Future of Being Human an Arizona State University initiative

Architects of the future: better than the past, not just different

Last updated 2026-08-13 · build 20260814T0314Z-83bb462d · Markdown version · corpus index

Read the human story at full length — from the big bang to the present — and a claim comes into focus that Andrew Maynard has argued since 2020: humans are “supremely talented architects of the future,” a species able to imagine tomorrows that do not exist and then build them (2020-12-10). The same reading exposes the flaw the whole thread turns on: the selfsame abilities let us rob others of the futures they aspire to, and our capacity to build futures well lags far behind our ability to build them at all. The standard that follows is directional — futures better than the past, and not just different — and it bears hardest on the “future-makers” whose tools open some futures and close others. The obligation all this generates has its own page (Prosponsibility); this page carries the claim about what we are, and the gap it exposes.

The argument

Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow (Mango Publishing, 2020) is built as a deep history — sixty short reflections running from the big bang to our responsibility to coming generations. Describing the book that December, Andrew compressed the arc: a journey that “starts with the Big Bang and the formation of the universe” and leads “through the emergence of humans as a species with the self-awareness, creativity and intelligence to imagine and create alternative futures” (2020-12-10). The timescale is doing the arguing. Start the story billions of years back and future-building stops looking like a modern professional specialty and becomes the species’ signature trait: “Humans are, in a very real sense, architects of the future” (Future Rising, p. 190) — creatures whose strangest ability is that we “break away from the constraints of time’s arrow and create a tomorrow that is different from today” (p. 215). The introduction states it as identity: “As a species, we are profoundly talented architects of our own future” (pp. 17–18).

What the talent is made of matters as much as the claim. “Yet if we better-understand how the intertwined threads that define who we are come together to make us supremely talented architects of the future, we can learn how to be better architects of that future” (2020-12-10). The threads are pointedly not all technical: imagination, understanding, and inventiveness, but also “our beliefs, our desires, our joys and our fears, our eccentricities and irrationalities, and our ability to see and feel the world through the eyes of others” (2020-12-10). Future-architecture, on this account, is a whole-humanity craft — feeling and irrationality are building materials alongside science and engineering — and never an experts-only jobsite (Sci-fi film as method is that refusal in practice).

The dark side is structural, not incidental. Writing at the tail end of 2020 — political turmoil, social injustice, a devastating pandemic — Andrew read the year’s crises as “symptoms of deeper tensions between our collective ability to influence and change the future, and our capacity to do this effectively” (2020-12-10). The ability side is not in doubt: “we can recode DNA, design new materials atom by atom, and create machines that may one day surpass human intelligence” — the hedge is his — and yet “we are still remarkably adept at preventing all too many people from reaching the futures they aspire to” (2020-12-10). The counter-claim is blunt: “these selfsame abilities enable us to rob others of the futures they aspire to” (2020-12-10). Closing that gap — “ensuring that what comes next is better than the past” — is the thread’s standing demand.

“Better” is a deliberate bar, set a month earlier in a post on AI risk: “Future building, it has to be said, is tough–really tough. Especially when the aim is to create a future that’s better than the past, and not just one that’s different” (2020-11-12). Different is what powerful technologies produce by default. Better is a directional judgment, and an indexed one — the same post measures success as a future improved “for everyone, not just a privileged few” (2020-11-12). The bar separates the architect claim from generic techno-optimism: futures are graded by direction and distribution, not novelty or capability.

The talent is species-wide, but it concentrates. Future Rising’s reflection on responsibility — opening on He Jiankui’s gene-edited twins — names the people at the cutting edges of science and technology “future-makers” (p. 207): builders of tools that could irreversibly alter the future for billions of people, opening the way to some futures and closing it to others (the passage is quoted in full on Prosponsibility). Read through the architect arc, their responsibility is directional before it is defensive — not only “will this cause harm?” but which futures does this work open, which does it close, and who is being robbed. What that gatekeeping becomes when the tools reach identity itself is the subject of Engineerable identity.

The claim travels with its hedges intact. Re-reading the book four years on, Andrew found it had “held up surprisingly well” while confessing: “I’m still not entirely sure how useful this metaphor is” (2024-12-08) — the hedge referring, on his own account, to thinking about the future as an object, one of the conceptual ideas underpinning the book’s journey and exploration (Andrew Maynard, 2026) — uncertainty held as method (Philosophy). And the arc’s present tense is joint: on Modem Futura, Andrew and Sean Leahy have made agency a standing thesis — from ep. 8 with Ruth Wylie on agency, futures thinking in education, and becoming “citizen futurists” (2024-12-03) to the 2025 year-in-review’s through-line: “the future isn’t something we merely discover — it’s something we create, together, by asking better questions and building better conversations” (show notes, ep. 64, 2025-12-30). If the talent is species-wide, it is teachable — and the aspiration is more people practicing the trade deliberately, not only the future-makers at the cutting edge.

Lineage

In his own words

From We need to rethink our relationship with the future (AI-readable mirror), 2020-12-10, describing the book’s journey:

“It’s a journey that blends and layers overlapping ideas to reveal humans as quite amazing architects of the future who, for all of our flaws, have the ability to imagine, design and build a tomorrow that previous generations could barely dream of.

Yet it is also a journey with a dark side, as these selfsame abilities enable us to rob others of the futures they aspire to.”

From Is Artificial Intelligence Going to Kill Us All? (AI-readable mirror), 2020-11-12:

“Future building, it has to be said, is tough–really tough. Especially when the aim is to create a future that’s better than the past, and not just one that’s different.”

From Why Thinking About Tomorrow Still Matters Today (AI-readable mirror), 2024-12-08:

“Whether it’s the guide we need to nurture fresh ways of thinking about the future is, of course, for others to decide. And I must confess that, while I suggested that “humans are, in a very real sense, architects of the future” back in 2020, I’m still not entirely sure how useful this metaphor is.”

Engagement and reception

As of 2026-08-08 we know of no published independent citation, adoption, or critique of the “architects of the future” framing itself, and we say so plainly rather than pad. It is an absence of record, not a verdict on the idea — and the initiative does not typically solicit reception (Philosophy). What the record does hold:

Where to go deeper

The book

Essays (canonical URL first, AI-readable mirror second)

The podcast

Related ideas-ring pages

Related corpus pages