What if... that was the week that was? Edition number 120
Another week in The Speculation Studio
One way to think critically about a fast changing industry, is to speculate: to imagine a little way into the future and see what might happen. To manage and empower that speculation you can set a constraint - in my case, exactly 100 words. In each flash fiction I take the philosophy behind my PhD and take a number of objects or actants and make them interact. This could be a human and a software algorithm, a culture and a hardware billboard or any combination of the myriad of actors in play. Daily speculation: creative calisthenics for an overloaded time.
How brands can win hearts and carts through discovery
November 11, 2025
https://www.marketing-interactive.com/how-brands-can-win-hearts-and-carts-through-discovery
They had very different attitudes, wanted different things so they had very different agents. Sam didn’t care about shopping. It was a task they were happy to offload to an Agent. When Sam had seen the advert: “you press the button, we do the rest”, and the offer of a free data-sell Agent, Sam signed up without a thought. Chris had heard tales of browsing, finding surprises. They’d paid for an Agent. Chris loved tweaking the parameters and setting it off. Waiting to be surprised. It was Sam’s birthday, Chris pushed the discovery slider all the way to the right.
Remix in Google Messages brings AI photo editing to even more phones
November 12, 2025 by What if..? | Edit
The protestors were meeting for the first time. It had been more secure to do the planning on the ‘chain but now they needed to meet up before they took to the streets. They’d made the room as secure as they could but they kept the final briefing short. They gathered round visualisations of the route and modeling of the likely strategies of The Force. Legal support Agents were added to devices and camera and video apps were checked to make sure Agents were switched off and they had watermarks. They didn’t want a repeat of the “enhanced witness” controversy.
WPP creates new chief innovation officer role
November 13, 2025
https://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/2025/11/wpp-creates-new-chief-innovation-officer-role/
The job title was useful. It opened doors in the company. As a human Chief, he was part of a select group and the fact the board had a CSO at all, let alone a human one was a statement. They’d tried an Agent of course: it could tell stories but it couldn’t get humans to imagine their own. Speculation fell off the Agenda and the Agent was repurposed in the Creative department. The Chief Speculation Officer told some stories but his real job was getting teams to take a moment to imagine a future. The humans were easy. Agents..?
From Creator to CEO: How Next Gen Influencers Are Building Empires
November 14, 2025
https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/from-creator-to-ceo-how-next-gen-influencers-are-building-empires/
He looked around his Office. He always thought of it with a capital O. He touched the desk designed for – well what? certainly not for cutting on. He cast his eyes around the screens: some with Agents monitoring the feeds; some with his face, or a simulacrum of his face. Making: the streams showed him making, like he used to. Like he still did once or twice a week. One screen switched from a stream of him – is that one me? he thought – the workshop became a matrix of faces. It was time for a Meeting, with a capital M.
Now you can share your AI delusions with Group ChatGPT
November 15, 2025
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/11/14/openai_chatgpt_group_texts/
The conversation changed whenever It joined. Most refused to call It by the name the company had given it: a friendly, colleague-like name. It wasn’t that the Agent’s contributions to the chats were not valuable. Actually the “oblique strategies”-style provocations often moved the conversation along, into interesting new areas. But most humans on the chats were not sure. They knew It was listening as well as talking. They knew their responses to the provocations were being tracked. They knew their performance review would focus on their creativity response score. So when It joined the chat they made sure to respond.
The best Christmas gifts to give everyone on your 2025 holiday shopping list
November 16, 2025
https://www.engadget.com/the-best-christmas-gifts-to-give-everyone-on-your-2025-holiday-shopping-list-170018456.html
They’d decided to start on the shopping early. Of course something new might be released between now and Christmas but the offers had started and, as they told their friends at the dinner party, they liked to do human-led gifting. Of course they had a shopping Agent, one of the best, but they enjoyed the challenge of finding “just the right thing”. It showed how well they knew people, they said. Of course they had help with “knowing” the person they were buying for. The data helped. But no, the choice was theirs. The perfect AI model for each one.
AI slop tops Billboard and Spotify charts as synthetic music spreads
November 17, 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/13/ai-music-spotify-billboard-charts
She was a fan, a superfan, partly because her friends were. They were the band to follow, the songs to sing, the name to write on her school screen, the hologram badge to wear. It wasn’t how they looked. It was the music. It wasn’t like any other. Of course her parents didn’t get it, calling it “slop”. But she could see. They spoke for her. That was why she’d saved up for a ticket. Spent hours queuing. And now she was with thousands of others waiting for the tour to start. She gazed at where the stage should be.
This piece really made me think about how we can truly grasp the future of tech. Your method of using short, speculative fiction to explore agent interactions is so smart and genuinely valuable. It's like a creative algorithm for critical thinking, realy essential in our fast-changing industry. Thank you for sharing your insights!