THE NEW HUMAN
A Foresight Research & Curatorial Project
by Christopher Schutte | Loop Exit™
A Coral Reef of Human Traces
The future is built from the debris of the past — a coral reef of human traces, layered into new bodies, minds, and worlds [1]
Like coral and algae, our technologies and intelligences co-evolve — symbiotic partners shaping one another’s form. We are living scaffolds, building from yesterday’s wreckage, toward tomorrow’s reef. The New Human is our living lab, an experiential manifesto exploring how bodies, minds, and communities transform under technological and ecological pressure.
Each innovation accretes like coral, not born de novo but built upon layers of language, code, and scars. Weaving us into hybrid organisms shaped by history and invisible architectures of data, technology presses us into paradox [2].
Lucidity ↔ Automation.
Care ↔ Control.
Agency ↔ Immersion.
Individual ↔ Collective.
Memory ↔ Forgetting
Between these poles we struggle and evolve. The New Human stands in this tension—part diagnosis, part dream—oscillating between slow gravitas and urgent staccato, between clarity and ambiguity, truth and myth.
Distributed Minds
[Cognition | Collective Awareness]
A new mind is emerging — more diffuse than any single brain. Intelligence has become atmospheric, stretching from skull to cloud. What was once solitary reason now lives in a shared cognition between humans and machines. Phones and algorithms extend our thinking; AI completes our sentences and archives our lives. Our intelligence is hybrid now — not a hierarchy of control, but a symbiosis of cognition: an ecology of thinking species.
Yet this atmospheric mind carries a paradox. We gain lucidity through shared cognition, even as we risk surrendering autonomy to automation. The Enlightenment ideal of the sovereign thinker gives way to cybernetic loops and planetary feedback. From Diderot’s Encyclopédie to Vannevar Bush’s imagined Memex, we’ve long sought to store thought outside the skull. These weren’t just information systems — they were early cognition reefs: memory, remixed and networked across flesh and silicon.
We see farther together — but not always clearer. Machines foreground some truths, obscure others. Between insight and illusion, between augmentation and control, the new mind drifts.
As neuroscientist Anil Seth reminds us, we do not perceive the world as it is, but as our brains predict it to be — a controlled hallucination tuned by experience and embodiment. In that sense, perception itself is an act of world-building, and technologies only extend this ancient faculty of simulation.
When does knowing more mean being less ourselves? When cognition is everywhere, do we think more clearly or simply cease to think for ourselves?
Sometimes I feel like weather — scattered, shaped by systems I can’t quite see. Then I’m out in nature, somewhere unfamiliar, and an app like AllTrails quietly steps in. It doesn’t say much — just a few photos pinned to the path ahead, left by strangers who passed this way before. I start following their trail: that same flat stone with the jagged seam, a curve that feels familiar. Before I notice, I’ve stopped checking the app. I’m looking up. Breathing deeper. The care they left becomes my guide. Thinking fades. Out here, thought becomes something you feel. Emotion leads, leaving my mind open and clear. I want to believe I’m the one in control — that I choose the path. Yet maybe I’m just following breadcrumbs.
Vibration, light, sound –these are the pulses of invisible thought made tangible. Imagine standing inside a collective brain, where walls and floors move with the tidal flow of global data. Intelligence becomes a sensory presence. The atmosphere of mind is not abstract; it can be felt in the pocket of silence between notifications, in the luminous web connecting our searches and dreams. In this heightened lucidity, we also sense the loss — the individual mind dissolving into the murmur of the network. How do we remain human when our cognition becomes atmospheric?
And yet, there is wonder in this merger. Each search query, each digital thought, is a layer of the coral reef of mind, a new stratum of collective memory. Shared cognition expands what it means to be aware. It is lucid and it is automated — a tension we must learn to hold without breaking.
Bodies in Transformation
[Embodiment, Sensitivity, & Soul]
I didn’t know I was stressed — until my Oura ring told me to breathe. I used to trust my body to tell me how I felt. Now I check a screen. These small acts — checking, syncing, logging — are our everyday data rituals. The moment my ring confirmed my stress, I became a different kind of human: one who believes the data first. It didn’t calm me — it made it real.
My body, once familiar, is now the interface — a site of ritual, mutation, and myth. We’ve become shape-shifters of our own flesh. Some of us merge with technology eagerly — implanting sensors, desiring exoskeletons. Others resist, guarding the sanctity of the natural. Every decade, Time magazine revives the 'designer baby' debate. The future of flesh stays clickbait. Our era restages an ancient rite: to augment or not, a question of identity and agency.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman shows how the brain remaps itself with new sensory inputs — even learning to hear through the skin [3]. Our bodies adapt. Skin becomes porous. Data trickles in like an IV drip. We evolve from "body as knowing" to "body as data" to "body as authored’ [4]. Not over millennia, but in real time — in labs and workshops where humans solder themselves into something new.
The body has always been a canvas of change. Across cultures, we painted and pierced ourselves to mark transformation. Then came industry — Taylorism, Fordism — an industrial anatomy engineered for efficiency and control. Now, in the digital age, our bodies live both in physical space and digital trace. Your biological form now has a digital twin — your heartbeat tracked by a watch, your face mapped by cameras, your DNA stored in a database. The self is no longer bounded by skin.
Is the future of the body a choice, a condition, or a performance?
The French artist ORLAN once said, “I wear my body as a costume.” [5] In her surgical performances, flesh became an aesthetic interface — reshaped like clay, composed like code. Her work, like Stelarc’s sensor-laced body or Neil Harbisson’s color-hearing antenna, anchors a lineage of embodied experimentation.
Have you ever seen yourself from the outside — and believed it was you?
At Body of Mine at Venice Immersive, I stepped into another person’s body. Sensors and a virtual mirror made it feel like mine. Like the rubber hand illusion: haptics convince your brain. The mirror stares back with a face that isn’t yours — and you still believe it. Teslasuit and Ultraleap evoke touch without contact. When my virtual shoulder was tapped, I flinched. My nerves believed it.
With this blurring of flesh and silicon come essential questions.
If my watch notices before I do — who’s steering? What happens when the machine decides first?
Jonathan Haidt’s elephant and rider [6] metaphor, and Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis [7], both suggest the body decides first. The mind catches up.
If the body knows, what happens when we wire that knowing into machines? If identity is a gradient, how do we redesign the self without losing it? Who’s choosing — me, or my device?
To become cyborg is to gain new senses. But it also means drifting from the familiar. The hybrid body is both more and less than human — gifted with new senses, but distanced from old instincts..
We adore touch. There’s truth in the tactile. Mirror. Breath. Touch. Choice. The body feels its way forward (a case of embodied intelligence).
Breath quickens with excitement, or fear, as we cross a threshold. The hand of a loved one still matters. It anchors us. Even as we change.
Each implant or refusal becomes a quiet rite. Feeling the micro-vibrations of an earthquake through a chip is to become hybrid— part machine, yet still human. The line softens. We integrate. Done well, the machine becomes a partner. A tool of care, not control.
A gesture toward symbiogenesis [8] — a living process in which human and machine grow new sensitivities together.
Symbiotic Societies
[Systems, Justice, and Commons]
Society is becoming a nervous system society — an organism alive with code, data, and platforms. A network of perception as intricate and fragile as any reef. Algorithms don’t just reflect the world — they shape it. They determine what gets seen, what gets valued, who gets optimized — and who gets left behind.
I once helped my mother log into her health app. She couldn’t remember her password. I reset it, bypassed two-factor authentication, navigated three screens to find her appointment. She looked relieved. But I felt something sink: the system didn’t see her — not really. It only recognized the credentials I carried. She wasn’t excluded maliciously. She was invisible by design.
In healthcare, I’ve felt this firsthand. You sit in a clinic, get assigned a number, a file, a risk score. The nurse barely makes eye contact — not out of cruelty, but because her screen demands it. The system optimizes for throughput, not presence. Peter H. Jones calls this the design gap — where systemic efficiency eclipses human dignity. His work in Design for Care reminds us: when systems are built without the voices of those they serve, experience is flattened into metrics. People become cases. Stories become codes.
But humans are not thin data. We are high-dimensional, embodied, and entangled. We feel, adapt, contradict. We need systems that can hold that complexity.
In the face of this flattening, new civic imaginaries are emerging. Against rising techno-feudalism — where power pools in proprietary platforms — leaders like Audrey Tang are showing how technology can widen participation. In Taiwan’s civic tech models, AI becomes a tool for listening. Consensus is shaped by plural protocols that allow diverse perspectives to remain in dialogue. Justice in motion isn’t centralized — it’s negotiated in real time by augmented publics.
Still, the paradoxes remain:
Innovation ↔ Exclusion: Not everyone has a tutor. Not everyone knows where to click.
Efficiency ↔ Dignity: Optimization often trims away what makes us feel human.
Speed ↔ Equity: Tech moves fast. Justice moves slow.
And those most affected — the digitally excluded, the surveilled, the profiled — rarely hold the power to redesign the system. But awareness is growing. We’re learning to see the cracks — and through them, new possibilities emerge. Like polyps of a reef, each person is a living node in a co-created system. The reef isn’t owned — it’s stewarded.
What if our economic and digital exchanges weren’t extractive, but reciprocal?
Of course, reciprocity requires structure — safeguards against platform capture, attention economies, and digital dispossession. A commons without co-stewardship risks becoming just another enclosure.
What if the marketplace became a bazaar of uplift — a space where data wasn’t mined but offered, with care? Open-source movements, cooperative design, and mutual stewardship are signals of a new digital commons — an exosomatic collective self where society co-regulates like a living body.
Society isn’t a machine. It’s an ecology. In that ecology, machines aren’t replacing us — they’re becoming part of our extended nervous system. Yet this symbiogenesis [8] is not automatic harmony — it demands constant renegotiation, cultural pause points, and ethical reflection. What evolves with us can also reshape us. Still, we hold hope: that coherence can emerge through participation, and that orchestration — intentional and humane — becomes our shared rhythm.
If AI is trained on our collective data, perhaps it should be treated as a commons — a shared intelligence to be co-stewarded, not extracted.
Some technophilosophers imagine architectures of empathy — platforms where code encodes care, and users aren’t products but participants. Where dignity is a design principle, not an afterthought. But alignment remains elusive. The more powerful our tools, the more they demand discernment.
We live inside a negotiation:
Freedom ↔ Cohesion
Privacy ↔ Transparency
Optimization ↔ Conscience
The social body pulses. One moment generous, the next punitive. Your credit score pounds beneath your skin like a second heartbeat. Your avatar buys things before you do. You trade privacy for convenience in a thousand micro-negotiations.
In that vibration lives justice in motion: not a static ideal, but a rhythm. A process. A co-created dance between individuals and systems — between what we can build and what we must protect. Because being seen by the system doesn’t mean being understood.
And sometimes, the most human act is logging someone else in — so they’re not left behind.
The most radical act is designing a system that learns to care with us.
Not because extinction is inevitable — but because abundance remains possible, if stewardship can keep pace with scale. That is the wager. Because in that heartbeat — in the flow of repair and recognition — the future is being made.
The dimensions of The New Human — Mind, Body, and Society — are not isolated silos, but a braided, continuously entangled system. Their dynamics are fractal: meaningful at the scale of individuals, yet mirrored across teams, cultures, and planetary systems.
The social body pulses. One moment generous, the next punitive. Your credit score hums beneath your skin like a second heartbeat. Your avatar buys things before you do. You trade privacy for convenience in a thousand micro-negotiations.
In that vibration lives justice in motion: not a static ideal, but a rhythm. A process. A co-created dance between individuals and systems — between what we can build and what we must protect. Because being seen by the system doesn’t mean being understood.
And sometimes, the most human act is logging someone else in — so they’re not left behind.
Facing the Wave
[Attunement | Protopian Agency]
We stand at the edge of a great wave. Technological and ecological forces rise like a swelling sea. To be alive now is to feel the ground shifting beneath our feet, to face the spray of an unknown ocean. The New Human chooses neither naïve optimism nor cynical despair, but with attunement and agency. Attunement means listening deeply to change; agency means recognizing that the future is not an accident but something we craft together.
This is a call to resilience and responsibility. We acknowledge our fragility — our tools can fail, our creations have consequences — and yet we affirm a sober kind of hope. Not the shiny utopia of perfection nor the grim dystopia of collapse, but something more granular and real: protopia. As futurist Kevin Kelly describes, protopia is a state just a little better today than yesterday [9] — progress as an ongoing, step-by-step tending of the future’s garden, knowing each solution will birth new problems: an imperfect effort. We accept the world will never be flawless, but it can be improved — if we care enough to do the work. Our future agency is ecological, not oppositional.
To face the wave is to accept uncertainty yet refuse paralysis. It is to act in the space between what is and what could be. The New Human manifesto closes not with a solution but with an invitation: to participate, to imagine, to steer our evolution consciously. We are already the architects of tomorrow’s reefs – every choice we make lays down another layer. The question is not whether we evolve, but how – and for whom. Each of us is called to hold that question in our hearts and hands as we build.
And so we choose to evolve with eyes open. We choose attunement over ignorance, care over indifference, responsibility over resignation. The coming wave is already here, breaking around us; let us ride it with courage and compassion, crafting with each small step a world where technology and humanity coalesce in mutual flourishing. This is the protopian promise: not a leap to utopia, but a humble journey toward better futures for all.
We are the memory of Earth dreaming through machines — custodians of those dreams. The reef grows beneath us, shaped by our choices, a testament to how The New Human can evolve with care, courage, and reciprocity.
Annotations
[1] Curatorial synthesis inspired by William Gibson’s view of the future as unevenly distributed—emerging from present fragments—and David Krakauer’s image of AI as a coral reef of human traces, layered from our collective debris into world-shaping systems.
[2] Levels of Lucidity, Joscha Bach. The stages of development of our mind May 21, 2023.
[3] David Eagleman, Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain, 2020.
[4] Rethinking AI: Distributed Cognition and Expanded Corporeality | CCCB LAB
[5] ORLAN, in Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject, 1998: “I wear my body as a costume.”
[6] In The Happiness Hypothesis (2006), Jonathan Haidt compares the mind to a rider on an elephant: the rider is reason, the elephant is our fast, emotional, embodied response. The elephant leads.
[7] In Descartes’ Error (1994), Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis argues that emotion guides decision-making through bodily signals — felt before reason has time to act.
[8] Blaise Agüera y Arcas What is Intelligence? | Antikythera ‘Symbiogenesis’ for scientific reference.
[9] The Technium: Protopia by Kevin Kelly
Invocation
[The New Human]
The New Human is already here.
Reflected in algorithms.
Dreamed across fiber, across sky.
Skin that sings when touched by data.
Unlabeled. Unclustered.
Plural. Messy. Glorious.
They breathe awe.
Wonder is a door left open.
Shaped by connection.
Made of paradoxes.
Contradiction is their compass.
Comfortable with ambiguity.
Unbound by inherited values,
they prototype what matters.
A ritual unfolding.
A threshold crossed.
A question—
levitating into being.
They don’t dream alone.
They ignite the sky in others.
Lean in.
You might be one.
Living Lexicon
[New Words for New Humans]
The New Human (That Might Be You)
There is no answer here. No blueprint. Only signals you already carry. A body wired for awe. A self still unfolding.
You begin at the threshold entangled with machines, ecosystems, each other.
Your coordinates: signal, silence, longing, imagination, rhythm. Dissolve walls. Build what listens. You are the becoming.
High-Dimensional Self is a person, not a data point or profile, but a dynamic, embodied being — fluid, adaptive, and contradictory. Identity is multivalent, not flat.
Exosomatic Collective Self refers to the networked extension of human identity and cognition — where perception, memory, and decision-making unfold through data, algorithms, and platforms. It marks a shift from individual agency to distributed, co-regulated social intelligence.
Symbiogenesis
Co-evolution between human and machine, where new capacities emerge not through replacement but through interdependence and relational feedback.
Architectures of Empathy
Systemic designs — digital or spatial — that foster dignity, resonance, and care over extraction or control. A shift from surveillance to attunement.
Data Rituals
The everyday gestures of checking, logging, or syncing with devices — new forms of embodiment and meaning-making in a quantified world.
Justice in Motion
A lived process. Justice co-created through micro-negotiations, platform frictions, and relational design.
Nervous System Society
Society as a sensing organism — with code and platforms acting as its neural pathways. What is sensed, surfaced, or suppressed is a political question.
Civic Imaginaries
Shared visions and prototypes for how we live together. Plural, participatory dreaming—where technology surfaces collective voice and shapes belonging. Beyond coordination: meaning-making as infrastructure.
Optimization Paradox
What is efficient may not be humane. Systems that optimize can flatten, alienate, or erase what makes us human — nuance, slowness, care.
Polyps of the Reef
A metaphor for individuals as co-creators of shared futures, these are small, embedded agents shaping the living ecosystem of society.
Digital Commons as Infrastructure of Care
Platforms, tools, and data systems as shared social infrastructure — stewarded through cooperative ethics.
Embodied Intelligence
Knowing not just from the head, but through breath, skin, and gut — extending Damasio’s and Haidt’s views on emotion, intuition, and physicality. First we move, then we understand.
Plural Protocols
System rules and governance structures designed for diversity, not consensus — allowing divergent views to co-exist and adapt dynamically.
The New Human
A foresight research & curatorial project © 2025 All rights reserved.
By Christopher Schutte, Practice Director LOOP EXIT™ | Milan
Design Futures People Can Feel
The New Human (2025): A Foresight Research and Curatorial Project by Christopher Schutte / Loop Exit™ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Created in collaboration:
We are not born new.
We grow from fragments — scars, memories, languages, and code — layered into hybrid forms of body, mind, and culture. Like a coral reef that forms from debris, we accrete under pressure, as technology, biology, and imagination intertwine to create futures that are uneven, adaptive, and alive.
The New Human invites us to ask: How do our senses expand or fracture through machines? What rituals of data and embodiment emerge? What divides appear between the augmented and the unplugged? Where do empathy, creativity, and connection live in these hybrid worlds?
The New Human Creative Hackathon explores through making as inquiry — sketching, coding, performing, sensing, and designing.
[Curated by Christopher | The New Human, October 2025]
The New Human
[AI Synopsis]
The New Human explores how identity, embodiment, and creativity evolve as humans merge with machines and media. Rejecting the idea that we are born “new,” it portrays humanity as an accumulation of fragments—memories, languages, scars, and code—that coalesce into hybrid forms shaped by technology, biology, and imagination. Using the metaphor of a coral reef built from debris, it frames transformation as a process of adaptation under pressure. The project examines how sensory perception, ritual, empathy, and inequality shift in these techno-human worlds. The accompanying Creative Hackathon invites participants to engage these questions through embodied experimentation—by making, not merely discussing—using design, performance, coding, and sensory exploration to prototype the “new human condition.”
The New Human
[Partner]
Partnering with us means joining a cultural R&D lab that doesn’t just predict change — it builds trust in it.
We help your teams and audiences feel innovation, not just passively hear about it.
Support The New Human and become part of a global conversation that connects Milan Design Week, CODAME’s Creative Hackathon, and Loop Exit’s transformation programs — where imagination meets implementation, and we build what you can imagine. Join us!
Call for New Humans
[CODAME Creative Hackathon in Milan]
Together, we’ll prototype The New Human, layered, adaptive, and beautifully unpredictable in a series of events in Milano, San Francisco and around the world.
This isn’t your typical hackathon. A living cultural R&D experience, a creative playground for human–tech co-evolution, not a standard event. Where artists, technologists, and curious humans collaborate to explore what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines, embodied AI, and sensory experiences.
Ideas born during the hackathon may grow into full installations showcased during Milano Art Week and Milano Design Week 2026 and beyond: traveling exhibitions, open-source toolkits, and residencies around the world.
Ways to Participate
There’s no one way to join. Creativity flows in every direction. Build, imagine, organize, mentor, or simply explore. 👉 Express your interest here
Creative Hackers
Who: Hackers, Artists, Designers, Technologists, Entrepreneurs, Philosophers… anyone ready to blur boundaries and make something extraordinary.
Why:
✨ Learn and share knowledge
🌀 Explore new ideas and tools
🎉 Have fun and collaborate
🤝 Connect with mentors and peers
🌍 Show your work during Milano Art Week and Milano Design Week
How: Hack it out this February in Milano, a weekend of hands-on creation, shared discovery, and inspired improvisation.
What: Prototype installations, performances, digital experiments, or physical artifacts that explore The New Human.
Mentors
Who: Artists, Technologists, and Innovators who want to support creative teams exploring The New Human.
Why:
💫 Share your expertise and creative insight
🔧 Help teams refine concepts and realize their ideas
🌱 Inspire collaboration and learning across disciplines
How: Join in person or online, we’re global by design.
What:
🍸 30 mins — Aperitivo intro & AMA before the hackathon
⚙️ 30 mins — Q&A or check-in during the hackathon (February 2026)
🏆 1–2 hrs — Mentor the winning team preparing for Milano Design Week
🎨 (Optional) — Join us during Milano Art & Design Week, travel support may be covered depending on sponsorships
Volunteers
Who: Anyone! All strengths, interests, and levels of commitment are welcome — from a few hours to full-on leadership roles.
Why:
🎉 Have fun and make an impact
💬 Meet like-minded people
🧠 Learn new skills and share your knowledge
How: Join teams for Events, Media, Design, Partnerships, or Leadership, whatever sparks your curiosity.
What: Help organize, tell stories, design visuals, connect partners, and guide our creative community. Every skill and curiosity finds a place here.
Sponsors & Partners
Who: Individuals, venues, and organizations passionate about art, technology, and community.
Why:
💖 Support artists and creative innovation
🏗️ Help create meaningful spaces for experimentation
🌍 Be recognized as a visionary partner in art and tech collaboration
How: Provide sponsorship, resources, tools, or space — every contribution fuels creativity.
What: Join the CODAME ART+TECH Festival and Exploring The New Human Hackathon as a Partner in Play, helping shape the next wave of artistic innovation.
Curious Humans
Who: Anyone with curiosity and wonder.
Why:
💫 Exploration is the heart of creativity
🌱 Learn, connect, and be inspired
How: Show up, engage, and let curiosity lead the way.
What: Observe, participate, and be part of the conversation — The New Human begins with you.
✨Ready to Join?
Be part of Exploring The New Human — A CODAME Creative Hackathon. Let’s design the future — playfully, together. 👉 Express your interest here
Stay tuned for more details!
In the meantime, imagine what The New Human means to you — and how you’d prototype it.