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about future tense subscribe sign in home front page about technology followed to its human consequences future tense watches technology leave the stage enter the furniture of ordinary life and begin moving the chairs about once a month i begin with something you could put on a table or in a court filing a product a failure a scientific result a rule a corporate process or a piece of observed behaviour i follow it through the walls and into the likely changes in power status work intimacy agency or shared reality the result is a long form narrative investigation the sort of thing that might occupy a chapter of a book acquire a tasteful price sticker and spend three years judging you from a bedside table i keep researching until the evidence strongest objection and likely human consequences have received more than a hurried pat on the head i have spent nearly three decades around safety critical and consequential technology it taught me to admire what engineering can do and to watch the surrounding social machinery with the suspicion normally reserved for a damp plug socket the thesis beneath much of my work is simple advanced technology fails socially before it fails technically this leaves plenty of room to like technology sometimes the machine works the institution behaves sensibly and the future deserves applause the interesting questions are who receives the benefit who absorbs the uncertainty and which choice becomes inevitable five minutes after somebody has made it science fiction is prior art i am interested in fiction whose social pressure could become real rules and institutions technological satire bureaucratic cosmoses competence mediated reality ethical optimism manufactured belief enhancement and desire gadget prediction is the least interesting trick i want to know what the story understood about people and what it missed about the price policy procurement decision or irresistible convenience that would carry its future through the front door choose your reading depth free readers receive a substantial opening from every monthly investigation plus selected signature work and curated routes through the library paid members continue into the complete investigation the history strongest counterarguments competing interpretations second order consequences possible responses and final synthesis they also receive the complete future tense library founding members receive the same publication and contribute more towards the independent time required to make it the secret council has mercifully failed to materialise this is probably safer for everyone annual suits readers who already use future tense to inspect the world monthly gives the machinery a trial run already a paid member your current price remains grandfathered while your subscription stays active future tense is independently written and its editorial judgement belongs to me relevant public conflicts are disclosed private access supplies no invisible authority if this sounds like the way you want to read technology begin with how the publication works how to read future tense subscribe subscribe to future tense future tense publishes monthly investigations of real technology human consequences and the plausible science fiction futures arriving through ordinary decisions written independently by a z mackay subscribe people 2026 a mackay privacy terms collection notice start your substack get the app substack is the home for great culture this site requires javascript to run correctly please turn on javascript or unblock scripts