Since January 20. 2025, the idea of an American Future as a global reference point has diminished, and now it no longer exists. Instead, a new threat has emerged: The Bad Future, defined by raw power and might over purpose, technology over humanity, and transactions over trust and cooperation. Now (July 2026) it is becoming painfully obvious that Europe must ‘take back tomorrow‘!
The Choice before us: Good Future or Bad Future?
Since 2016, the core idea of my work as a Futurist, Keynote Speaker, Author and Film-Maker has been The Good Future. From the beginning, The Good Future was more than a concept – it was a vision grounded in human values, collaboration, and science and technology that sought to ensure flourishing for everyone. For a while, it seemed that this future might still be anchored in the United States: the birthplace of the internet, early social networks, Silicon Valley and the Bay Area (with all its thinkers, inventors and visionaries, such as the LongNow Foundation where I am a member as well) and many of today’s foundational as well as frontier technologies.
But those days are gone. Since early 2025, the promise of The Good Future has been under intense pressure — not because technology has failed, but because political, economic and cultural leadership has.
Technology Didn’t Fail — We Did (globally)
AI hasn’t turned “evil” … It has become normal. AI was adopted faster than the internet itself but without commensurate ethics, culture, or safeguards. Convenience has been sold as progress, personalization as insight, effort-avoidance as smartness, and automation as liberation — all while we quietly relinquish human agency, judgment, responsibility, and the powers of creative friction. Read more on the Bad Future.
Why Europe must take the lead NOW.
The Good Future doesn’t vanish in times of crisis. It evolves. What has changed is not the need for it, but where and how it can be credibly build. It is no longer shaped by what happens in a very obviously dysfunctional United States – and this assessment goes far beyond any single administration. I am afraid The Good Future will not be made in the USA (unless a very fundamental change takes place there – read my colleague and friend Peter Leyden’s views on that). It will emerge everywhere else, but its moral center must be Europe, working alongside new partners—including the BRICS countries, but specifically Canada, South Africa, South Korea, Australia/New Zealand, and yes, China (more on that soon).
The Bad Future is not inevitable. It is optional. But pessimism and fear didn’t protect us, and optimism without action wasn’t enough – and I should know! And neutrality enabled the worst outcomes. We didn’t resist. We didn’t decide. We simply clicked “Accept.”
Europe must decisively disengage from the U.S. trajectory toward the Bad Future. Not quietly—but deliberately, visibly, and unapologetically yet wisely and with care. Europe must resist the Bad Future, reject it, and stop supporting, promoting, or financing those who advance it.
This is the moment to reclaim human agency, restore purpose, and lead—not by dominance, but by values.
