Synthetic Eden: Why We Needed a New Story About the Futures We’re Building

I didn’t plan to write a novel.

At least, not while the world was still trying to figure out if artificial intelligence was a passing headline or a permanent species of infrastructure.

But Synthetic Eden didn’t start as a story — it started as a conversation we were already having at The Connected Ideas Project. The kind of conversation that happens when scientists, engineers, and policymakers realize they’re arguing about the same thing in different languages.

We talk about “responsible innovation...