Orientation – some recent personal anecdotes and thoughts about AI In May our reunion of H-Star academic collaboration between Stanford and Denmark prompted me to reflect upon AI in research collaboration [Link]. A new white paper from Stanford’s Accelerator for Learning — Responsible Assessment in the AI Era — prompted me to comment that we…
future of learning
Larry Leifer
Larry Leifer, extraordinary pioneer in design practice and design research, passed away yesterday August 29. Larry was a key figure in what I had hoped Stanford might stand for when I arrived in 1999. He welcomed me into The Learning Lab, Stanford Center for Innovation in Learning, Center for Design Research (CDR), and the Hasso…
Creative Pragmatics for active learning — implications of AI in assessment
Assessment in the AI era: a moment we have been preparing for since the 1980s A comment on the Stanford Accelerator for Learning white paper “Responsible Assessment in the AI Era” (2026) Quick summary — AI is revealing the flaws of traditional pedagogy based on standardized testing of final course deliverables. I am not alone…
Infrastructural imaginaries
Chris Ford and I are in a conference in Cambridge UK. The archaeological imagination applied to urban architecture, planning, design. Hosted by the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, this global conference on Situated Imagination and Imaginaries of Urban Futures brings together over 70 scholars, practitioners, and artists from around the world for a day to…
Trans-Nation Co-Creation
Studio Michael Shanks Stanford This week I am off to join Sabine (Remdisch) and colleagues as part of our collaboration — Trans-nation Co-creation. Here’s a kind of prospectus. TNCC Tour and Dialogues: A Week of Innovation, Leadership, and Foresight From June 13 to 19, 2026, the Institute for Performance Management at Leuphana University Lüneburg holds a…
Some archaeological notes on futures studies
The Janus Maneuver Hindsight, foresight, and futures studies Everyone, it seems, is a futurist now. Here are some loosely gathered thoughts on why an archaeology of design may be a missing foundation. These are notes – so expect inaccuracies and mistakes of memory (hopefully minor). After Janus – the divine principle of looking both back…