As is my habit around this time of year, I’d hoped to hand over guest editorship this week to someone like the best locally-based Labour PM we never had, or this beloved TV personality, OBE and mental health advocate herself, ahead of the annual gathering of such minds at 2026’s HowTheLightGetsIn Festival.

However it hasn’t quite worked out like that, at least yet.

Modern life raises a lot of mind-boggling questions for our poorly-acclimatised human brains, and it doesn’t exactly look like that pressure is going to ease off.

We get ourselves in a right old bind over key issues; our very humanness often the obstacle to agreeing a common sense approach, with all our inherent tribalism, fear-avoidance and pattern recognition proving unhelpful in navigating the modern world.

And its not only us. Many of our established systems are creaking under the weight of their irrelevance as time marches onward, at pace.

While it might make you want to hide under a pillow much of the time, it can be quite inspiring to poke your head out and hear the latest thinking on our biggest collective conundrums, (which is why I’m always keen to partner with HTLGI, as per the above).

Looking back, I spotted the 2024 Camdenist interview with with SOAS professor and UN labour economist Guy Standing about the possibility of all being paid a Universal Basic Income (UBI) if work has been outsourced to our robot overlords - or perhaps even if it hasn’t.

AI has had two more years to threaten our job prospects since then, and while the situation does feel that much more precarious, some of the more doom-laden predictions have not yet come to pass. The truth of the matter may actually end up being we’re left working even harder and even faster…

With the arrival of such disruptive tech at global scale, unforeseen repercussions of all stripes are pretty much all we can guarantee. Despite what Standing says about UBI’s reduction of stress levels, the revaluation of unpaid roles such as caregiving, volunteering and creativity for the joy of it, and the possibility of all kinds of exciting little micro-businesses, dishing out cash would surely also bring some wildly unpredictable negatives, too.

Trials seem to have disproved the idea that we’d all just sit around playing video games and getting high, though, but I bet some people would. Of course, some people very much already do.

While the tech oracles like to tell us we’ve got 18 months until we’ll all be out of work/luxuriating in free time to indulge in whatever vices or pursuits we please, by them having moved fast and broken things, gifting cash to make up for the mass layoffs would need to be carefully sourced. We’d need to avoid a massive potential redistribution of public wealth up into the hands of the energy companies and assorted billionaires who run the very job-erasing systems themselves, anyway.

That would hardly feel like progress, even if Elon Musk seems to have worked it all out via some kind of robot tax.

Meanwhile, at some point, we’re surely going to have to address the glaring harms that the ‘war on drugs’ reap, the status quo being so clearly unfit for purpose, and stuffed full of examples of the unintended consequences of prohibition.

But what will it take to attempt the honourable aim of harm reduction in a radically different way? The decriminalisation favoured by the Greens, and even eventual degrees of legalisation, would certainly stop lots of people getting locked up pointlessly, hugely easing pressure on the prison system and freeing up the Police for more vital work, while raising valuable tax revenues. It would also stop scary adulterants like fentanyl, or synthetic creations like spice causing overdoses and deaths, the existence of which prove just how badly current policy performs in terms of actual public health.

But can you also begin to imagine all the unforeseen negative societal ripples, too? Now, they may actually end up being worth it compared to the current shitshow, but the established black market might well simply go on co-existing alongside the more expensive legal one, while corporate profit-maximisation and lobbying could well make the new legal intoxication barons quickly look and act a bit like Big Tobacco before them.

And without the constraint of the law, would far more of us be getting legally wasted more regularly, with all the downstream fallout on on our work, relationships and mental health?

Consider a near future that sees both a pressing need for UBI and the long-overdue rethinking of drugs prohibition. This may result in an intersectional a hellhole of permanently frazzled sofa-centric wasters, but equally, the poverty that drives both the sale and the overuse of drugs may be alleviated, and hedonism become more mindful, as opposed to mindless self-medicating in its practice. Who knows? But it’s fairly certain that we’ll soon need to try out some things that currently may seem wildly out there, and then manage the many ramifications - the good and the bad.

The unexpected consequence of developing AI that I think could be most disruptive (among the many) towards breaking established human norms is the potential that we essentially create an alien mind, forcing humanity to rethink everything from our gods to our geopolitical nonsense to our dominance of the planet.

What if an impending alien first contact is not with little green men from outer space, but something we have created and let become wildly superior to our own flawed little human minds?

I know the AI bros like to frame their creation in quasi-religious terms, and I don’t want to play into that, but when you are looking at the big shifts societies are going to have to make soon, reframing everything via a completely new lens like ‘the aliens of our own creation’ sure gets the synapses a whirring. Or perhaps the pillow back over your head.

Pondering a strange utopia of alien-designed, non-toxic, tailor-made altered states and spiritual experience-on-demand to fill our previous working hours is what you get from me this week, in lieu of hearing (something similar?) from a visionary HTLGI speaker.

Now, what do you think?

It’s the apex of the summer season, with all kinds of bank holiday pop-offs to enjoy, taking place all over the country. Personally, I’m aiming for a 3-day Notting Hill Carnival bonanza, as regular readers will know it is my absolute favourite event of the year. Read more about that obsession, alongside an insight into the competitive world of the weekend’s street art one-upmanship, as told by last year’s guest editor and most prolific of Carnival spray can (and fly poster) artist, ABOTZ.

In other festivals news, hot on the heels of last week’s flagging up of hot King’s Cross-based festis for the late summer - AVA London and Vision Festival - comes news of the Knowledge Quarter’s annual The Future of Knowledge, a 1-day conference that brings together the wealth of locall-based innovators in science, technology, education and more to cut through the sectors and see what comes of it. The panel and breakout workshops can all be explored on Tues 10th Nov at the British Library. Tickets go live on Tues 1st Sept.

Future Forum hosts an inaugural summit for cross-sector thinking on tech, culture, environment and more with 150 key names from big institutions speaking, hands-on studio sessions and plenty of special satellite events across 13th-15th Oct in King’s Cross at Town Hall by Bottaccio and into Soho.

But first up, just up the road, it’s the return of the new indoor incarnation of Camden Inspire on 26th & 27th Sept held at Camden Collective, with eco-focused workshops, panels, poetry and podcasting, plus all manner of making, from printing to weaving, to be enjoyed at this community-focused event tackling all the big global themes.

FRINGE: 🎭 For a Fringe finale, try L.O.V.E / L.A.S.K.O., an interactive performance blending dance, theatre, live music and audience participation, in the form of a late-night talk show exploring how we experience love, intimacy and connection. The production premiered at the Prague Quadrennial and now comes to London for two performances only at The Courtyard Theatre tonight 28th and tomorrow Sat 29th Aug.

Remember, the Camden Fringe Agent is available until the end of the month to help you to search and find more Fringe shows you might love before the season is over…

EVENT: 🕺🏼Camden Council’s own Inverness St Block Party is back on Sat 29th Aug with Camden Town’s disco house dancefloor legacy being celebrated by DJs including the inimitable Brandon Block, Ricky Morrison, Matt White, Janice Vee and loads more all day.

EVENT: 🔊 The final outing for Jazzie B’s Back II Life Café at Hawley Wharf is an all-dayer for the whole fam, with music by the man himself and a selection of special guests, too. Expect locals to gather once more to whine their way intro the bank holiday weekend around the slick purpose-built stage.

EVENT: 🥳For a more sedate Sunday than a trip to Notting Hill, the Natural Aspect Summer Concert marks the end of the Parli Hill bandstand season this Sun 30th Aug with local guitar hero and John Etheridge and internationally renowned soul singer Vimala Rowe alongside The Boheme Hot Club gypsy band, ska reggae blues fusion crew Peace & Love and local #DJ ledge Dan Carrier, alongside loads of family activities all day.