Future Design Inquiries. January 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

The horizons of hope

What if we’ve set unreasonable conditions for hope? Research psychologist David DeSteno, who specializes in how emotions guide decisions, argues in a recent NYT essay that modern psychology has made hope conditional: you should only hope for what you can personally achieve. But this ‘manageable hope’ shrinks our ambitions precisely when the world needs audacious progress. Climate change? Political division? Too big for one person, so why bother hoping? But an older conception of hope is that it is a virtue to be practiced, not an aspiration to be managed. In spiritual traditions, hope persists even when outcomes are beyond individual control. Life is not about any one of us, and “to hope is to do good without expectation that we can make it so.” His research backs this up: people with a faith practice aren’t just more hopeful, they’re more actively engaged in bringing about change. Hope is a muscle that strengthens through collective action.

This reframes what organizations are actually for. Companies exist precisely because some goals require more than individual effort; they are vehicles for achieving what’s impossible alone. Yet how many companies actually cultivate hope as a practice? Too often they optimize for near-term results (like quarterly KPIs) which are ‘manageable hope’, rather than missions worth pursuing over decades (practiced hope). Are we asking people to believe success is achievable soon, or inviting them into something bigger than themselves — knowing that the work matters whether or not they can personally see it completed? (SB)

We should stop underestimating one another

As we head into 2026, I’ve read a lot of thoughts, predictions and analyses about how we as a society can make this year better than the last. Of course, there are important policy, political and social issues at stake. But I think one of our biggest problems is that we chronically underestimate each other. The researcher Adam Mastroianni (his Substack is excellent) wrote a piece, How to be less awkward, highlighting studies showing that:

• Everyone blames themselves for awkward silences
• People think they like others more than others like them in return
• People expect conversations to go poorly, even though they usually go well
• People think chatting with a stranger will be unpleasant, even though they typically end up enjoying themselves

This all matters because human relationships are really, really important! Like – the most important. It’s where we derive most of our happiness. Yet we all seem to be stuck in an insecure thought loop and it can make us deny ourselves the one thing that would make us happier. It’s been well documented that we need to rebuild trust (among ourselves and among our institutions). But before we can get to that, we need to collectively realize that, in fact, we really do enjoy one another. (HS)

Growth through crisis

The final book I read last year was also one of my favorites: Nick Thompson’s The Running Ground. Thompson is CEO of The Atlantic, and a record-holding distance runner, but the book is really about his navigation of life. A particular turning point for him was surviving cancer: the brush with mortality brought a level of clarity and conviction on how he wanted to live. I experienced the same in my own cancer rodeo (but I didn’t get the world records). What scientists call post-traumatic growth can be a powerful thing, but it’s not automatic, it only emerges when we have the right social support and when we actively construct meaning from adversity. It’s what we do with the struggle, and who helps us through it, that determines whether we break or break through. Which brings me to Frank Capra, the godfather of holiday season movies like It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Capra grew up through the Great Depression and World War II. His ‘fantasies of goodwill’ weren’t naive or sentimental, they were deliberate acts of collective meaning-making, processing generational trauma into stories that said: we can still choose kindness, community, and to believe in each other even when things feel dark. Living through another concatenation of crises, the question is whether we’ll create the conditions for post-traumatic growth at a collective level. Can we make meaning together that moves us forward? (SB)

The next era for technology in society

When ENSO began, we were woven into Silicon Valley’s spirit of optimistic service. ‘Don’t be evil’ was famous, and companies earnestly declared ambitions to move the world forward; Jony Ive recently described the era as ‘like an innocent euphoria: like-minded people driven by values, in service of humanity’. Then came the ‘techlash’, ‘move fast and break things’ became infamous, and a policy shift towards the deregulatory right. Many companies stepped back from the declarative positive intent that energized their early growth. Peter Leyden’s recent article sets an agenda for the pendulum swinging back. The 2026 and 2028 elections are going to require perspectives on how America can work for everyday people: the abundance agenda, affordability, opportunity. Which gives the tech industry an opportunity to “craft a tech-positive, future-forward vision for America. That vision has to start with embracing the positive potential of AI as an extraordinary tool that could enable us to reinvent America and make a much better world”. This requires designing a society of abundance that makes the most of AI, rather than just driving engagement. Which companies will resuscitate idealism, prove that AI can serve humanity, and make people fall in love with tech again? (SB)

These nuggets are curated by ENSO partners Hanna Siegel (HS) and Sebastian Buck (SB).

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

• Adults are rushing to sign up for NYC’s drop-in choirs as they search for low-commitment fun. ‘It’s an a-choired taste.’
• MONUMENTS at MOCA LA is a remarkable show, presenting old confederate-era monuments in juxtaposition with modern art on slavery, racism and American life. 
• “Where once our digital environments inevitably shaped us against our will, we can now build technology that adaptively shapes itself in service of our individual and collective aspirations. We can build resonant environments that bring out the best in every human who inhabits them. And so, we find ourselves at this crossroads. Regardless of which path we choose, the future of computing will be hyper-personalized. The question is whether that personalization will be in service of keeping us passively glued to screens—wading around in the shallows, stripped of agency—or whether it will enable us to direct more attention to what matters.” - The Resonant Computing Manifesto has been signed by a lot of tech luminaries and is worth a read
• Why on Earth Have I Seen the Same Broadway Show 13 Times? Such a great excavation of why some things get deep in our psyche. [and Operation Mincemeat is amazing]
• So what if Nike’s neuro shoes are a placebo? 
• The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards never disappoint

• ClientEarth is a legal team for the planet, using corporate law to establish accountability

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. Designing the largest day of service ever, with a coalition of 80 for-profit, non-profit and civic organizations 
2. Helping artists sustain an artistic life over the long term: Designing the space and tools to help artists everywhere thrive. 
3. Changing the world of work: the labor market is the engine of prosperity, but ~80% of people are not engaged or thriving. We’re working to change the system. 
4. We have to redesign everything. We get to redesign everything. At this inflection moment of old systems breaking, widespread dissatisfaction and the AI explosion, we are thinking about how to redesign our world for abundance.

Thank you for being part of the network that fuels our optimism and expands what’s possible. We’re grateful for you, and we’re committed to creating positive futures together.

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Reach us at news@enso.co

See you next time.

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