Future Design Inquiries. May 2026

Hello from ENSO, a future design company. We’re sharing the things that make us think, bring us joy or shift our perspective. 

What we’re reflecting on

Exponential everything

In the early days of ENSO, we spent time around Singularity Summit and Singularity University at NASA Ames in Silicon Valley; Kirk and I were really enamored by the optimism. The core idea of Singularity was: technologies are developing at a predictable rate on the exponential (Moore’s law, etc), and if we know where the speed of compute will be in 5 years, or the cost decline of sequencing DNA, we can start inventing with that technology today. I’ve been thinking about this because Dario and Daniela Amodei are talking about ‘living on the exponential’; Anthropic was planning for 10X growth this year — but they’re experiencing 80X growth. Dario says that even though he predicted it a decade ago, experiencing it is ‘strange and unsettling’. What feels different this time is that exponential development is not just related to functional technologies and a small community of technologists, but daily life, and everyone. With the proliferation of AI, big chunks of life are now exponential, from how we make art to how we experience the news. Grappling with exponentials is hard, exciting, and concerning. Daniela has described Anthropic’s growth as ‘like a rollercoaster going vertical, driven by a teenager’, but we’re all on it now. Amdahl’s law says that when you’re speeding something up, you have to look at what’s not sped up — that will become the bottleneck. In this case, our behavioral, cognitive and cultural norms will all be way slower to adapt, leading to a lot of tension. The path through that? Daniela’s answer: ‘hold light and shade’, meaning, be open to what’s good and becomes possible, and be alert to the risks. I would add, the most important work may be the slowest: building relationships, rituals, and shared meaning that allow us to metabolize change in all this speed. (SB)

To augment or automate? That is the question

Every company seems to be asking whether it can save costs with AI. Our friend Jan-Emmanuel De Neve has co-authored a great piece in HBR that maps two divergent paths: cutting costs by automating people out, or creating value by augmenting people with AI. By playing out both scenarios, the better strategy becomes clear — automation is a downward spiral of commoditization, disengagement and talent repulsion; augmentation, an upward spiral of differentiation, engagement and talent attraction. I know which one I’d rather be in. 

What I appreciate as much as the conclusion is the method: articulating multiple scenarios and playing them out is a far more useful approach to navigating the future than the spurious ’science’ of forecasting, the reflexive instinct to cut costs, or the non-answer of incrementalism. These approaches collapse a range of strategic possibilities into a single path, and thereby discard good ideas and shared ideals before they’ve even had a chance to live. Every company could run ‘augment vs. automate’ scenarios for their own future. Or better still, go deeper: design complete futures that explore not just the path, but the destination … beyond cutting costs or doing what we’ve done before a bit better, what do we really want? That’s what we like to do at ENSO. (SB)

Solvers and scalers

We’ve been fortunate to do a lot of work with Stanford’s first new school for 80 years — the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Given how important Stanford is to the computer science and AI revolutions, it’s exciting to see that nexus being turned to climate solutions. I recently attended the first Stanford Sustainability Forum, a remarkable assembly of scientists, solvers and scalers. It’s the kind of place that makes you recalibrate what’s possible. A researcher demonstrated for the first time that bleached, ‘dead’ coral can fully recover, when placed in contact with healthy coral. A Nobel laureate panel featuring Steven Chu, Frances Arnold and Carolyn Bertozzi focused on synthetic biology, AI, and cross-disciplinary science to compress years of evolution into tractable engineering problems. But simplistically, to get this done we need two things: breakthroughs and mass adoption. The most energizing part to me was people who’ve figured out the scale part: José Andrés and World Central Kitchen have delivered over 350 million meals by landing ‘with the know-how and the heart’, that means every local boat, helicopter, and kitchen becomes theirs. No heavy equipment, just people mobilizing together. McDonald’s has achieved 95%+ elimination of plastic packaging; Apple has decoupled growth from carbon — 75% revenue growth alongside 60% decarbonization. Apple’s Sarah Chandler put it this way: solutions must be beautiful, advanced, delightful — and best for the planet. No either/or allowed. We’ve spent decades asking whether the solutions exist. They do. The harder, more human question is: who will carry them to scale? (SB)

The paradox of progress

Derek Thompson has a new piece out on the 6 megatrends that are defining 2026 and as I read it, I had this growing sense of whiplash. AI is fueling industry growth at unprecedented levels, but a majority of Americans don’t like it. We’re making incredible progress in some areas, like medicine, but generally feeling worse, having fewer children, buying fewer homes and not moving up at work. The media says the country is a mess but (domestically) we’re actually in a period of historic peace. I think this extreme dissonance is the defining condition of the current era. It's not just uncertainty. There are actually plenty of certainties, but they seem to contradict each other, and in some ways that's harder to sit with than not knowing. This extreme dissonance is, I think, the theme of the current era. The temptation for leaders and brands (and honestly, people) is to resolve the tension — to pick the story that's most convenient in the moment and tell it confidently. But the ones that will earn trust in the long run are the ones acknowledging the contradictions and sticking to their anchor values anyways. Right now, it feels like the most credible thing you can say in a paradox is: both things are true. (HS)

Sport was designed to unite us. It can be redesigned.

The institutions and structures of sport have drifted far from their original intent. Mike Geddes (of 17 Sport) and I wrote a piece for Fast Company, published today, on the opportunity to redesign. (SB)

These nuggets curated by ENSO leaders Sebastian Buck and Hanna Siegel 

7 things that made us think, gasp, share and/or laugh: 

• I love NASA so much – they have a tool where you can put in your name (or any words) and it'll give it back to you using Earth imagery

• My new favorite trend is communities that are building a Library of Things. Why buy a sewing machine / metal detector / bundt pan, when you can borrow it and then return it for the next neighbor who needs it. 
• This delightful and inspiring profile of Martin Short, a man who for decades has reflected on his week every Monday and graded himself across 9 categories (“The more disciplined I am, the better I feel.”). And who has endured more tragedy than anyone should have to. Of his daughter’s recent suicide, he simply says, “I am trying to move toward the light.”
• Sam Culley is walking the South West Coast Path (around Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset), and his daily updates are delightful
• The 6 Megatrends of 2026 (so far) from Derek Thompson
• To effectively treat depression, therapists are now focusing on finding joy instead of reducing pain. And it’s working.
• 6 reasons to be (cautiously) optimistic about movies in 2026

What we’re working on

ENSO is a small, senior team, so that we can work on just a few initiatives at a time. This allows us to go deep on some of the biggest challenges/ opportunities. Recently, we’ve been working on a few main missions with our partners:

1. Reimagining the future of the seas, and exploring what a new frontier in maritime might mean for the world
2. Exploring the human advantage in work, with senior talent leaders shaping the culture of companies embracing AI  
3. Helping artists sustain an artistic life over the long term, and designing the space and tools to help artists everywhere thrive. 
4. Building awareness and new behaviors for childhood safety, when there's already too much to do.

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Reach us at news@enso.co

See you next time.

ENSO • 115 W California Blvd #9101 Pasadena, CA 91105