What’s the best technology that doesn’t exist yet?

On technological optimism and technological pragmatism

"There are no guarantees that things are going to turn out very well for anyone.”

100 years of whatever this will be

What if all these weird tech trends actually add up to something? Last time, we explored why various bits of trendy technology are, in my o...

Technology without Industry

A home for poorly researched ideas that I find myself repeating a lot anyway

Ali Alkhatib: On techno-optimism

I’ve got a longer draft in the works, but I don’t think that’s going to become a blog post, so I figure it might be useful to publish something here and solicit feedback, or just plant a flag in the ground that this was a thing I did. Last week Several weeks ago I gave a talk at Wayne State University titled “the uncanny pessimism of techno-optimism”. In this post I’m going to breeze through some of the stuff I talked about and give a sense of what’ll be coming. Eventually.

We Build On Hope @ PublicSpaces Conference 2026

Keynote by Robin Berjon The current state of tech can feel disheartening. Years of critical analysis and reform efforts have left us with a digital sphere that seems worse than ever. In Europe, our...

If AI is normal technology, history is not reassuring. — LessWrong

There’s a truism that technology is good - even if it creates winners and losers, it improves the world. Toby Ord argues that the conclusions about t…

Future

The future I want to build.

We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

Innovation that truly serves us all is in scarce supply. That’s a problem.

What technology takes from us – and how to take it back | Rebecca Solnit

The long read: Decisions outsourced, chatbots for friends, the natural world an afterthought: Silicon Valley is giving us life void of connection. There is a way out – but it’s going to take collective effort

Optimistic Computing

I recently made two new friends: Abhinav Omprakash and Dawn Walker. Abhinav said I’m an optimist and I should write about it. Dawn said I shouldn’t try to coin any new terms. I should know better, but this essay follows Abhinav’s recommendation — and credits Dawn, in the very likely event I should have followed her advice instead. I have been alive for approximately four decades. Each of those decades was witness to its own fun brand of computering.

About Us

Around the world, building the internet’s operating system—and a better way to work. In a world of tech companies fighting for growth at any cost, imagine one that gives away its most successful pr…

Some ideas for what comes next, May 2026

Gemini Flash 3.5, Mythos, open-closed balance, America's open-source surge, emerging power struggles and more.

After Forty Years, Still No Silver Bullet

As always, technology can help with production. What’s scarce is orientation.

Presentations — Benedict Evans

Every year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. New in May 2025, ‘AI eats the world’.