What Happens If Humans Become Biologically Immortal? (5 minute read) One of the most fascinating ideas I have come across recently is something called longevity escape velocity. It sounds like a term from a science fiction novel, but it describes a surprisingly simple possibility. Imagine medical science reaches the point where, for every year that passes, it can add more than a year to your healthy lifespan. You celebrate your sixty-fifth birthday and, during the next twelve months, advances...
12 days ago • 9 min read
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life! (4-5 minute read) On June 18th this year, it will be exactly one year since I released my first novel, Return to the Galaxy. In some ways the year has flown by. In others it feels as though it has lasted a decade. Since then, we have released eight novels in the Return to the Galaxy series, with a ninth hopefully arriving around the anniversary itself, soon to be followed by a collection of short stories set in the same universe. Looking back, it is...
19 days ago • 15 min read
What if Earth isn't Special? (4-5 minute read) For most of human history, we have oscillated between two instincts. One says we are unique, central, chosen in some cosmic sense. The other says we are ordinary, just one planet orbiting one star in one unremarkable spiral arm of one galaxy among hundreds of billions. Science has leaned steadily toward the second view. The Copernican principle quietly suggests that we should not assume we occupy a privileged position. And over the last thirty...
26 days ago • 5 min read
Why the Next 20 Years of Discovery Could Outpace the Last 100 (4-5 minute read) There is a moment, easy to miss, where the future quietly accelerates. Not with a single invention or a headline that changes everything overnight, but with a shift in how quickly ideas can move from one mind to another. That shift has been happening for a long time, and we are now reaching a point where its consequences are becoming difficult to ignore. For most of human history, knowledge was slow. If you go...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
The Quiet Force That Changes Everything (4-5 minute read) What if the future isn’t shaped by revolutions… but by something almost invisible? Not breakthroughs. Not dramatic discoveries. Not even the big moments we tend to point to in hindsight. Something far quieter than that. A few percent per year. It doesn’t sound like much. In fact, it sounds almost trivial. The kind of number that gets ignored because it lacks drama. It doesn’t make headlines. It doesn’t feel urgent. It certainly doesn’t...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Why Technology Amplifies Human Nature (4-5 minute read) Every major technological leap arrives with a familiar promise. This time, things will be different. Faster communication will bring understanding. Better information will produce wiser decisions. Automation will free us from drudgery. Intelligence, once amplified, will smooth out the rough edges of human behaviour. Violence will decline. Cooperation will rise. Reason will finally outrun instinct. It is an old hope. And a persistent one....
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
A New Horizon Beckons (4-5 minute read) There are moments in history that don’t announce themselves clearly at the time. They don’t arrive with a single headline or a defining event that everyone immediately recognizes as significant. Instead, they emerge quietly, almost indirectly, through a series of developments that, taken one by one, feel interesting but not transformative. It is only when you step back and look at them together that the pattern begins to take shape. I have the growing...
2 months ago • 6 min read
AI: The Coming Creativity Boom (4-5 minute read) Most people are asking the wrong question about AI. They’re asking how it will make things faster. More efficient. Cheaper. Whether it will take jobs. Whether it will help them write code or analyse data more quickly. Those are reasonable questions. They’re also the least interesting ones. Because they assume AI is just a tool. And it isn’t. If you look back at every major technological shift, the real impact didn’t come from doing the same...
2 months ago • 4 min read
A Brighter Future, Faster (4-5 minute read) If you strip everything away, money, politics, technology, what actually powers the world? It’s not what most people think. Not governments. Not markets. Not even intelligence on its own. It comes down to two things: energy, and ideas. Everything else is built on top of them. If you go back through history, this becomes hard to ignore. The Roman Empire didn’t fall because it suddenly forgot how to organise itself. It lost the ability to sustain the...
3 months ago • 5 min read