## First keynote & workshops announced! We’ve crafted a dynamic program designed to spark ideas, meet friendly people, and collaborate—and we’re thrilled to announce our first keynote speakers and workshop lineup, with more exciting sessions to be revealed in the coming weeks! Picture this: hands-on workshops where you’ll create alongside peers, interactive sessions that challenge your thinking, keynotes that leave you inspired, rapid-fire pitches packed with fresh perspectives, and a vibrant exhibition showcasing groundbreaking work—including a spotlight on the most exciting student projects of the year. This is where creativity meets community. Mark your calendar and Get your early bird tickets ## Keynotes & talks ## Hands-on workshops & Interactive Sessions ## Exhibition Our exhibition returns with community projects and exceptional student work, featuring: • The Interactive Environments minor from TU Delft • The Master Digital Design program from Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, including their new digital fashion technology track We’re bringing back the Student Awards to celebrate the best projects with prizes. ## Thursday evening 11th December Community get together. More announcements soon. ## Friday 12th December – time table **Time**| **Activity** ---|--- 9:00| **Doors open, badge making, etc** 9:30| **Opening** 10:00| **Opening** **Keynote** 10:30| **Introductions workshops** 10:45| **To the workshops** 11:00| **Workshops & interactive sessions – Round 1** 12:45| **Lunch** 13:45| **Recap and introductions afternoon** 14:00| **To interactive sessions** 14:15| **Workshops & interactive sessions – Round 2** 16:00| **Break** 16:30| **Pitches, student awards** 17:30| **Closing keynote** 18:00| **Wrap-up** 18:15| **Drinks** 20:00| **End**

## **Share your expertise: Workshop proposals for TH/NGS 2025** We’d love to hear your ideas for workshops and interactive sessions at TH/NGS 2025! Year after year, these collaborative experiences have become a highlight of our conference, and our community consistently tell us how much they value them. ## **What We’re Looking For** We welcome proposals for 100-minute sessions where the participants play have an active role. Usually at TH/NGS these take the form of: * **Hands-on workshops** where participants create or make something together * **Interactive sessions** featuring brainstorming, discussion, or a panel of speakers exploring a specific theme with the audience * **A new format** We are always open to different forms; feel free to propose. Whatever the format, our community thrives on active participation and meaningful exchange. If you have a different approach in mind, we’re all ears—creativity is encouraged! ## **The Details** * **Time slots:** We have two rounds available—11:00-12:40h (before lunch) and 14:20-16:00h (after lunch) * **How to propose:** Use the form below to send us an outline with enough detail for us to understand your vision and what participants will gain. * **What happens next:** We will be in contact to discuss details. We will make a selection. Once selected, we’ll help you create a dedicated page to share information about your session in advance We can’t wait to see what you’ll bring to TH/NGS 2025. Your knowledge and passion make our conference what it is! ## _Our deadline is 1st of November!_

Mass intelligence immerses in physical reality - Designing for meaningful conversations and immersive behaviors. And more on human-AI-things collabs.

Weeknotes 352 - Companion Paradox: agency in the age of relatable AI - GPT-5 is everywhere in the news. It delivers and it underwhelms, depending who you ask. I dived in two the impact on being a relatable AI.

_Theweekly 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._ ## Morning, with headlines Maya scrolls the morning headlines with her thumb, the screen casting a cool light across the kitchen table. War, elections, the price of olives. She pauses on an explainer about last night’s late-breaking vote, unsure whether to be relieved or more worried. The bowl waits without hurrying her. Steam from the kettle curls into the air; the apartment is quiet enough that she can hear the street waking up one floor below. She takes the first spoonful without looking, and something tart—briny almost—cuts through the cream. For a second she’s back at the small restaurant around the corner: the citrusy pickle that arrived unannounced between courses, the waiter’s shrug when she asked what was in it, the way the table’s conversation lifted after that bite. She smiles into her phone and only then notices the numbers stamped on the empty packets by the sink. She’s pretty sure she didn’t reach for those yesterday. Maybe she did. Maybe the hand just knows its own mind in the morning. The bowl is larger than it needs to be at first, like a shallow pool that invites her to wander. As she eats, it seems to settle closer, drawing the edges in until each spoonful finds its way with less searching. She doesn’t think about it doing anything; it simply meets her pace. Between articles she checks a message from Raj—three photos of shoes lined up by a classroom door and a note: “Tried 4-11-6-2. The kids demolished it.” She glances back at her own numbers and thinks of the pickle again. Outside, a siren flickers and fades. Another headline insists on certainty; another argues for the opposite. She decides she doesn’t buy either. A berry catches at the back of her tongue, not sweetness but the suggestion of it, like someone about to tell a story they’re not sure they should tell. She reads one more paragraph and pushes the phone away. The last spoonful is different from the first—less showy, more composed. She can’t say why. At lunch she passes a café window and notices a tray of pastries dusted with something red. Not her usual place, not her usual hour. She almost goes in, doesn’t, makes a note to remember. On the train home, a stranger’s ringtone chimes a melody she can’t place, and for a moment the taste of the morning returns—bright, then gone. In the evening she rinses the bowl and leaves it to dry, its little analog dial resting at a tick-mark she hasn’t learned to name. The new box on the counter has a small sticker she hasn’t seen before—a subtle upward arrow next to one of the numbers. Trend, or coincidence, or a hundred breakfasts elsewhere tugging on her own? She turns the sticker between her fingers and thinks of the article about the vote, of the pickle, of choosing without knowing exactly why. Before bed, Raj sends a voice note: the field trip was a success, his daughter fell asleep before the train left the station. “Same combo tomorrow?” he asks. Maya doesn’t answer. In the morning, she’ll see what her hand reaches for. The headlines will argue again; the bowl will wait. Somewhere between them, the day will find its flavor. Prompt by GPT-5, Image by Midjourney ## July reflections: think with us: friction, agency, and the networked self The speculative thing in this day-in-the-life story aims to embody the key themes I’ve been exploring this July via my newsletter Target is New. Claude (via Lex.page) explains the links between the story and the weekly columns. **Human-AI Partnership vs. Dependency** : You consistently explore the tension between AI as a collaborative thinking partner versus AI as a replacement for human thinking. The phrase “think with us, not for us” captures this perfectly. **Necessary Friction** : You argue against seamless, frictionless AI experiences, suggesting that certain types of friction (like explicitly telling an AI what you’re seeing) preserve human agency and engagement. **The Unseen/Unsaid** : You explore how AI might relate to what’s not explicitly stated in data – the spaces between, the unspoken, the void that carries meaning in human experience. **Agency and Control** : Throughout all entries, you question who controls the AI’s intentions and how we maintain human agency in our relationships with intelligent systems. **Networked Intelligence** : You touch on moving beyond the individual to understanding intelligence as relational and networked between humans, technologies, and environments. ### Day-in-the-life connected to the posts Why does the day-in-the-life connect to the five posts? I asked my AI buddy (Lex.page using GPT-5). **Week 347: Think with us, not for us** – Essence: Agency-preserving guidance. The bowl suggests pace and possibilities (numbers, portion, timing) but leaves the choosing and meaning-making to Maya; it thinks alongside her, not instead of her. **Week 348: Articulated frictions for engaged presence** — Essence: Friction as focus. The numbered ritual and flavor surprises require small, intentional acts; the bowl waits for her lead, keeping the human as guide and making the experience felt, not automated. **Week 349: A void AI might make tangible** — Essence: Sensing the unsaid. Taste triggers memory (the pickle, the restaurant) and mood without explicit prompts; the bowl surfaces the in‑between—associations, not instructions—making the “void” perceptible. **Week 350: Paradox of ambient intelligence** — Essence: Probabilities, not proclamations. The quiet dial and subtle “trend” arrow communicate soft confidence rather than certainty; differences between first and last spoonful model calibrated, transparent uncertainty. **Week 351: Humanity in AI co‑performance** — Essence: Networked choice without surrender. Raj’s message, the shared trends, and Maya’s morning hand show co‑performance: individual agency braided with a social signal, neither outsourced nor isolated. ## Shaping a speculative thing I took inspiration for the speculative object from the Design Fiction WorkKit: A sensor thing related to breakfast, with a retro chic feel, and has shrink/expand behavior. This is my prompt for my AI writing buddy1 to create a day in the life story above: _A special breakfast bowl offers a variety of combinations between yoghurt and ingredients, along with different variations. The subscription service is delivering a possible mix for a week, which can end up in many different variations. The ingredients are packaged in neutral-designed boxes with only numbers. Every morning, you choose a set of numbers based on a short conversation and sensing with the service, which checks your mood and the people sitting at the table (lonely, with family, functional, relaxing, etc.). The mix is not made by a set script but is generated based on all the users around the world. Depending on the popularity, the breakfast bowl is more or less filled, which will serve as an additional data point._ _The service is not making the easiest bowl, but the one that is delivering the best experience, which is defined by the friction it unlocks, and the stories along._ ## **Research through Design Fiction** With Cities of Things, we aim to envision the impact of living together with things that have agency, are agentic, or are autonomous in 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 quick impression that opens up more questions than it provides answers. Something that is always the right start.

Weeknotes 348 - Do we want to remove all frictions in a seamless AI presence, or do we need this for being human? Thoughts and captures from the news in human-AI-things.