Soft Futures is a montly newsletter dedicated to the future of technology as we do not know it.
Our vision of technology is slowly changing. Robots are abandoning their anthropomorphic shells to increasingly resemble invertebrates and plants. Living cells and artificial materials are forming new fertile symbioses between technology and nature. Even our computers are abandoning the rigidity of silicon to embrace the plasticity of biological matter.
These and other emerging technologies are based on a radically new vision of matter: no longer a passive and inert substrate of human projects, but an active, dynamic and unpredictable participant in its own transformation. How are these technologies transforming our relationship with matter and our visions of the future? What scientific and cultural questions do they invite us to address?
Through encounters with emerging technologies, the lively philosophical debates surrounding them, and contemporary artistic languages, Soft Futures explores how the vitality of matter can defy our expectations.
Who writes Soft Futures?
My name is Laura Tripaldi. I’m an interdisciplinary researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for AI & Culture of NYU Shanghai. I hold a PhD in Materials Science and Nanotechnology. Intersecting philosophy, science, and speculation, my current research focuses on the materiality of emerging technologies. I’m interested in the many ways materials defy our expectations. I wrote Parallel Minds. Discovering the Intelligence of Materials. Find me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Join Soft Futures
Soft Futures is a personal research project. The best way to support it is by subscribing and spreading the word.
