactly with waht I'm seeing: lots of shiny demos that fall apart when deployed.
Examines how technology has drifted away from the people who use it, shifting from empowering tools into systems that extract data, erode agency, and prioritize scale over human well-being. Through personal experience and cultural observation, it shows how many promises of modern tech convenience, connection, progress came with hidden costs that left users feeling watched, managed, and disconnected. The post argues for a return to technology built around trust, ownership, and human-centered design.
Explores how modern systems appear polished and efficient while quietly hollowing out autonomy, meaning, and social connection. It traces how market-driven innovation and techno-utopian narratives create frictionless surfaces that mask deeply extractive dynamics beneath. The post points toward escape not through rejection of technology, but through rebuilding smaller, local, and humane alternatives that restore agency and participation.
Articulates a forward-looking vision for technology that belongs to people again rather than managing them. It identifies the assumptions that must be discarded surveillance, lock-in, and infinite growth and replaces them with principles centered on ownership, transparency, and human-scale systems. The post concludes by outlining what this alternative future could look like in practice, emphasizing that it becomes possible when people deliberately choose to build and support it.
Using past performance as an indicator of future results (or just taking a look around and seeing what’s actually there) I can confidently predict the following for 2026:
1. AGI remains in the realm of science fiction. Predictive models have no conception of the physical world and they never will as long as machine learning remains in a silo. Changing the vocabulary doesnt change the results. A rose by any other name will still just be software
2. Ai is about wealth transfer and repricing human accountability, that bubble is not going to pop just because reasonable people look at a tech stack and decide the use case remains limited. We’ve reached cult status. Should Tesla stock be worth 50$? Yes but that doesnt matter because it’s captured by its carnival barking CEO. Should BitCoin be worth 0$? Yes but acolytes who cant tell you what use it has beyond skirting sanctions have believed it to be worth something and so it is - Ai is in the space of promising believables not deliverables, and right now we need to believe data centers are the answer or the ass falls out of the economy
3. Robotics arent going to do anything new. A tele-operated humanoid bot is just a slave with a subscription fee. We still never got that revolutionary product from Jon Ive and Sam Altman (its a pet rock that only becomes a pet rock in the future, when its remotely disabled)
4. Self Driving cars will continue failing to reach L5 autonomy, foiled by bicyclists and pigeons
5. Katie Perry will once again be invited to space by a billionaire but this time she will politely refuse. Having been to the mesosphere and finding nothing there, she will instead write a song about how women can do anything when they harness the power of friendship
"...with AI technology built to connect people at a human level and drive them closer to each other, even when physically they’re apart..."
I read that as [we will] "connect people through DIGITAL INTERFACES and HERD THEM INTO GOOEY, WINDOWLESS SILO'S ... always craving the oxytocin of real life connection but never ever getting it."
[We will] "drive them" is the tell.
This new herding technology is what they're referring to in prediction #1 "...unleashing a wave of innovation IN HERDOLOGY to compare with the industrial and digital Revolutions of the past..."
Well, here is some BBC coverage of a Global Environmental Outlook report I've worked on throughout 2025 and that 200+ other scientists have spent the last 5 years developing:
Fasicnating breakdown of how spectacularly wrong these forecasts were. The contrast between predicted moon colonies and actual workslop epidemic really underlines the gap between hype cycles and engineering realities. I've been tracking AI adoption in mid-size companies for like 2 years now, and the 95% pilot failure rate tracks exactly with waht I'm seeing: lots of shiny demos that fall apart when deployed.
Instead of predicting the future why not just build a better one?
Part 1: The Post Bullshit World:
https://kennetheharrell.substack.com/p/the-post-bullshit-world
Examines how technology has drifted away from the people who use it, shifting from empowering tools into systems that extract data, erode agency, and prioritize scale over human well-being. Through personal experience and cultural observation, it shows how many promises of modern tech convenience, connection, progress came with hidden costs that left users feeling watched, managed, and disconnected. The post argues for a return to technology built around trust, ownership, and human-centered design.
Part 2: Escaping Our Immaculate Dystopia:
https://kennetheharrell.substack.com/p/escaping-our-immaculate-dystopia
Explores how modern systems appear polished and efficient while quietly hollowing out autonomy, meaning, and social connection. It traces how market-driven innovation and techno-utopian narratives create frictionless surfaces that mask deeply extractive dynamics beneath. The post points toward escape not through rejection of technology, but through rebuilding smaller, local, and humane alternatives that restore agency and participation.
Part 3: A New Tomorrow:
https://kennetheharrell.substack.com/p/a-new-tomorrow
Articulates a forward-looking vision for technology that belongs to people again rather than managing them. It identifies the assumptions that must be discarded surveillance, lock-in, and infinite growth and replaces them with principles centered on ownership, transparency, and human-scale systems. The post concludes by outlining what this alternative future could look like in practice, emphasizing that it becomes possible when people deliberately choose to build and support it.
Great Article!
Using past performance as an indicator of future results (or just taking a look around and seeing what’s actually there) I can confidently predict the following for 2026:
1. AGI remains in the realm of science fiction. Predictive models have no conception of the physical world and they never will as long as machine learning remains in a silo. Changing the vocabulary doesnt change the results. A rose by any other name will still just be software
2. Ai is about wealth transfer and repricing human accountability, that bubble is not going to pop just because reasonable people look at a tech stack and decide the use case remains limited. We’ve reached cult status. Should Tesla stock be worth 50$? Yes but that doesnt matter because it’s captured by its carnival barking CEO. Should BitCoin be worth 0$? Yes but acolytes who cant tell you what use it has beyond skirting sanctions have believed it to be worth something and so it is - Ai is in the space of promising believables not deliverables, and right now we need to believe data centers are the answer or the ass falls out of the economy
3. Robotics arent going to do anything new. A tele-operated humanoid bot is just a slave with a subscription fee. We still never got that revolutionary product from Jon Ive and Sam Altman (its a pet rock that only becomes a pet rock in the future, when its remotely disabled)
4. Self Driving cars will continue failing to reach L5 autonomy, foiled by bicyclists and pigeons
5. Katie Perry will once again be invited to space by a billionaire but this time she will politely refuse. Having been to the mesosphere and finding nothing there, she will instead write a song about how women can do anything when they harness the power of friendship
We guess a lot don't we?
"But nope: we certainly aren’t doing “everything possible to stop emitting more carbon,”
We have to acknowledge some improvement: 2025 is the first year when global CO2 emission is less than previous year.
"...with AI technology built to connect people at a human level and drive them closer to each other, even when physically they’re apart..."
I read that as [we will] "connect people through DIGITAL INTERFACES and HERD THEM INTO GOOEY, WINDOWLESS SILO'S ... always craving the oxytocin of real life connection but never ever getting it."
[We will] "drive them" is the tell.
This new herding technology is what they're referring to in prediction #1 "...unleashing a wave of innovation IN HERDOLOGY to compare with the industrial and digital Revolutions of the past..."
Well, here is some BBC coverage of a Global Environmental Outlook report I've worked on throughout 2025 and that 200+ other scientists have spent the last 5 years developing:
by Matt McGrath and headline "UN environment report 'hijacked' by US and others over fossil fuels, top scientist says". https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1w9ge93w9po