On belonging, becoming, and communities with a clock.
Locating Family Values: A Field Trial of the Whereabouts Clock: (Nominated for the Best Paper Award)
Reimagining Ourselves at the End of Our World: Kinship, Interconnection, and Spirituality in the Metacrisis - The Great Simplification
Over the past decade, the world has become increasingly chaotic and uncertain – and so, too, has our cultural vision for the future. While the events we face now may feel unprecedented, they are rooted in much deeper patterns, which humanity has been playing out for millennia. If we take the time to understand past trends, we can also employ practices and philosophies that might counteract them – such as focusing on kinship, intimacy, and resilience – to help pave the way for a better future. How might we nurture the foundations of a different kind of society, even while the end of our current civilization plays out around us?
The loneliest generation: What it is like to grow up in England today | IPPR
A connected society is one in which we care about how others are doing and, in turn, others look out for our wellbeing. It is the state and public services
Grow like Trees: An Organic Approach to Societal Regrowth
2026 is the year that system breakdown became impossible to deny. Democratic norms, societal norms, rule of law, the fabric of the social contract tearing as we watch. Or hide, unwilling or unable to face the unravelling. The hopeful among us see opportunity through the dark. Tentatively or boldly we
Seven Generations Principle: Healing the Past & Shaping the Future — The Indigenous Foundation
This is adapted from an Unrooted podcast episode by Breanne Smith @breazieboozhoo What if I told you that the choices we make today could shape the lives of those who come seven generations after us? And that we are the bridge between our ancestors’ resilience & our descendants’ future.
Micro-Commons and Third Space Culture in Taiwan
Observing intergenerational, future-proof spaces in Taiwan that are community and health centric.
Third Places as Mini-Cosmopolitans - Surfing Modernity
What happens to identity in times of movement and change? In my second post, I proposed the importance of cultivating a third space that is not dependent on…
Narrative strands & memetic lineages in community social data using Community Archive - - ATmospher
Collective Flourishing
Our tools for navigating the future haven't kept pace with its growing complexity. Creating new systems that integrate a deep understanding of people, profound advances in modelling and foresight, and expressive interfaces could help us see, reason, and choose a better future together.
The CMX Social Identity Cycle: How to Build Thriving Communities
The CMX Social Identity Cycle is a simple model that leverages community psychology to design truly engaging community experiences.
Culture x Capital: The end of forgetting
Comprehensive life logging, federated recall, and the promise (and peril) of remembering everything.
Developmental Spaces: Cultural incubators for a time of transformation | Conscious Communities
The whitepaper. Rosie Bell, Boaz Feldman and Rufus Pollock, September 2025.
Homebound: The Long-Term Rise in Time Spent at Home Among U.S. Adults
The changes in daily life induced by the COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to longstanding concerns about social isolation in the United States. Despite the links between the physical setting for individuals' daily lives and their connections with family, friends, and the various institutions of collective life, trends in where American adults spend their time have been largely overlooked as researchers have focused on how and with whom they spend their time. This article analyzes data from the American Time Use Survey over a timeframe spanning nineteen years and argues that the changes in Americans' daily routines induced by the COVID era should be seen as an acceleration of a longer-term trend: the rise of time spent at home. Results show that from 2003 to 2022, average time spent at home among American adults has risen by one hour and 39 minutes in a typical day. Time at home has risen for every subset of the population and for virtually all activities. Preliminary analysis indicates that time at home is associated with lower levels of happiness and less meaning, suggesting the need for enhanced empirical attention to this major shift in the setting of American life.
Homebound: The Long-Term Rise in Time Spent at Home Among U.S. Adults
The changes in daily life induced by the COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to longstanding concerns about social isolation in the United States. Despite the links between the physical setting for individuals' daily lives and their connections with family, friends, and the various institutions of collective life, trends in where American adults spend their time have been largely overlooked as researchers have focused on how and with whom they spend their time. This article analyzes data from the American Time Use Survey over a timeframe spanning nineteen years and argues that the changes in Americans' daily routines induced by the COVID era should be seen as an acceleration of a longer-term trend: the rise of time spent at home. Results show that from 2003 to 2022, average time spent at home among American adults has risen by one hour and 39 minutes in a typical day. Time at home has risen for every subset of the population and for virtually all activities. Preliminary analysis indicates that time at home is associated with lower levels of happiness and less meaning, suggesting the need for enhanced empirical attention to this major shift in the setting of American life.
Open source confronts its midlife crisis | The Observation Deck
Midlife is tough: the idealism of youth has faded, as has inevitably some of its fitness and vigor. At the same time, the responsibilities of adulthood have grown: the kids that were such a fresh adventure when they were infants and toddlers are now grappling with their own transition into adulthood – and you try to remind yourself that the kids that you have sacrificed so much for probably don’t actually hate your guts, regardless of that post they just liked on the ‘gram. Making things more challenging, while you are navigating the turbulence of teenagers, your own parents are likely entering life’s twilight, needing help in new ways from their adult children. By midlife, in addition to the singular joys of life, you have also likely experienced its terrible sorrows: death, heartbreak, betrayal. Taken together, the fading of youth, the growth in responsibility and the endurance of misfortune can lead to cynicism or (worse) drastic and poorly thought-out choices. Add in a little fear of mortality and some existential dread, and you have the stuff of which midlife crises are made…