It isn’t fear of the future. It’s the growing sense that the rules don’t apply equally — and that ordinary people are the ones left paying.
There is a comfortable story told from conference stages and boardrooms: that anyone uneasy about AI is simply afraid of the new. The same reflex, we’re told, that once greeted the loom and the motor car. Get on board or get left behind. It is a flattering story if you are the one selling the technology, because it lets you treat every objection as ignorance.
Our world is starting to look a lot like the one depicted in Mike Judge’s 2006 satire Idiocracy. AI chatbots are making people less curious. Social media has hollowed out two generations’ ability to react thoughtfully to bot-generated clickbait. We are, collectively, not in great shape.
Here are my top five issues with the world today — and what I think we can each do about them.
I recently wrote about the data harvesting reality behind age verification on my professional blog. But this isn’t just a tech issue — it’s a human rights issue. And there are things we can do about it right now.
I’m writing this while staring at yet another weather warning on my phone. Severe weather. Moderate snow or ice. And honestly? It barely registers anymore.
That should concern us.
As I write this in mid-February 2026, parts of England have experienced over 40 consecutive days of rain. Not 40 days of drizzle. Forty days of persistent, ground-saturating, river-bursting, field-flooding rainfall that hasn’t let up since New Year’s Eve. Devon, Cornwall, and Worcestershire have been hit the hardest, with the Met Office confirming some stations have recorded rain every single day since 31 December 2025.
Let’s be honest for a moment. Traditional climate action — the marches, the petitions, the protests — isn’t working. Not because the people doing it are wrong, but because the people in power simply aren’t listening. And when the consequences arrive, they’ll blame everyone but themselves.
So where does that leave the rest of us?
I’d argue it leaves us exactly where we need to be: focused on resilience. Not saving the planet in some grand political gesture, but building something real and local that actually helps people survive what’s coming.
