The real-world efforts I’m keeping an eye on — filter by the Open Questions they bear on. Some are scaling, some are early bets, some are contested. A living map of problems ↔ who’s working on them.
Efforts
23 items under this folder.
Acorn Land Labs
The Land Lab Simulator — a drag-and-drop app to design a self-sufficient off-grid homestead (food, water, energy, sanitation) before you build it.
acornlandlabs.com
cadCAD
Open-source Python framework for modeling and simulating complex adaptive systems and their dynamics over time.
cadcad.org
Coral Vita
Land-based coral farms that grow reef-ready coral via microfragmentation — restoration aimed at months, not decades.
coralvita.co
Deep Future
Gordon Brander's notebook on tools for thought, local-first software, and the long-run future of computing.
deepfuture.now
Dynamicland
Bret Victor's lab incubating a 'humane dynamic medium' — communal, spatial computing with real paper and objects instead of screens.
dynamicland.org
Edge Esmeralda
A month-long popup village where builders live together to prototype the community, governance, and institutions of a future town.
edgeesmeralda.com
Elicit
An AI research assistant that automates literature review — finding, screening, and synthesizing findings from scientific papers.
elicit.com
folkjs
An open research project for malleable, spatial software — programmable canvases and "folk" interfaces built from scrappy, composable web primitives.
folkjs.org
GreenWave
Popularizing regenerative ocean farming — vertical kelp + shellfish farms that need no inputs, sequester carbon, and produce food.
greenwave.org
Human Chemical Co.
An AI lab running regulatory-grade chemical safety + toxicology assessments — hazard prediction and risk reports in minutes, not months.
humanchemical.com
Ink & Switch
An independent research lab inventing the tools and infrastructure for local-first, malleable software.
inkandswitch.com
Insilica
AI toxicology and cheminformatics — automating chemical hazard assessment (ToxIndex, BioBricks, Sysrev).
insilica.co
Midjourney Scanner
The image-AI company's health division: a ~60-second, radiation-free whole-body ultrasound screen (licensing Butterfly Network).
midjourney.com
Mossy Earth
Membership-funded rewilding running 30+ restoration projects worldwide — including a coral reef rebuild in Indonesia.
mossy.earth
Open Source Ecology
Building the Global Village Construction Set — 50 open-source industrial machines you need to start a small, self-sufficient civilization.
opensourceecology.org
PlanetCare
Washing-machine filters that capture microplastic fibres from laundry, with a closed-loop cartridge return.
planetcare.org
PlasticList
Independently lab-tested 300+ Bay Area foods for plastic-related chemicals and published every result openly.
plasticlist.org
Qualia Research Institute
A nonprofit building a precise, mathematical account of consciousness and valence — and mapping the full state-space of possible experience.
qri.org
Remedy Scientific
AI- and sensor-guided systems that detect and destroy PFAS 'forever chemicals' in contaminated land.
remedyscientific.com
Santa Fe Institute
The original research institute for complexity science — emergence, scaling, and the laws that cut across cells, cities, and economies.
santafe.edu
The Ocean Cleanup
Builds systems to extract plastic from the ocean and intercept it in rivers before it ever reaches the sea.
theoceancleanup.com
The Tyre Collective
Wheel-mounted device that captures tyre-wear particles at the source — the single largest source of microplastics.
thetyrecollective.com
Topos Institute
A research institute using category theory to build a compositional science of complex, interacting systems.
topos.institute