(est. 2021) explores the intersections of technology, culture, and human experience. From urban phenomena and digital spirituality to the evolving landscapes of creativity, we investigate how modern life reshapes perception, identity, and society.
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#21 — VIOL: the ‘anti-violence’ drug that is spreading through Lisbon by Mark Ellison
#20 — Signal Ghosts: The Cities Where Wi-Fi Never Dies
#19 — Digital Detox Retreats: Escaping the Algorithm by Cassandra Myrren
#18 — The Urban Sleep Crisis by Eleanor Voss
#17 — Cryptic Art: NFTs and the Revaluation of Creativity by Marcus Ellwood
#16 — Virtual Pilgrimages: Religious Experience Online by Mark Ellison
#15 — The Dark Side of Wellness: When Self-Optimization Becomes Obsession by Eleanor Voss
#14 — AI Companions and the Loneliness Epidemic by Isolde Maren
#13 — The Rise of Microdosing in Corporate Culture by Cassandra Myrren
#12 — Sonic Immunity: Healing Through Frequencies by Cassandra Myrren
#11 — The Ethics of Immortality by Adrien Veyra
#10 — Algorithmic Faith: When Machines Preach by Mark Ellison
#09 — Post-Human Erotics: Desire Beyond the Flesh by Elin Vårnes
#08 — Synthetic Memory: The Future of Personal Archives by Caio Navarro
#07 — Neurosprawl: Mapping the Brain as a City by Eleanor Voss
#06 — The Archive Will Outlive You by Liang Wei
#05 — Eternal Scroll: The Infinite Feed as a Prison by Isolde Maren
#04 — Terraforming the Mind by Alessio Romano
#03 — Digital Necromancy by Mark Ellison
#02 — Speculative Hunger: Future Diets in a Synthetic World by Cassandra Myrren
#01 — The Ecology of Glitches by Alessio Romano
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In the twenty-first century, human sustenance is no longer merely an act of survival; it has become a locus of speculation, identity, and control. The rise of synthetic nutrition—ranging from lab-grown meats to engineered macro-nutrients and flavour-coded consumables—has transformed the very ontology of eating. Food, once tied to culture, geography, and biology, is now increasingly algorithmic, programmable, and artificial. The body, in this context, becomes a laboratory for experimentation, and appetite a vector for futurity.
Synthetic diets, often justified as ecological imperatives or solutions to global inequities, carry profound philosophical implications. By divorcing consumption from natural sources, humanity is invited to redefine desire, health, and corporeal pleasure. The distinction between nourishment and experience collapses: a meal is no longer solely a matter of chemistry but a curated interaction between neural stimulation, sensory engineering, and ethical projection. As Haraway (2003) argues in The Companion Species Manifesto, our co-evolution with technology entails not merely physical adaptation but ethical and existential negotiation; the synthetic diet is a paradigmatic extension of this principle, binding biology, technology, and morality.
This transformation raises urgent ethical and ontological questions. If future diets are designed to optimize health, cognitive performance, or longevity, what role remains for choice, intuition, or pleasure? Does the optimization of nutrition through synthetic means risk transforming desire itself into a quantified, programmable variable? And as corporations, AI systems, and policy frameworks govern these nutritional infrastructures, the act of eating becomes inseparable from systems of control and surveillance. Paradoxically, the very liberation promised by synthetic diets—the freedom from environmental and corporeal constraints—may produce new forms of dependence, where the human body is calibrated and monitored as a cybernetic system.
Culturally, speculative hunger manifests as an aesthetic and psychological phenomenon. Social media feeds, virtual marketplaces, and immersive gastronomic simulations reinforce not only a desire for novelty but a collective fascination with engineered futures. Digital “tasting experiences” and VR gastronomy allow the eater to inhabit synthetic flavours before ingestion, merging anticipation with pre-mediated pleasure. In these spaces, appetite is both a subjective experience and a site of algorithmic intervention, raising questions about autonomy, authenticity, and the limits of desire in synthetic ecologies.
The discourse around future diets thus intersects ecology, ethics, and identity. In a world increasingly dependent on synthetic nutrition, hunger becomes speculative: not merely a physiological cue but a reflection of evolving social, technological, and existential imperatives. How we choose to feed ourselves—and what we imagine as sustenance—will shape not only the body but the moral and cultural architecture of posthuman existence.
References
- Haraway, D. (2003). The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Prickly Paradigm Press.
- Pollan, M. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin.
- Post, M. J. (2014). “Cultured Meat from Stem Cells: Challenges and Prospects.” Meat Science, 96(1), 45–55.
- Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press.