Futur-ish

While you were counting down to 2026 on New Years, Tobias was counting down the last seconds of a future he very personally dreamed of; a future with less cars. You see, Zipcar, the UK’s biggest car sharing company were going out of business, ceasing operations for 2026. 
Almost simultaneously, the UK government accelerated the timeline on autonomous vehicle trials. Before we know it, LA’s Waymos are going to be hitting London streets. But this isn’t the future either, it’s just a different version of the same car-fuelled nightmare. What if, instead, we already had the perfect technology and just didn’t realise it? 
LInks:
Car-sharing company ZipCar to end UK operations, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8zv1gr0z9o
Autonomous Vehicle Market Surges with 34.84% CAGR as MaaS, ADAS, and AI Adoption Accelerate, Newswire: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/01/19/3221004/0/en/Autonomous-Vehicle-Market-Surges-with-34-84-CAGR-as-MaaS-ADAS-and-AI-Adoption-Accelerate.html
Road traffic injuries, WHO: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries
Autonomous Vehicle Accidents: NHTSA Crash Data (2019-2025). Craft Law: https://www.craftlawfirm.com/autonomous-vehicle-accidents-2019-2024-crash-data/
Cyclist 'jumped red light and killed pedestrian Peter McCombie', BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56320121
Does cycle commuting reduce the risk of mental ill-health? An instrumental variable analysis using distance to nearest cycle path: https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/53/1/dyad153/7529101
Association of Cycling With All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality Among Persons With Diabetes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8290339/
Potential for reduced premature mortality by current and increased bicycle commuting: a health impact assessment using registry data on home and work addresses in Stockholm, Sweden: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7849870/
Get on your bike: Study shows walking, cycling and e-biking make a significant impact on carbon emissions, Oxford: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-02-02-get-your-bike-study-shows-walking-cycling-and-e-biking-make-significant-impact
Bicycle Technology, Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bicycle-technology/
A Classic Graphic Reveals Nature’s Most Efficient Traveler, Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-human-on-a-bicycle-is-among-the-most-efficient-forms-of-travel-in-the/
Energy and Equity, Ivan Illich: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1683220.Energy_and_Equity

All over the world, healthcare systems are straining under the weight of ageing populations, crippling costs and overheads and new and novel conditions exacerbated by the biodiversity crisis. 
A spate of new gadgets promises to give us more control over our health but if the social problems that underpin failing healthcare aren’t solved, how much can they do? Could we instead use seismic sensors in our feet, colour sensors on our heads and piezoelectric patches on our skin to talk to the planet? To hang out with rivers? 
LInks:
Anonymous crypto gambler made $436,000 on Maduro capture, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gn93292do
Gambling platform Polymarket not paying bets on US invasion of Venezuela, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/wager-platform-polymarket-will-not-pay-out-on-bets-on-us-invasion-of-venezuela
Roxana Chicas designs wearable patch for early detection of heat exposure, Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/09/28/roxana-chicas-designs-wearable-patch-for-early-detection-of-heat-exposure/REFILE: Atlanta scientist creates biopatch to protect farmers from the heat and heat-related deaths, Reuters: https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/refile-atlanta-scientist-creates-biopatch-to-protect-farmers-from-the-heat-and-heat-related-deaths
Inxects vest lets architects "feel" the health of a site like a sixth sense, Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/21/gaia-communication-system-wearable-inxects/Cyborg artist Moon Ribas feels earthquakes, Next Nature: https://nextnature.org/en/magazine/story/2020/moon-ribas
Nobody Told Me Rivers Dream, Superflux: https://superflux.in/index.php/work/nobody-told-me-rivers-dream/#
The Americans Who Stick Gadgets Under Their Skin, VICE: https://www.vice.com/en/article/hannes-wiedemann-american-grinders-biohacking-photo-book/
A 3-in-1 wearable and implantable biopatch for integrated in-body energy harvesting, sensing, and self-powered diabetic wound treatments: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211285525001028

There’s been enough warning from fiction and indeed reality that people should really know better than to reduce the horror of conflict to gaming, petty bets and the chaos of chance. But perhaps ‘leaders’ really do think the gods play dice and now, as global institutions become increasingly unreliable, they want in.
Things look pretty ‘yucky’ if you, for instance, respect the dignity of human life and though this isn’t anywhere near the first time finance has been tied up in geopolitics, the incentives are all backwards now, fuelling misinformation, deception and misappropriation in the name of a quick crypto-buck. 
Links:
'Unauthorized' Edit to Ukraine's Frontline Maps Point to Polymarket's War Betting, 404 Media: https://www.404media.co/unauthorized-edit-to-ukraines-frontline-maps-point-to-polymarkets-war-betting/
Institute for The Study of War: https://understandingwar.org/ 
The Polymarket Effect: How Prediction Markets Are Beating The Experts, Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonwingard/2025/11/19/the-polymarket-effect-how-prediction-markets-are-beating-the-experts/
How the Trump Whale and Prediction Markets Beat the Pollsters in 2024, Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/how-the-trump-whale-and-prediction-markets-beat-the-pollsters-in-2024-dd11ec4e?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeH1TI6Po6c_Ztr0l0voyhPfeAozcF_RHfJiu9zSQXT5KxGQFR_lYDXAzE0Cw8%3D&gaa_ts=694649c3&gaa_sig=ap1q4d4NOKg-UohvdZv-8fI_BySV6y0o1O_HI8iDwa0TtkNG50snxiApdJ1viRVncs1hQWDI28kjzDrZuCDjDQ%3D%3D
Disaster Map Foundation: https://info.petabencana.id/ypb
New App Lets Users Bet on Deadly Conflicts in Real Time, Futurism: https://futurism.com/future-society/polymarket-polyglobe-gambling
Deep State Live: https://deepstatemap.live/en#6/49.4383200/32.0526800

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake

Somewhere, in a Trump administration office, someone decided that architects aren’t all that and now they’re being de-professionalised and removed from public debate. At the same time, more and more research is telling us that architecture happens inside your head and we need to design that way. 
But what does this have to do with World War 2 battleships and the state of education? Radha thinks that the banning of architects from public discourse gives us an opportunity to reimagine what ways, for who and how the built environment is imagined and designed. 
Links
Architecture no longer considered a "professional degree" in US, Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/11/24/architecture-degree-not-professional-usa/
Making Federal Architecture Great Again, Whitehouse.gov: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/making-federal-architecture-beautiful-again/ 
Could bad buildings damage your mental health? The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/16/bad-buildings-damage-mental-health-research-anxiety-depression
Why Ugly Architecture Is Bad for Your Health, The Architectural Uprising: https://www.architecturaluprising.com/studies/why-ugly-architecture-is-bad-for-your-health/
Cleo Valentine: We now know architecture can cause stress, Venetian Letter: https://venetianletter.com/2023/09/07/cleo-valentine-we-now-know-architecture-can-cause-stress/
Trump doubles down on classical capital with "Arc de Trump" proposal, Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2025/10/16/trump-triumphal-arch-proposal/
Dazzle Camouflage, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
CV Dazzle, Adam Harvey: https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle

Futur-ish are taking a short hiatus from our bi-weekly release schedule for the holiday. We’ll be back in 2026!