Category: reflections

The weekly reflections on the news in human-AI-thing co-performances are brought to life via a story from the future of living with agentic things in the city.

A Day in the life: The Ginger Grid

I wake to a soft ripple of brass and bike chains—the “Bitter Bridge” profile our neighborhood brewed into its IPA last spring. The sound isn’t coming from a speaker in my room; it’s in the street outside, and the light through my blinds is tinted the amber that the profile taught the lamp posts to remember. Our block voted for this motif after the brewing co-op sent around tasting flights. Bitter, bright, a flash of citrus—somehow the flavor mapped to the sound of early commuters, and now it’s become how morning feels here.

At the corner café, the bartender pulls a ginger beer with the “Muddy Rhizome” tag. It’s the winter recipe: earthy heat, short finish. The tap handle has the NFC glyph that links to the profile’s social thread; I tap it, and my feed shows the neighboring district’s “Waxwing” IPA—a poet’s beer, crisp and clean. The city’s Ginger Grid aggregates these profiles across neighborhoods, and you can trace routes by flavor alone: follow Waxwing uptown, then switch to Rhizome to spiral back home.

Outside, the billboard across the tram stop murmurs awake as I arrive. It’s a national campaign from the brewery federation—a shimmering ribbon of foam, streetlights refracted in it, the slogan: “Drink Local, Link Global.” The panel senses our block’s Bitter Bridge profile and draws it into the spot like a warm sample, then lays it beside Waxwing. The ad isn’t static; it’s more like a tasting note for the city itself. A QR note invites us to tonight’s shared pour: three neighborhoods will stream their ambient profiles into the plaza and mingle them.

On the tram, I watch the line graph of today’s linkage emerge on my phone. The city’s soundscape is stitched by brew-tags, and every tag carries a governance token. When the ambience gets too intense, you can dial it down for your block. We learned that last month when a glitch introduced a deepfake saxophonist to our profile—someone had scraped an old video of the bandleader who passed away and layered his phrasing over our mornings. The effect was beautiful and wrong. The authenticity flags lit up red; the profile moderators sent a note: “We don’t let ghosts perform without consent.” The saxophonist’s daughter posted a response and asked if we’d like a studio outtake with his approval. We switched it in. The sound changed, softer now, but true.

At noon, I cross into Waxwing territory. The air cools; the streetlights shift to glacial white, and the shadows sharpen. People say this district’s profile makes you walk straighter. The local billboard is an evolving poem, lines rearranging themselves as passersby vote with their cups. A tiny badge in the corner guarantees “no synthetic faces” today. Their brewer says the poem is “our archive you can drink.” I sip the IPA and feel the neighborhood in the back of my throat.

By dusk, the shared pour starts. We stand in the plaza with paper cups, and three profiles thread together like a braid. Rhizome’s warmth spreads across the paving stones; Waxwing pitches the LEDs into a thin sheen; Bitter Bridge drifts in with a bicycle chorus and a slow brass line that feels like home. The billboard dissolves into a map of taste and sound—the day’s story of us. I spot my neighbor, Jas, who helped compile the original Bitter Bridge tag. She raises her cup and says, “It’s getting loud.” I scroll the governance slider a notch down—friction, not silence. The brass settles; the bikes keep weaving.

Later, the plaza lights dim to clear—no tint, just night. The profiles persist like aftertaste. I walk home through our amber glow, feeling the city’s linked conversation humming at street level, and think: we built this—flavor for language, sound for memory, light for belonging. The grid is national, the ginger is local, and the mix only works because it never overwhelms the thingness of the street or the faces within it.

October Reflections: rebalancing local practice with global learning

The speculative thing that is the subject of the story above aims to embody the key themes I’ve been exploring in August via my newsletter. Claude explains the links between the story and the weekly columns.

The evolution of AI is reshaping our fundamental relationship with technology, transitioning from mere tools to companions to immersive presences embedded in physical reality. Throughout this transformation, crucial questions emerge about agency, transparency, and control—not simply whether AI might overtake humanity, but rather how we maintain our autonomy as we delegate increasing decisions to intelligent systems. As AI spans multiple forms of technological mediation—embodied, hermeneutic, alterity, and background relations—it creates unprecedented forms of human-technology interaction, potentially establishing a new “expressive relation” where our identities blend with AI capabilities. This evolution suggests that the future of human-AI collaboration depends less on functional capabilities and more on the quality of relationships we establish, particularly as intelligence becomes ubiquitous in our physical environment, understanding what we mean rather than just what we say, and actively participating in our daily lives in ways both visible and invisible.

Shaping a speculative thing

I took inspiration for the speculative object from the Design Fiction WorkKit:

As an object, the cards dictated a branded beverage, combined with a billboard advert as archetype, immersive as attributes, and a deepfake as action.

The speculative thing, based on the overarching theme, is linking different scales of operation and impact (national and local) by applying AI as a social-permeating infrastructure. In other words, a future where locally brewed ginger beers and IPAs are inheriting the local specific characteristics, while these profiles become the linking pin for connecting different neighborhoods in a wider (national or even global) network of communities. The profiles trigger certain synthetic elements of a neighborhood, such as sound and lights, resulting in immersive experiences that foster connection. The challenge is to balance out the local character with the merged exchanges expressed in the synthetic experiences.

With this concept for a thing, I prompted ChatGPT to write a day-in-the-life.

Overarching Theme

Across the month, AI is framed less as a spectacle and more as a social, permeating infrastructure: alien-yet-familiar intelligences seep into tools, objects, and communities, demanding governance beyond corporate logics, embracing productive friction, and rebalancing local practice with global learning so that technology mirrors and matures our collective values rather than eroding them.

Connections: Weekly Thoughts to Day-in-the-Life

Week 362: From Immersive to Permeating: How AI Quietly Transforms Our Lives — The amber morning light and stitched city soundscape demonstrate permeating, ambient intelligence in “things” that keep their thingness, with humans staying in the loop to tune intensity and meaning.

Week 358: Alien intelligence shaping human connections — The deepfake saxophonist incident and consent process show “alien” intelligence mimicking human emotion, forcing the neighborhood to renegotiate trust and expectations in human connection.

Week 359: Friction of Creation for Social Dynamics of AI Tools — The brewing co-op votes, governance tokens, and “Drink Local, Link Global” billboard embody creation as co-performance with productive friction, balancing local making and global sharing.

Week 360: Making AI tools for reshaping personal realities — Tap-handle NFC glyphs, profile threads, and composable neighborhood tags reflect personal toolchains where imagined flavors and ambiences rapidly materialize, tightening the hyperstitional loop.

Week 361: Building a collaborative society with Fifth Order AI — Lamp posts, billboards, and street soundscapes carry agency and responsibilities through civic protocols, with community moderation ensuring the system mirrors collective values rather than solutionist control.

The weekly reflections on the news in human-AI-thing co-performances are brought to life via a story from the future of living with agentic things in the city. This month, we go inside the home.

A Day with NutriSphere: The Ambient Kitchen

6:30 AM: Maya’s bedroom gradually brightens as her NutriSphere begins its morning routine. “Good morning, Maya,” comes the gentle voice from everywhere and nowhere. “Your cortisol levels are slightly elevated today, likely from yesterday’s presentation stress. I’ve adjusted your breakfast accordingly.”

As Maya enters the kitchen space, surfaces come alive with subtle illumination. The central island—a seamless blend of preparation area, cooking surface, and interactive display—shows her personalized nutrition dashboard. Three breakfast options appear, each calibrated to her current biological state: a turmeric-ginger smoothie bowl, adaptogenic oatmeal with stress-reducing ashwagandha, or eggs with specific micronutrient-rich vegetables.

“I’ll go with the oatmeal today,” Maya says, watching as the necessary ingredients emerge from modular storage units. The preparation surface highlights where to place each item, guiding her hands with gentle light cues. As she works, NutriSphere shares insights: “Your magnesium levels have been trending down this week. I’ve added a sprinkle of pumpkin seeds to help balance that.”

12:30 PM: Returning home for lunch, Maya notices NutriSphere has already sensed her approach through her wearable. The kitchen’s ambient lighting has shifted to blues and greens—calming colors that research shows can reduce overeating during stressful workdays.

“Your morning meeting ran longer than expected,” NutriSphere observes. “I’ve prepared three quick lunch options that will support your afternoon focus.” Maya chooses a nutrient-dense salad, appreciating how the system knows her tendency to choose convenience over nutrition when rushed.

As she eats, the kitchen island displays her weekly trend report. “You’ve been consistent with protein intake this week,” the system notes approvingly. “And your omega-3 balance has improved since last month.”

7:00 PM: Maya returns home with a friend for dinner. NutriSphere immediately detects the second person and adjusts. “I notice you have company,” it says discretely through Maya’s earbuds rather than the room speakers. “Would you like me to suggest a shared meal plan or would you prefer privacy mode tonight?”

“Privacy mode, please,” Maya responds. The kitchen’s surveillance functions recede to background operations—still monitoring but not actively guiding. The space transforms from health-optimization center to social cooking environment.

Later, after her friend leaves, Maya reengages full functionality. “How did I do tonight?” she asks.

“Your wine intake was 30% above your weekly allocation,” NutriSphere responds without judgment. “I’ll adjust tomorrow’s recommendations to balance your antioxidant and hydration needs. Would you like me to prepare a hydration supplement for morning?”

10:30 PM: As Maya prepares for bed, NutriSphere sends a gentle notification: “Based on your sleep patterns this week and tomorrow’s exercise plan, I recommend the herbal sleep support tea I’ve prepared. It’s on your bedside table.”

Maya smiles, remembering when kitchens were just places with refrigerators and stoves, not integrated wellness companions. She takes the tea, knowing that NutriSphere has already analyzed her evening meal, stress levels, and activity patterns to formulate the perfect blend for restorative sleep.

As she drifts off, NutriSphere quietly begins its overnight analysis, updating her nutritional algorithms, cross-referencing her biological data with the latest research, and preparing to once again help her navigate the delicate balance between optimal health and human desire when morning comes.

This day in the life of Maya with NutriSphere was written by Claude 3.7 Sonnet via Lex.page writing tool. Prompted by me, read below how that came about.

August Reflections: From Tools to Companions to Immersive Presences.

The speculative thing that is the subject of the story above aims to embody the key themes I’ve been exploring in August via my newsletter. Claude explains the links between the story and the weekly columns.

The evolution of AI is reshaping our fundamental relationship with technology, transitioning from mere tools to companions to immersive presences embedded in physical reality. Throughout this transformation, crucial questions emerge about agency, transparency, and control—not simply whether AI might overtake humanity, but rather how we maintain our autonomy as we delegate increasing decisions to intelligent systems. As AI spans multiple forms of technological mediation—embodied, hermeneutic, alterity, and background relations—it creates unprecedented forms of human-technology interaction, potentially establishing a new “expressive relation” where our identities blend with AI capabilities. This evolution suggests that the future of human-AI collaboration depends less on functional capabilities and more on the quality of relationships we establish, particularly as intelligence becomes ubiquitous in our physical environment, understanding what we mean rather than just what we say, and actively participating in our daily lives in ways both visible and invisible.

Shaping a speculative thing

I took inspiration for the speculative object from the Design Fiction WorkKit:

As an object, the cards dictated a kitchen appliance, combined with a trend report as archetype, supplements as attributes, and surveil as action.

I like to envision the kitchen as a whole as an appliance to serve us to build the best day of our life, every day again, by creating a specific meal plan, and help us prepare it as a companion. As we know how weak we can be, the kitchen as a whole is surveilling us, not to get data for external parties, but for ourselves, as a tool. What was once a trend in the decade of quantified self, for data geeks and health nerds, is not standard practice in every kitchen. Or do we still have a kitchen? A place to compose our energetic resources for the day, balancing out our nutrition over longer periods, being an immersive environment that creates trend reports that make it also possible for us to keep agency, divert from the offered meal plans, knowing that our companion will balance us out over time.

With this concept for a thing, I prompted Claude to write a day-in-the-life.

Based on this inspiration and triggered by four cards from a design fiction card deck, I created the concept for a speculative thing, wholesome kitches as an appliance for a balance diet. See the text.Can you create a day in the life of someone living in and with this kitchen appliance, including thinking of a catchy name of that ‘appliance’?

Connection to Weekly Columns

How does it relate to the four column I wrote in August? I asked Claude again to make that connection:

Weeknotes 352 – Companion Paradox: NutriSphere embodies the companion paradox by providing relatable AI interactions while balancing transparency (showing its nutritional reasoning) with a seamless experience, addressing the tension between agency and delegation.

Weeknotes 353 – Technological Mediation: NutriSphere perfectly exemplifies all of Ihde’s technological relations simultaneously—embodied (extending Maya’s nutritional awareness), hermeneutic (translating biological data into actionable insights), alterity (direct interaction as a companion), and background (ambient monitoring)—while also creating that potential “expressive relation” where Maya’s identity blends with the system’s nutritional intelligence.

Weeknotes 354 – Relations Over Functions: The success of NutriSphere isn’t primarily in its functional capabilities but in the quality of relationship it builds with Maya—adapting to her preferences, respecting her social contexts, and developing a personalized understanding that evolves through continued interaction rather than just executing preprogrammed nutritional rules.

Weeknotes 355 – Mass Intelligence in Physical Reality: NutriSphere represents the ultimate expression of immersive AI by embedding intelligence throughout the physical kitchen environment—from illuminated surfaces that guide food preparation to ambient lighting that influences eating behaviors—creating an experience where intelligence is physically manifested at every touchpoint without requiring explicit conversational interaction.

The weekly reflections on the news in human-AI co-performances are brought to life via a story from the future of living with agentic things in the city.

Morning, with headlines

Maya scrolls the morning headlines with her thumb, the screen casting a cool light across the kitchen table. War, elections, the price of olives. She pauses on an explainer about last night’s late-breaking vote, unsure whether to be relieved or more worried. The bowl waits without hurrying her. Steam from the kettle curls into the air; the apartment is quiet enough that she can hear the street waking up one floor below.

She takes the first spoonful without looking, and something tart—briny almost—cuts through the cream. For a second she’s back at the small restaurant around the corner: the citrusy pickle that arrived unannounced between courses, the waiter’s shrug when she asked what was in it, the way the table’s conversation lifted after that bite. She smiles into her phone and only then notices the numbers stamped on the empty packets by the sink. She’s pretty sure she didn’t reach for those yesterday. Maybe she did. Maybe the hand just knows its own mind in the morning.

The bowl is larger than it needs to be at first, like a shallow pool that invites her to wander. As she eats, it seems to settle closer, drawing the edges in until each spoonful finds its way with less searching. She doesn’t think about it doing anything; it simply meets her pace. Between articles she checks a message from Raj—three photos of shoes lined up by a classroom door and a note: “Tried 4-11-6-2. The kids demolished it.” She glances back at her own numbers and thinks of the pickle again.

Outside, a siren flickers and fades. Another headline insists on certainty; another argues for the opposite. She decides she doesn’t buy either. A berry catches at the back of her tongue, not sweetness but the suggestion of it, like someone about to tell a story they’re not sure they should tell. She reads one more paragraph and pushes the phone away. The last spoonful is different from the first—less showy, more composed. She can’t say why.

At lunch she passes a café window and notices a tray of pastries dusted with something red. Not her usual place, not her usual hour. She almost goes in, doesn’t, makes a note to remember. On the train home, a stranger’s ringtone chimes a melody she can’t place, and for a moment the taste of the morning returns—bright, then gone.

In the evening she rinses the bowl and leaves it to dry, its little analog dial resting at a tick-mark she hasn’t learned to name. The new box on the counter has a small sticker she hasn’t seen before—a subtle upward arrow next to one of the numbers. Trend, or coincidence, or a hundred breakfasts elsewhere tugging on her own? She turns the sticker between her fingers and thinks of the article about the vote, of the pickle, of choosing without knowing exactly why.

Before bed, Raj sends a voice note: the field trip was a success, his daughter fell asleep before the train left the station. “Same combo tomorrow?” he asks. Maya doesn’t answer. In the morning, she’ll see what her hand reaches for. The headlines will argue again; the bowl will wait. Somewhere between them, the day will find its flavor.

July reflections: think with us: friction, agency, and the networked self

The speculative thing in this day-in-the-life story aims to embody the key themes I’ve been exploring this July via my newsletter Target is New. Claude (via Lex.page) explains the links between the story and the weekly columns.

Human-AI Partnership vs. Dependency: You consistently explore the tension between AI as a collaborative thinking partner versus AI as a replacement for human thinking. The phrase “think with us, not for us” captures this perfectly.

Necessary Friction: You argue against seamless, frictionless AI experiences, suggesting that certain types of friction (like explicitly telling an AI what you’re seeing) preserve human agency and engagement.

The Unseen/Unsaid: You explore how AI might relate to what’s not explicitly stated in data – the spaces between, the unspoken, the void that carries meaning in human experience.

Agency and Control: Throughout all entries, you question who controls the AI’s intentions and how we maintain human agency in our relationships with intelligent systems.

Networked Intelligence: You touch on moving beyond the individual to understanding intelligence as relational and networked between humans, technologies, and environments.

Day-in-the-life connected to the posts

Why does the day-in-the-life connect to the five posts? I asked my AI buddy (Lex.page using GPT-5).

Week 347: Think with us, not for us – Essence: Agency-preserving guidance.

The bowl suggests pace and possibilities (numbers, portion, timing) but leaves the choosing and meaning-making to Maya; it thinks alongside her, not instead of her.

Week 348: Articulated frictions for engaged presence — Essence: Friction as focus.

The numbered ritual and flavor surprises require small, intentional acts; the bowl waits for her lead, keeping the human as guide and making the experience felt, not automated.

Week 349: A void AI might make tangible — Essence: Sensing the unsaid.

Taste triggers memory (the pickle, the restaurant) and mood without explicit prompts; the bowl surfaces the in‑between—associations, not instructions—making the “void” perceptible.

Week 350: Paradox of ambient intelligence — Essence: Probabilities, not proclamations.

The quiet dial and subtle “trend” arrow communicate soft confidence rather than certainty; differences between first and last spoonful model calibrated, transparent uncertainty.

Week 351: Humanity in AI co‑performance — Essence: Networked choice without surrender.

Raj’s message, the shared trends, and Maya’s morning hand show co‑performance: individual agency braided with a social signal, neither outsourced nor isolated.

Shaping a speculative thing

I took inspiration for the speculative object from the Design Fiction WorkKit:

A sensor thing related to breakfast, with a retro chic feel, and has shrink/expand behavior. This is my prompt for my AI writing buddy1 to create a day in the life story above:

A special breakfast bowl offers a variety of combinations between yoghurt and ingredients, along with different variations. The subscription service is delivering a possible mix for a week, which can end up in many different variations. The ingredients are packaged in neutral-designed boxes with only numbers. Every morning, you choose a set of numbers based on a short conversation and sensing with the service, which checks your mood and the people sitting at the table (lonely, with family, functional, relaxing, etc.). The mix is not made by a set script but is generated based on all the users around the world. Depending on the popularity, the breakfast bowl is more or less filled, which will serve as an additional data point.

The service is not making the easiest bowl, but the one that is delivering the best experience, which is defined by the friction it unlocks, and the stories along.

Research through Design Fiction

With Cities of Things, we aim to envision the impact of living together with things that have agency, are agentic, or are autonomous in near-future cities. We explored concepts such as the Collect|Connect hub as an engaging “AI”-neighbor to orchestrate and support community life in neighborhoods. With Wijkbot, we created a kit for civic prototyping, possible futures, and impacts of living with intelligent and autonomous objects in our cities. Read more on our activities.

Combining capturing knowledge and creating inspirational artifacts is typical of what Cities of Things like to engage. By ourselves or as commissioned projects for students or workshops. Check out citiesofthings.org and hoodbot.net for examples, and reach out if you like to know more.

This example is just a quick impression that opens up more questions than it provides answers. Something that is always the right start.

New AI-endeavours build communities of self-improving multilateral augmented intelligence, as flocks of multi-core AIs improve themselves in continuous self-reflection.

(This post was sent as a newsletter on 31th July via Cities of Things Substack)

Having AI as co-performers with humans has been the topic more than once, referring to the concept defined back in 2018. In the latest developments of the AI uprise, we see the power of conversational AI in chatGPT and all the followers. It is often perceived as the interface with the AI, the new way of addressing the powers in combination with the magic of tokenised predictive language created through the large language models (LLMs). On top of that, starting from this new implementation of conversations with the machine intelligence, the start of real interactions with the AI emerges and with that, a potential learning loop between the human and the AI. 

With Cities of Things, we look at intelligent (behaviour of) things in our future cities. Robotics combined with an intelligence agency. Last week I attended a lecture by James Bridle, who wrote a book last year on other intelligence last year (Ways of Being), that I liked a lot. They showed how there is more than human intelligence and how these can inspire us. Bridle also made a link to how computing is designed still around the Turing machine. There is another concept that Turing once hinted at in a footnote (1) in his first paper on the automated machine, and later a bit more in the 50s in another paper, but never was able to flesh out. In short, the difference in computing concepts is the way it computes intelligence. The Turing machine uses as much of the existing information and generates the intelligence internally in the system. The Oracle machine is using the art of making theses and the learnings from responses to build intelligence, a machine that is looking outside itself to build knowledge. The lecture by Bridle will be online sometime soon I expect, but he explained the concept in earlier lectures like this one.

Last week Noam Chomsky wrote an opinion piece in The York Times on why ChatGPT offers a false promise (2). I see links here, and interesting enough, the thesis of Chomsky is built upon the notion that current machine intelligence is based on a limited form of computing. At the same time, you could make a case that the form of accessing this machine intelligence via the chat-routine is testing the promise of the oracle machine. On the verge of the introduction of GPT-4 it is useful to think about what we can learn from the application of GPT-3 in the world through these new interfaces, and what we need for the next iteration.

What is missing in the current models is an ability to learn, and to reference a general mental model of the world. If we are using the current tooling right, we make sure that these models (morality) are provided by the human in the loop. We need to be sure there is a human in the loop in using the tooling. And to be sure, having a human in the loop is not the same as a human using machine intelligence to provide answers to questions formulated by humans. It is definitely true that asking the right questions is key, and that is why prompt engineering is such a highly valued expertise in the near future. The example in the article of Chomsky is a speaking example.

The design of these tooling should facilitate, or even more maybe steer, the right flow of theses and claims. The human actor should always create a moral framework before the machine is asked to ‘oracle’ based on general knowledge, and the final judgement is also to the human. In the most sophisticated versions of this tooling, the AI can help to formulate the best claims. I wrote earlier on the concept of co-performance which provides some insightful poses. A useful metaphor is also the centaur, the half-human, half-machine; that is what we are developing more quickly than we might have expected. The most important challenge is to balance the right tasks for the machine and the human.

The image and reference that Bridle uses from the Cybernetic Factory by Stafford Beer (1959) is a possible implementation design. The goal was to create a better way of automating factory processes by using all kinds of outside knowledge and building a complete ecosystem. Bridle connect it to learning from other intelligence like how slime moulds can solve the traveller problem much more efficiently than our current computers can do.

What was not discussed is the relation of the current interaction model within tools like ChatGPT and the possibility of building a kind of Oracle Machine. It feels almost too simple to connect these; what if we can use the power of the dialogues with intelligence in a real learning environment, and what if the outcome is a new form of ecosystem computing? The biggest learning from the upheaval around the use of ChatGPT for all is that we should take into account what the value of the knowledge is. If we can build in the right human guardrails in the oracle machine we might be able to loosen up the limitations of current implementations.

Notes

(1) “We shall not go any further into the nature of this oracle apart from saying that it cannot be a machine” Alan Turing, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals (1939)

(2) The oped of Chomsky has triggered a debate, Gary Marcus is reflecting on this debate here.

(This post was published earlier via the Cities of Things newsletter)

Dear readers. The last edition was just released after the war in Ukraine started. The flow of the war is maybe different than expected in some parts, like the resistance and duration. On the other hand, patterns seem the same as earlier wars initiated by Putin, and also compared to the rituals of growing dictatorships. Some are predicting a long-lasting fight for dominance by democratic systems or dictatorial systems. We only can hope that France will not vote for a extremist new president in two weeks…

How does this all relate to the topic of this newsletter? I made the connection when thinking about one of the key elements of the explorations in Cities of Things: the agency balance. We see that part of our own agency is delegated to the intelligent systems, and that there is a shift happening toward technology as a partner above being a tool. A silent partner though, it is not always visible what is defining the help we get. There is a danger in that, linking it back to the balance between centralized and decentralized systems, between democratic and dictatorial systems. Even if we can resist that shift and if the war is not coming to our own country, we can expect more centralized ruled systems, as part of a warlike state of being. And in the end we are integrated in a geopolitical ecosystem that is already balancing value systems.