Cover: Possible Futures Volume 6
The cover depicts the POSSIBLE FUTURES logo with Vol 006 in small text on the right. Thin red line scribbles of stars and S-curves peek in and out of the POSSIBLE FUTURES letters.
In the middle of the cover is multimedia collage artwork by Rebawho showing the text "WORLD CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES" in the center, with various text blocks above with words like "THERMAL SHIELDS", "MIXING CHAMBER", "PULSE TUBE COOLERS", "COAXIAL CABLES", "QUANTUM AMPLIFIERS", and "QUANTUM PROCESSOR". Red scribbles are around each of these text blocks, and all of this is on a light red background with other colorful marks and words like DESIGN, CONTENT, and ANALYTICS on the margins.
At the bottom of the cover is a small white strip with the DAIR and Data & Society logo on the left, and the text "A COMMUNITY ZINE" on the right.
Page 1
In the Possible Futures workshop series, we imagine alternative futures in the form of drawings, poetry, prose, multimedia pieces, and more.
The following pieces were created at a Possible Futures workshop co-hosted by DAIR and Data & Society in Portland, Oregon on April 11, 2026.
We asked participants to: show your imagined techno-futures
Here are some of those imaginations.
Page 2
CREATIVE COMMONS CC BY-NC-SA
This page is filled up with an image of participants in a circle after passing around a ball of yarn and creating a web of interconnections. Most of the participants are wearing marks, and they are a diverse group of people. They are in a location with a concrete floor and walls filled with colorful paintings.
Page 3
This page shows a collage with "Plight of the" and "People" on the upper left corner, with "How?" and "a free life / in / limbo / until" scattered around them via erasure poetry. To the right is an image of an urban street with cars and light-up signs showing Chinese characters.
Across the middle of the page are two sets of human legs clad in jeans lying on a large red flag with a yellow star; to their right is a half of a pig carcass with a human hand holding its foreleg.
Underneath this is a sideways piece of erasure poetry that says: solve every problem, \ heal every wound, \ hope. We have kept the faith in \ what our real task is. Thank you.
The bottom of the page mixes an image of a fracking landscape with oil rig machines with an image of a farmer spraying pesticide below. Mixed in is a pen drawing of people walking on a long red path wearing hats and backpacks, with one person receiving the pesticide in a bucket.
Credit: Amy Xiao
Page 4
This page has two columns of erasure poetry, vertically separated by a few squares of cut-out steel poles, a block of text that says "There is no elevator. Instead, a floating staircase is the backbone between decks." and a yellow circle cut-out of text stating: "MAKE SURE ALL JOINTS ARE TIGHT AND SECURE SO THERE'S NO WOBBLE."
The left-side column of erasure poetry says: artificial intel-ligence / power / man-optimizing efficient / step / future" accumulating / future / monitor / supervise powers back up as if they never left. strength / course. destination mmaintenance recharge
The right-side column of erasure poetry says: IMPROVISE Blinded / hunkering / violently swaying / safest option. unanticipated / destruction trying / to navigate / looks like it's going to take a long time. overwhelmed avoid injury / downed / the decision is made
Credit: Anonymous
Page 5
This page shows several clippings of text and images above an orange cave painting background. On top is a strip saying "SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF COMPUTERIZATION."
In the middle is an image of an old email in an old-fashioned email window from 2006 regarding a reply to an email about conference participation. To its right is an image of a scientist in a full-body protective suit unloading a large scientific machine.
In the middle of the page is a piece of erasure poetry where "back" in "How do I go back" is erased and the word "forward' is added.
In the bottom is a strip of purple text saying "Receive and Read E-mail Messages." and a cut-out of an old-fashioned text editor window on Wordpad showing an essay called Trips v Vacations explaining their difference. To their right is a highway of cars where some cars are boxed in green marker.
Credit: Aubrey Lewarne
Page 6
This page is an erasure poetry speech from Ronald Reagan's "Speaking My Mind". It reads:
I'm often accused of being an optimist, and it's true As angry as I may be As disappointed as I may be My heart is / a strategic opening
Credit: Dylan Baker
Page 7
This page is a crayon drawing. On top are several blue people in an orange truck with faces that have dollar signs for eyes and tongues, and they are driving towards some pink rabbits. The truck is connected by a wire to the exposed brain of a person in the lower right corner who is hypnotized by a purple screen.
In the middle left is a box with the text: THEY STOLE OUR DREAMS In the middle right is a box with the text: TO FUEL THEIR MACHINES
Credit: Dylan McClain
Page 8
This page has a large image of whales pointed down with a small diver beside them facing upwards in the ocean. On top is the text: MAKE TIME. On the bottom is the text: STAND STILL. Near the bottom left is a red fish peeking out of a rock with a sad expression. Around the image is a slashy red border.
Credit: Anonymous
Page 9-10
This page is a multimedia collage entitled "Pattern and Flow"
On the left are a few cut-out images of diagrams such as houses and buildings, the construction of a red bridge-like structure, a legend that shows different colors for categories like Electric Vehicles, Electronics, Energy Storage, Other batteries, and Total Industrial, and a pie chart color-coded with those categories. Below that is a red-filtered picture of Elon Musk.
In the center is a gradient watercolor venn diagram of two circles, the left having words like GRIEF, CONTROL, PROGRESS, LINEARITY, DATA, and SELF CENTERED while the right having JOY, PARTICIPATION, ENOGUH, CO-CREATION, INFORMATION, LIFE-ING, INTERDEPENDENCE. In the middle intersection is a orange cave painting footprint and two hands joined holding a sprout with a mountain in the background, as well as a banner that says START WHERE YOU (we) ARE and CHANGE below it with an arrow pointing up connecting them.
On the right are images of trees, flowers, and a butterfly, with text saying Join Us!
Credit: Erika Sajak
Page 11
This is a pen drawing. In the center, it says Certified H (small R) Operations. Below, it says "This ____ (tool / company / institution) is committed to human centered ways of working and well-being, transparency, and the highest standards of social impact. We give back to communities.
Credit: JC
Page 12
This page is a pen drawing. In the center, it has a hand holding a device labelled HAND HELD SYNTAX PATTERN MATCHER. Below, it says:
- Build your own small language model
- Ethically source data
- Learn how it works
- Solar-powered or winding-powered
Credit: JC
Page 13
This page depicts a collage with a monarch butterfly, the root systems of some trees, ants carrying some green chunks, a dirt road lined with cement blocks, and a footprint in grey dirt. Around it are pen and marker lines with some additional ants and a house draw on top of the roots with a ladder from it leading down to a river.
Credit: Joerg Rings, https://joergrings.com
Page 14
On top of this page is a small green button on a larger greener rounded interface. Below, it is magnified to show its letters as black dots on a grid. Below that is text saying: "many programmers become so personally involved in their programs that they cannot take criticism resulting from program testing very well and become resistant to suggestions from peers and people who will be using the program —personality gets in the way of objectivity."
Below that is an old picture of a female teacher showing four young children a computer from the 90's with a black and green text interface. On top of the image is the text "What Will Be" and below it is the text "b. What's more important is that people become informed, and form their own opinions, about the changes ahead."
Credit: Julian Dunn, @OMGLOLWTFBBQ.BSKY.SOCIAL
Page 15
This page has a form from the table of Robert J Oswald, D.D.S. from Totem View Professional Building in Kirkland, Washington. The form is filled out in blue ballpen with Valena Allenspael as name, 12-19-97 as the date, and the prescription showing a multimedia collage of the text "Slow Print Media" with a stack of books below it. Below those is the form text saying "No Refill" and a signature.
Credit: Julian Dunn, @OMGLOLWTFBBQ.BSKY.SOCIAL
Page 16
This page has a multimedia collage with pink and yellow flowers and red and orange squiggles scattered throughout the white background.
On top is a vintage black and white picture of two vultures next to an egg, captioned "VULTURES STONING OSTRICH EGG \ Thought for food." To their right are strips of text that say "Moral Right & Economic Might", "IN A BLIND RAGE", and "A Bomb".
In the middle is a young girl with brown hair and light eyes making a shocked expression, looking down at a strip of text that says "the world's new technology."
Below are a few strips of text that say: "THE AI RACE GETS RED-HOT", "Privacy for Nazis", "(for the fun of it!)", and a chart showing NVIDIA's market capitalization reaching 4 Trillion while AMD's stays relatively flat. To the right of that chart is a nude person's backside and buttocks half-shown as they lie flat on their stomach.
Credit: Kate LaForge
Page 17
This page has a large colorful image of a heatmapped createred surface colored in red, green, and blue. In the middle is a snippet of text: "LIFE IN ISOLATION. From From an outpost called a puesto (above), hired hands tend to far-flung grazing in Río Negro, where a single ranch can stretch for several hundred thousand acres. "I can fly for more than three hours and see just a few of these places," says bush pilot Javier Adem. Residents of this empty steppe find bare comforts in towns like Los Altares: one bar, one gas station, one telephone." Below this is a body of a person wearing blue shorts lying down in water, suspended over a cutout image of a red bed.
Credit: Kaito Campo De Novais
Page 18
This page has a large image of the surface of a planet in space as the background. On top of it is a folding, twisting futuristic-looking silver flip phone showing a blue human eye on the screen with futuristic binoculars jutting out of it.
Below that is an image of a bunch of people in Hazmat suits above a picture of a house and a blocky black building with a red doorway with a red label called BAR.
Credit: Kaito Campo De Novais
Page 19
This page is a cut-out of a marker and watercolor illustration of a stylized woman's face shaded in orange and green with a colorful, intricate earring. There are stylistic elements of a graph and nodes on the woman's face. All of this is on a grid background; on the lower left is the text PATTERNS and on the lower right is a simple smiley face with a tongue sticking out.
Credit: Anonymous
Page 20
This page is a piece of erasure poetry on a text from Ronald Reagan. Throughout the page are small images like a small bird on a green background, a small gingko leaf, and two ripped out pieces of a painting of people. The poetry reads:
Ronald Reagan [Laughter] Go / home, soldier a hero is no [Laughter] God [Laughter] --[Laughter]-- author, of each time, a great trial and suffering \ And he would always desert you
Credit: Mar (They/Theme/Elle)
Page 21
This page is a multimedia collage of a person standing on two cars staring at a painting. Underneath that painting is a green face of a person on a background of a dark green landscape. Below the two cards are some small images of buildings and above the cars are some ink circles.
Credit: Anonymous
Page 22
This page is a multimedia collage with a black and white 3D grid background with rays radiating from a small silhouette of a person in the center. On top of this background are many small images of various people and text snippets that say: Un - Automated Intimacy Cooperation care for each other Neighbors help Conversations With Human Friends un - loneliness
Credit: Meredith Noble
Page 23-24
This is a pencil illustration of a wooded cliff over a sand beach and water with buoys in it. Above the illustration is the following handwritten text:
IN 2025, RESEARCHERS AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY DISCOVERED THAT APPLYING ELECTRIC POTENTIAL TO A CONCENTRATED MIXTURE OF CARBON DIOXIDE GAS BUBBLED THROUGH SEA WATER CAUSES FORMATION OF CALCIUM CARBONATE, PROMISING BOTH FOR CARBON SEQUESTRATION AS A CARBON-NEGATIVE PROCESS WHEN POWERED BY SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES LIKE AT-JOULE WAVE POWER, BUT ALSO SUSTAINABLE CEMENT ADMIXTURE CREATION (SAND) THAT IS TYPICALLY ECOLOGICALLY DESTRUCTIVE TO MINE TRADITIONALLY.
Credit: M. Erberich
Page 25-26
This is a large landscape image of a abstract, fabric-like background with a red splotch in the middle of a bluish-greenish area. On the left is text saying WHAT COMES AFTER. On the bottom is text saying: AMID THE ASHES OF THE AMERICAN DREAM, WE Meet you there.
Credit: ANONYMOUS
Page 27
This page is a piece of erasure poetry from Ronald Reagan's Speaking My Mind. The erasure poetry reads: Veterans \ mortgage foreclosures. government planning \ more plans fail, the government tells you \ lie down and be depressed! people \ can't see fat \ man \ taking advantage \ human misery read the score \ reduction in \ public housing? the need grows greater, people \ hungry each night. the basis of earning ten times greater than \ the dark depths overhead.
Below, in marker, the date is written as 4/11/26.
Credit: @CHELLEFROZENOVER2
Page 28
The page is multimedia collage artwork by Rebawho showing the text "WORLD CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES" in the center, with various text blocks above with words like "THERMAL SHIELDS", "MIXING CHAMBER", "PULSE TUBE COOLERS", "COAXIAL CABLES", "QUANTUM AMPLIFIERS", and "QUANTUM PROCESSOR". Red scribbles are around each of these text blocks, and all of this is on a light red background with other colorful marks and words like DESIGN, CONTENT, and ANALYTICS on the margins. On the top is "Fund Education to Train People for Future Jobs" in a rainbow marker route. On the bottom is an illustration of people operating large machines that look like a cloud and a cube.
Credit: Rebawho
Page 29
This is a piece of erasure poetry with a photo of a couple on top. It says: we have our friends no misery neighborhoods could not be broken. Pouring into the human process.
Credit: Toni Maisano, Oregon State University, @Ohtodi
Page 30 - 35
These five pages are the various forms of a foldable piece.
For all five pieces, the top of the page is an illustration of a workign mother as Van Gogh's Renaissance Man, with multiple arms holding multiple things like a phone, briefcase, home tools, and a baby while emails, documents, and cards falling all around behind her.
Below is a folding piece where the top triangle has an illustration of a happy earth with a happy cloud, hapy mountains, a rainbow, a bird, and flowers.
Folding it up or to the left and right reveals a bottom triangle that says THE WORLD IS STILL BEAUTIFUL in a circle with a simple sun with radiating pink rays in the center.
Folding it up reveals the bottom section, which shows a simply drawn childlike map of a location with places like Garden of Fruit, Meditation Room, Gym, Fashion Studio, Pharmacy, Farm, Savannah, Discussion Room, Music Studio, etc.
Fully opening the foldable section shows more small childlike illustrations of various things like a Science Lab, a conveyor belt of people on boats, a playground, a telescope, and a room with various balls and clothes.
Back Cover
This back cover is a multimedia collage entitled "Pattern and Flow"
On the left are a few cut-out images of diagrams such as houses and buildings, the construction of a red bridge-like structure, a legend that shows different colors for categories like Electric Vehicles, Electronics, Energy Storage, Other batteries, and Total Industrial, and a pie chart color-coded with those categories. Below that is a red-filtered picture of Elon Musk.
In the center is a gradient watercolor venn diagram of two circles, the left having words like GRIEF, CONTROL, PROGRESS, LINEARITY, DATA, and SELF CENTERED while the right having JOY, PARTICIPATION, ENOGUH, CO-CREATION, INFORMATION, LIFE-ING, INTERDEPENDENCE. In the middle intersection is a orange cave painting footprint and two hands joined holding a sprout with a mountain in the background, as well as a banner that says START WHERE YOU (we) ARE and CHANGE below it with an arrow pointing up connecting them.
On the right are images of trees, flowers, and a butterfly.
Below is the DAIR logo and the text www.dair-institute.org
