Towards Better Gifts: A Presentista Futurist

In my new article for Estadão, I write about meeting futurist Monika Bielskyte at the IT Forum Praia do Forte 2025. Based in South Africa, with collaborations with Nike, Google and the World Economic Forum, she brings a transformative proposal: to center the debate on human beings, not technology. Instead of mirages of flying cars or the colonization of Mars, Monika invites us to think about a future that is built in the present, with daily choices and responsibility. Between utopia and dystopia, she suggests **protopia** - the incremental evolution of possible, desirable and fairer worlds. As a neurodivergent and autistic person, she sees inclusion as a driver of real innovation, considering biological technologies even more relevant than digital ones. For her, AI must be an infrastructure of care, at the service of people, with not only technical but also ethical literacy. The article also explores how the gaze of the global south offers an ethic of the real for the adoption of AI in Brazil, avoiding “copy-paste” solutions and creating more honest responses to our urgencies.

Read the full article here: Towards Better Gifts: A Presentista Futurist(Estadão)