February in Cities of (Agentic) Things
Annotating a future agentic thing from February reflections
A Saturday Morning in Meadowlink Commons
The morning light filters through the cherry trees in Meadowlink's central garden as Elisa checks her neighborhood's energy forecast on her way to the weekly commons meeting. The community garden—once merely decorative—now serves as both gathering space and living interface to the neighborhood's autonomous energy system.
At the garden's center stands what residents affectionately call "The Negotiator"—a sculptural installation whose flowing water patterns and bioluminescent elements shift in response to the neighborhood's energy flows. Today, it pulses with an urgent blue pattern that Elisa immediately recognizes: the system has detected an imbalance that requires community attention.
Joining her neighbors on the benches surrounding The Negotiator, Elisa watches as the neighborhood's AI facilitator—a projection that materializes from the installation—initiates the meeting. "Good morning Meadowlink," it begins with a voice both warm and neutral. "Our energy storage is approaching capacity limits following this week's unexpected sunshine. The community prediction market indicates we'll exceed our positive energy targets by 23% this quarter. Would you like to allocate this surplus to: neighborhood infrastructure improvements, energy credits for under-producing households, or banking toward our summer festival?"
The residents engage in animated discussion while their personal tokens—small devices residents carry that represent their energy contribution and consumption patterns—pulse in sync with their emotional responses. The AI moderator ensures every voice is heard, occasionally surfacing overlooked patterns: "It appears households with southern exposure are overproducing consistently, while those on the north side struggle during winter months. This represents an imbalance not previously acknowledged in our allocation formulas."
By meeting's end, the community has reached consensus: 60% of the surplus will support struggling households, with the remainder split between infrastructure and the festival fund. As residents confirm their decisions, The Negotiator's water patterns shift to a vibrant green cascade, and the garden plants seem to stand a little taller in the morning light.
Unpacking the Speculative "Thing"
Thanks to a helpful writing co-authors1, this speculative thing got a fine storyline. I inspired the thing with a combination of four (randomly taken) cards from the Near Future Laboratory's Design Fiction Work Kit, and the behavior and role it takes as "Neighborhood Energy Negotiator" aims to embody the key themes I've been exploring this February via my personal newsletter Target is New, let’s unpack these:
1. Agents as Negotiation Moderators
Weekly Theme: "Agents negotiating towards truth machines"
In Meadowlink, AI agents don't simply optimize energy use; they facilitate human understanding and collective decision-making. This reflects Payal Arora's observations about AI's potential to represent diverse voices, while addressing Inte Gloerich's concerns about blockchain "truth machines" being corrupted by financial speculation. The Negotiator succeeds where purely technological solutions might fail because it centers human dialogue within a supportive AI framework.
2. Making the Invisible Visible
Weekly Theme: "Breaking the blinding boxes outside in for AGI"
The Negotiator reveals "unknown knowns"—energy patterns and imbalances that were invisible to residents despite affecting their community. Unlike current AI systems that struggle with contextual blindspots, this speculative system specifically surfaces overlooked information. It doesn't claim access to all knowledge, but rather helps humans recognize patterns they collectively miss—addressing the limitations of current AI tools that I explored in my second week's notes.
3. The Living Interface
Weekly Theme: "New aesthetics of human-AI interplay"
The garden interface represents what might recognize as the next evolution of "new aesthetics"2—physical spaces that respond to digital flows. Like the ThingsCon Shadowplay performance, The Negotiator creates a distinct visual and sensory language that doesn't merely mimic human design patterns but establishes its own co-creative aesthetic. The installation isn't trying to pass as human-made; instead, it proudly displays its human-AI hybrid nature.
4. Commons-Based Resource Allocation
Weekly Theme: "Reimagining Prediction Markets for Civic Economies"
Meadowlink's token system transforms prediction markets from speculative financial tools into instruments for commons-based resource management. Residents "bet" on future outcomes not for personal gain, but to collectively manage shared resources. This represents how market mechanisms might be repurposed to serve community needs rather than extract value.
Research through Design Fiction
With Cities of Things we aim to envision the impact of living together with things with agency, with agentic things, with autonomous things, in the near future cities. We explored concepts as Collect|Connect hub as an engaging “AI”-neighbor to orchestrate and support community life in neighborhoods. With Wijkbot we created a kit for civic prototyping possible futures and impacts of living with intelligent and autonomous objects in our cities. Combining capturing knowledge and create inspirational artifacts is typical what Cities of Things like to engage. By ourselves or as commissioned projects for students or workshops. Check out citiesofthings.org and hoodbot.net for examples, and reach out if you like to know more.
This example is just a quickly made impression that opens up more questions than it provide answers. Something that is always the right start.
The New Aesthetics is referring to a concept described by James Bridle back in 2011, that reflects on the aesthetics of digital expressions, captured via a tumblr-stream. More in depth: https://jamesbridle.com/works/the-new-aesthetic and the tumblr https://jamesbridle.com/works/the-new-aesthetic