The Ongoing Transformation

Bhavya Lal Charts a Future for Humans in Space

Bhavya Lal, a leader in space policy, shares the unexpected trajectory of her career. She discusses how policy and governance became her passion, how she went from writing reports to leading programs at NASA, and the big questions that drive her work.

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superglue traumatic brain injury, Bob Cook-Deegan

Urgent Care

A Brief Note From the Guy on the Table

A traumatic brain injury gave Robert Cook-Deegan a crash course in a medical research system tangled in technological dilemma and political paradox, a dysfunctional insurance bureaucracy, and the healing powers of superglue.

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Future Tense Fiction

Future Tense Fiction is a speculative fiction series that uses imagination to explore how science and technology will shape our future. It features short stories written by acclaimed authors across a wide range of styles. Each story is paired with original artwork by Rey Velasquez Sagcal and a response essay from an expert who connects the fictional narrative to real-world policy debates.

  • Rey Velasquez Sagcal's illustration

    Can We Cool Down Data?

    The energy demands of data centers—accelerated by artificial intelligence—are steering us toward disaster. Could biology help bring us back from the brink?

    Response

  • Rey Velasquez Sagcal's illustration for "Subsidence" by E. G. Condé

    Subsidence

    The AI boom means more demands on data centers—and running a data center requires complex technical infrastructure, vast environmental resources, and experienced human talent. In E. G. Condé’s story, a labyrinthine data center is in the middle of a massive outage. When the corporation that owns the center fails to diagnose the problem provoking the outage with its fancy technical systems, it’s forced to turn to human intuition to sniff out a more fundamental dilemma.

  • Rey Velasquez Sagcal's illustration

    Can Your Health Be Boiled Down to a Single Number?

    If a medical treatment for a life-threatening disease had a 60% chance of success, but another treatment with a 50% success rate had a lower risk of bankrupting your family, which would you choose? What if the success rates were 95 and 90%? Would you change your answer?

    Response

  • Rey Velasquez Sagcal's illustration for "Yellow" by B. Pladek

    Yellow

    If there were an app that estimated the risk of every decision, would you use it? B. Pladek’s short story “Yellow” explores how data changes the way we think about risk—and what happens when that data is manipulated.

  • Coser y Cantar

    Coser y Cantar

    What does ethical fashion look like? Gabriela Damián Miravete’s story explores transborder labor and the future of the textile industry.

  • workers and artificial intelligence

    Workers’ Hands Tell a Story. What If We Listened?

    In industries like meatpacking and textiles, human hands do strong, precise, and irreplaceable work. What happens when we pretend technology can replicate them?

    Response

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