2026-07-11 –, Creativity Dome
I have spent the past year doing a deep dive into fictions that imagine dystopian futures, exploring what rhymes with the future emerging out of our complex present and what these stories can tell us about our own experiences hoping and coping our way into the world we're co-creating.
I'll first compare works by authors like Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, William Gibson and Audrey Schulman, and media like Fallout and Silo, through the lens of eschatology and "existential hope"; and then we'll do an exercise on writing into speculative futures with the scaffolding of a condensed version of the Microscope scenario-writing & gaming format.
20 min – presentation about the subject matter of what I term as described above
5 min – explain Microscope and how we will use elements of it
5 min – break into groups or pairs, and brief introduction to one another by answering a prompt related to the upcoming exercise
25 min – introduce and begin scenario exercise 1
5 min – share results of exercise 1 (within groups/pair, or with wider group, depending on number of attendees)
25 min – introduce and begin scenario exercise 2
5 min – share results of exercise 1 (within groups/pair, or with wider group, depending on number of attendees)
Beth McCarthy is a Berlin-based strategist, curator & experience designer. With her consultancy Abstract Machine Studio, Beth serves clients building ecoystem, culture and relational intelligence. Currently, she supports DWeb Camp with strategic partnerships, Web3Privacy Now as Program Director, Funding the Commons with program design and management and other allies as an advisor.
Beth is passionate about digital rights and freedom, tech as a force for resilient communities, and designing for ethical humans and their systems.
I am an interdisciplinary nomad and explorer of the forefront of technology and culture. My life has led me through a vast diversity of environments; from playing in rock bands, to working in web3, all the way to an academic trajectory that led me to a PhD in philosophy. I navigate life with a profoundly unquenchable desire for deeper understanding of people, their cultural code and what motivates them. In parallel, I mostly find myself being an independent scout for emerging scenes of techno-cultural innovation that have the potential to be part of history, documenting them and supporting them.