For people working in the uncomfortable space between the world as it is and the world they're trying to build.
Neither Horizon is my ongoing body of writing and research at the intersection of technology, human behaviour and systems.
At its centre is a question:
What happens when our strategies, technologies and intentions meet the complexity of the systems they're entering?
In futures thinking, Horizon 1 is the present system. Horizon 3 is the world we're building toward. Neither horizon is where many of us are actually living, caught between the two, and it's from that uncomfortable middle ground that any real change has to begin.
The writing grows out of a decade spent inside large tech organisations trying to shape how systems affect the people who use them, including years leading player behaviour work at Riot Games across a platform of 140 million players, and out of a longer engagement with the thinkers and practitioners who have been asking these questions well beyond the tech industry, from Grace Lee Boggs to bell hooks to the restorative and relational traditions they helped build.
The series explores four mechanisms through which transformative change gets subsumed, from the psychological to the structural to the epistemological to the dynamics of how ideas spread and get absorbed. It's written for people still inside systems who haven't given up on changing them, but who are honest about how hard that actually is.
This work is grounded in practice rather than observation.
My questions took shape inside product teams, building systems that shaped how millions of people interacted with one another. Time and again, the hardest problems I ran into had little to do with technology, and everything to do with incentives, culture, trust, power, and human behaviour.
The more I worked on these problems, the more I found myself looking beyond product management. Areas like systems thinking, restorative practice, behavioural science, futures thinking, and AI governance, had explanations that technology alone couldn't provide.
Neither Horizon is where those experiences become public inquiry.
The writing sits in the restorative and relational approach to systems change, leading with construction, curiosity and honesty rather than confrontation or prosecution.
Subscribe on SubstackFour mechanisms by which transformative change gets subsumed by the systems it tries to change.
The psychological mechanisms by which systems reshape the inner lives of the people trying to change them, from the erosion of perception to the slow loss of a sense of self.
The structural conditions that reward compliance with existing logic and quietly starve whatever threatens it, regardless of anyone's intentions.
The epistemological constraints that determine whose knowledge counts, which problems become visible, and whose experience of the system is treated as evidence.
The network and diffusion dynamics that determine whether new ideas scale into something transformative or get absorbed into what already exists.
Setting the four mechanisms beside each other, and why the way through each one runs through the others.
On why the simpler story always travels faster, and what to do with the version that can’t. Part four of four on why it is so hard to change harmful systems even with the best intentions.
On the frames we can’t see and the ones we haven’t yet imagined. Part three of four on why it is so hard to change harmful systems even with the best intentions.
On the structural ceiling above even the most genuine work. Part two of four on why it is so hard to change harmful systems even with the best intentions.
On the psychological cost of trying to change the systems you’re also part of. Part one of four on why it is so hard to change harmful systems even with the best intentions.
For everyone who went in wanting to change things and isn’t sure what happened.
"Without creating intentional and alternative structures that allow us to practice operating differently, we inevitably revert back to the same ways of relating to each other that got us into this mess."Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance
This work develops through writing, collaboration, and conversation.
If you're exploring similar questions through research, policy, community practice, or organisational leadership, I'd love to hear from you.