31 December 2022
500 Words is a newsletter about the future. In every issue, you’ll get an essay about the path forward, often questioning the path forward. Do we really need that app? What are the motivations of the people who made it? What will it track about me and why? All the tech developments before us are exciting, but I think we also all need a filter.
I publish the newsletter more or less once a week. 500 Words is also a chronicle of the futurist projects going on at FutureX.Studio.
The FutureX.Studio vision for science fiction storytelling is positive. Every project we support asks, “What would the future of a just world look like?”
Science fiction storytelling is often dystopian. This dystopian view is valuable because it helps us see how not to proceed into the future and shows how we have failed. But storytelling focused on imagining social change must also ask what a just future would look like. FutureX.Studio exists to ask how technology can be our ally, and how future visions may be shaped to help us envision gender and racial equality and social and environmental justice.
I used to write a blog every Thursday that ran 500 words. It was called 500 Words on Thursday.
I would write about everything, from tech, to education, to creative work, to marriage. I even did one blog that was exactly 500 words long. Most Thursdays, I wrote it and sent it, fresh out of the oven. 500 Words is about taking creative risks, and the newsletter is an homage to that impulse.
Lee Schneider
(c) Lee Schneider 2023. Take care of each other. Subscribe.