ISIA Firenze’s UNUSUAL, on Via Pisana — and yes, that’s me among the speakers. On June 16 I was a guest speaker at ISIA in Florence. Before the invitation arrived, I had never heard of it. That is a little embarrassing, because ISIA, the Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche, has been training designers since […]
Italy’s Quiet Superpower: Design Excellence That Deserves a Bigger Stage Read More »
Roberta Lanzara interviewed me for the Italian news agency Adnkronos about the technological transformation we are living through and about Singularity University. The agency’s article, with the outlet’s own editorial framing, is here: read it on Adnkronos. What follows is the interview itself, the full version of our conversation. My thanks to Roberta and the
We Are About to Colonize the Solar System: The Transformation We Are Living Through Read More »
Cognitive enhancement, individual freedom, and neurotechnology in Europe David Orban — my full answers to the interview for Le Scienze MIND on the neurohacking of non-therapeutic prosthetics. The questions are by Teresa Giusti (Master in Science Communication, SISSA); a version was published in MIND. To what extent can cognitive enhancement be a free individual choice,
The Right to Non-Adoption Read More »
Humanoid robots are not the end of human purpose My contribution to the Formiche magazine feature on the age of humanoid robots. A version was published in the February 2026 issue. The headlines write themselves: humanoid robots will steal our jobs. Warehouses, factories, maintenance — first the repetitive tasks, then the rest. If machines do
From Work to Passion Read More »
The school of the future, beyond the factory-school My contribution to Il Sole 24 Ore’s feature on the macro-trends of the future. The questions were posed by Francesca Barbieri; below are my answers, in the complete version I wrote. Let’s project ourselves 160 years ahead… How might we imagine a typical day for a student
Learning Anywhere, with Anyone, at Any Age Read More »
Pope Leo XIV has written an encyclical about artificial intelligence. “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence” is a work of moral reasoning that places AI inside a tradition reaching back to 1891, when Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum, the first encyclical on economic justice. And as someone who
Where the Pope is right about AI, and where Rome risks a second Galileo Read More »
The rights of AIs as a path to flourishing in the 21st century — written version of the Bicocca talk, 22 May 2026.
Artificial Persons, Human Freedoms Read More »
In 2015, I finished writing a book about artificial intelligence that almost no one asked for. At the time, AI was still primarily a research story. Deep learning was advancing, but foundation models did not exist. There were no systems embedded in everyday workflows, no AI‑generated text saturating the internet, no sustained policy debates about
Ten Years Later: Releasing “Something New?” to the Commons Read More »
Value exchange has always rested on a simple principle: voluntary participation creates positive-sum outcomes. That was true in ancient barter and remains true in today’s digital networks. What has changed is our capacity to coordinate these win–win interactions. This is an edited transcript of my remarks at Token Talks & Tastes 2.0 for the panel
The Evolving Architecture of Value, Technology, and Human Purpose Read More »
For the past 30 years I have been building companies across multiple geographies. Creating plans, founding teams, joining opportunities, raising capital, investing: the full spectrum of entrepreneurial activity, unconstrained by a single location. Ten years ago Network Society Labs, a global network of blockchain consulting groups, operated offices in San Francisco, Buenos Aires, London, Malta,
Location, Location, Location: Physical, Digital, Global Read More »
