Summer Reading 2026 – Futures Worth Wanting

This summer, I am reading and thinking in public about optimism, design, and the future.

Not forecasts, not trend reports, not techno-fantasy. I am interested in the ideas, objects, buildings, books, and cultural moments that shaped how people imagined what could come next.

Today, optimism often arrives with a disclaimer. People feel the need to explain that they are not stupid, not blind, not ignoring the problems. Pessimism does not seem to carry the same burden.

I want to understand that shift — and collect examples of a different attitude: futures imagined with seriousness, generosity, beauty, and confidence. Futures that are not detached from the world we know, but rooted in things people can recognize, understand, and trust.

This is my public notebook for that journey.

My Reading List

• Rutger Bregman — Im Grunde gut (Humankind: A Hopeful History)
• Hannah Ritchie — Not the End of the World
• Fred Polak — The Image of the Future
• Charles & Ray Eames — The India Report (1958)
• Dunne/Raby — Speculative Everything
• Stuart Candy — *Experiential Futures
• Balmer/Urde/Greyser — Papers about Corporate Heritage Brands
• Brown/Kozinets/Sherry — Teaching Old Brands New Tricks
• Jason Crawford — Roots of Progress / Techno-Humanism