Three futures - an invitation
A scaffold for writers.
Three speculative snapshots of human society - taken at twenty-year intervals across the rest of this century - and an Advancement Arc that frames them. Together they sketch one plausible trajectory: what we look like in 2046 after the next two decades of technological compression, in 2066 once the consequences of that compression have arrived, and in 2086 when the children born now are middle-aged and the world they inherited has settled into something none of us alive today have yet imagined.
They are a rough working scaffolding, not a manifesto. Many trajectories are possible. This is one I find plausible and useful for thinking with.
What you can do with these
If you are a writer - published, aspiring, or just curious - you are invited to use these as the world of a story you write. Choose one snapshot, or two, or all three. Use the Advancement Arc as background, or ignore it. Honour the snapshots, or push against them. The framework is here to be worked with, not preserved.
The licensing is simple. I retain copyright on the Advancement Arc and the three snapshots themselves. Any story you write using them is yours - you do not need permission to write it, you do not owe me anything, and you do not have to share it. If you do want to share what you write, send it via the contact form. I will read everything that comes in. I will not promise feedback.
If something you write makes its way into the world, I would love to know.
The documents
- Advancement Arc - background
The framing document. Six developmental arcs - cellular agriculture, persistent ambient capture, non-implanted neural sensing, programmable architecture, building-scale atmospheric capture, and the institutional intelligence - tracked across the forty-year frame.
- Snapshot - Tuesday, 2046
Twenty years from now. A lobby desk in a mid-density Australian city. A capture-skin retrofit, a paper-wrapped parcel of eggs, and a small white band above a child's ear.
- Snapshot - Tuesday, 2066
Forty years from now. A bedroom wall that grew by half a metre overnight, a building-egg breakfast, a focus-index figure of seventy, and a child with no band sitting on a step.
- Snapshot - Tuesday, 2086
Sixty years from now. A studio that does not require the read. A chisel that took forty minutes to sharpen, a girl whose band AION cannot read, and a mother who takes her halo off and puts it in her pocket.