May reflections: the emergence of "ambient intelligence”
Annotating a future agentic thing from May news reflections
The weekly reflections on the news in human-AI co-performances are brought to life via a story from the future of living with agentic things in the city.1
The Tributary: Flowing Through Community
The morning light filtered through the maple trees of Riverside Heights, catching on the metallic blue finish of "The Tributary"—one of three autonomous vehicles owned collectively by the neighborhood association. Maya stood on her porch, coffee in hand, watching as the vehicle glided to a stop in front of the Johnsons' house across the street.
The Tributary wasn't just transportation; it was Riverside Heights embodied in machine form. Its sleek exterior featured subtle wave patterns in shades of blue and green, designed by local artist Amir Kazemi to represent the river that bordered their community. The neighborhood had voted on the design last fall, and the pride was evident in how residents cared for the vehicle.
"Morning, Maya!" called Darius, stepping out his front door. "Heading to the community garden today?"
"If The Tributary is free after the Johnsons," she replied. "Emma has a doctor's appointment this afternoon."
As if responding to its name, the vehicle's ambient lighting pulsed gently. The community AI that coordinated the neighborhood's three shared vehicles had already registered Maya's request through her home assistant.
The Johnsons emerged from their house—Sarah helping her elderly mother into the backseat while her husband Daniel loaded a folding wheelchair. The vehicle automatically adjusted its suspension to make entry easier.
"We'll be back by noon," Daniel called to Maya with a wave. "It's all yours after that."
What made The Tributary different from commercial rideshares wasn't just its community ownership, but how it had become central to neighborhood identity. When the vehicle passed other Riverside Heights residents walking on sidewalks, its lights would pulse in greeting. When parked at neighborhood events, it transformed into a mobile power station and information hub.
Last month, when the neighboring Westlake community had experienced flooding, three Riverside families had programmed The Tributary to deliver supplies. The vehicle returned with a small blue medallion now affixed to its dashboard—a token of thanks that had become a point of collective pride.
As The Tributary pulled away with the Johnsons, Maya noticed a new decoration—a small handpainted stone in the community collection box mounted on the vehicle's rear. These tokens, created by residents and carried by all three neighborhood vehicles, were physical manifestations of community stories and milestones.
Maya recognized this one—created by the Rodriguez kids after The Tributary had transported their entire soccer team to the city championships. By afternoon, dozens of residents would see this new addition, reinforcing their shared narrative without a word being spoken.
Later, as Maya prepared for her appointment, her phone pinged with a notification. The Tributary was running ten minutes behind schedule. The Johnsons had stopped to help a neighbor whose groceries had spilled on the sidewalk.
Maya smiled. The vehicles might be autonomous, but their rhythms were deeply human—shaped by the community whose values they represented and whose stories they carried through the streets of Riverside Heights.
May reflections: the emergence of "ambient intelligence”
The speculative thing aims to embody the key themes I've been exploring this May via my newsletter Target is New. Claude explains the links between the story and the weekly columns.
The overarching theme of May appears to be the emergence of "ambient intelligence"—AI systems that are becoming embedded in our physical and digital environments rather than remaining as discrete tools we consciously interact with.
Your four observations trace this progression: from Meta's "fittest" AI strategy (optimized for context rather than raw intelligence), through the temporal disconnect between human and AI experience, to simulation environments that orchestrate physical reality, and finally to new economic protocols enabling AI-to-AI transactions. These all point toward a fundamental shift where AI moves from being something we use to something we live within—creating what you call "living by simulation" rather than just living with digital tools.
The common thread is the dissolution of boundaries: between human and AI time perception, between digital and physical spaces, between conscious prompting and ambient response, and between individual AI tools and networked agentic systems. This suggests we're moving toward a reality where intelligence is distributed throughout our environment rather than concentrated in specific applications.
This story connects to the five newsletter “triggered thoughts” of May:
Part 1 (weeknotes (338): Survival of the fittest small AI
The neighborhood vehicle embodies the concept of "fitness for context" rather than raw intelligence—The Tributary's AI is optimized for community needs and local connections rather than trying to be the smartest possible system, similar to Meta's strategy of creating the "fittest" AI for specific contexts.
Part 2 (weeknotes 339): Compressing time as trigger for different co-performances
The story shows a natural co-performance between humans and AI—the vehicle coordinates schedules but adapts to human rhythms when the Johnsons stop to help a neighbor, illustrating how AI and humans can collaborate while respecting their different relationships with time.
Part 3 (weeknotes 340): Immersive AI as Orchestrating Agentic Prompted Systems
The Tributary represents ambient intelligence embedded in the physical environment—it's not just a tool but part of the neighborhood's fabric, greeting residents, transforming for different uses, and physically carrying community stories through the medallions and tokens.
Part 4 (weeknotes 341): New value mechanics for the agentic web
The story illustrates an alternative economic model based on community protocols rather than commercial transactions—the blue medallion from Westlake and the painted stones represent a value system based on community contribution and shared narrative rather than traditional currency.
Part 5 (weeknotes (342): Embodying physical AI simulations
The Tributary bridges the physical and digital worlds by embodying community identity in material form—unlike centralized simulation models, this represents a distributed, community-controlled form of physical AI that serves as both functional transportation and symbolic representation of collective values.
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 such as the 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. Read more on our activities.
Combining capturing knowledge and creating inspirational artifacts is typical of 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.
Thanks to a helpful writing co-author (Lex.page with Claude 3.7), this speculative thing got a storyline. I inspired the thing with a combination of four (randomly taken) cards from the Near Future Laboratory's Design Fiction Work Kit, that I translated into this prompt for a speculative thing.
I pulled these four cards: vehicle thing (object), retail signage (archetype), tattoo (action), collaborative (attribute), and this was the prompt I created for Claude:
In combination with the concept of ambient intelligence, distributed in all, rather than concentrated in specific applications, I think the collaborative action is inspiring; creating a system where we have indeed more shared vehicles that are really shared, and not as the current shared mobility that is more a rental service that is self-operated on the street. Imagine neighborhood-owned vehicles that are not only a vehicle to use, but also are operated by the community; they are also a signpost of the collective that is the framework of the neighborhood. In the neighborhood, the shared objects are defining the collective, and the way the inhabitants are dealing with the shared vehicles is defining the character of the collective, of the neighborhood. This collective item is icons, that are also represented in an expression that symbolises the neighborhood, which people are proud of. Almost like some ‘gangs’ have a tattoo to signal their shared beliefs, and support of each other. It is not literally like this; it is not a commune, but it has the same bonding. The outing can be found on several levels in the neighborhood. On building, on shared spaces, and on the vehicles that are used.