What if... that was the week that was? Edition #127

One way to think critically about a fast changing industry, is to speculate: to imagine a little way into the future and see what might happen. To manage and empower that speculation you can set a constraint - in my case, exactly 100 words. In each flash fiction I take the philosophy behind my PhD and take a number of objects or actants and make them interact. This could be a human and a software algorithm, a culture and a hardware billboard or any combination of the myriad of actors in play. Daily speculation: creative calisthenics for an overloaded time.

January 6, 2026

https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nvidia-announces-dlss-45-at-ces-2026-053000128.html

Humans still went to the show. They didn’t need to of course. Their Agents were doing the research and deals behind the scenes. But it was a few days away and, since the show was back in the real world now, a chance to travel irl. At the bar, late at night some would remember previous shows: the shiny new gadgets, the crazy inventions. They’d talk about trying them out: standalone computers, glasses, displays, anthropomorphic robots. They’d laugh. The show was still packed with material things of course. They looked out across the show at the booths showcasing their chips.

January 7, 2026

https://digiday.com/marketing/crisis-culture-and-costs-the-new-reality-of-the-modern-cmo

He struggled for an analogy. He was like the brand’s parent: raising it. Maybe he was its guard: protecting it. Maybe the brand was like a novel with him as the narrator? He played with these thoughts as he sat down to work. He was human. At least that was clear… for now. He looked at his team, his bank of screens, a wall in front of him. The Agents were ready with their reports: data, live streams, projections, models, simulations, trends and visualisations he still hadn’t figured out. As he began, a new image: maybe he was the conductor.

January 8, 2026

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/havas-will-use-ai-to-redefine-what-agency-work-is-worth/

Her colleagues sometimes joked that one day there wouldn’t be a human in the room. But there still was. She didn’t like real meetings, she’d rather send her Agent but the Company made a point of having “blood in the room”. Clients liked it. It made them think they could use human power, get an advantage. She relaxed as her Agent connected to the room. This was home. This was her space. Familiar. She re-arranged the data, created a new tool on the fly to generate a new model. She was so comfortable she didn’t notice the meeting had started.

January 9, 2026

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/01/09/iran_russia_ukraine_internet_outages/

He’d shut down the networks of course. His agents and Agents were on the streets and in the streams, “policing” the movements. They were listening, watching and “engaging” with the protesters’ stories. His advisors were encouraging him to shut down the protestors’ Agents as well. They were not networked of course but The Leader could reach them, disable them. He knew they were being used to plan, coordinate, model. They were powerful but he knew if he could feed the protestors’ Agents the right LLM data, he could shape those models, those plans, that intelligence. They could be his Agents.

January 10, 2026

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/minneapolis-ice-shooting-renee-good/685571

It was the new recruit’s first “event”. The new recruit wasn’t surprised they were caught up in an “event”. The situation was volatile and The Company’s teams were on the frontline. The new recruit was also expecting the request. Teams paired new officers with experienced ones and they had their methods. So when the recruit’s partner asked for the data to be reconfigured, it was no surprise. The argument was predictable: the reality was clear, the data should reflect that. The new recruit knew the argument didn’t match its standards programming. But it also knew that programming could be changed.

January 11, 2026

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/01/the-pitt-hbo-max-season-2-tv-review/685570

It was a throwback, but it had gone, what they call in the show, “viral”. And it was a passive. It was just something to watch. It was linear, a narrative you couldn’t change or play or regenerate. People had seen them in museums, talked about them in history sims at school and some artists still made them but this had gone mainStream. It was set in an anonymous office in the early days of Agents. The hero human was struggling to deal with the changes, battle for what he called “creativity”. Some people watched it alone. Without their Agents.

January 12, 2026

https://www.marketing-interactive.com/chagee-opens-first-family-friendly-store-in-singapore-at-suntec-city

It was an outing. Their Agents did the everyday shopping of course and even when they did input, at Christmas for instance, it was all “online” as they liked to call it. But when they had a family they wanted a family trip. The mall was just right. It was climate mitigated, and, as The Company subscribers, free for them. The play areas were balanced for diversity and inclusion and obviously configured to The Company’s curriculum, which Sam’s school used of course and while they played, Chris and Alex could share a personalised healthy meal while their Agents negotiated bargains.