

The climate crisis is already here. In the face of it, neither naive optimism nor pessimism will help. We need active hope: the understanding that the future depends on what we do today. Every action counts. Tomorrow cannot be predicted; it is built through organization, collective action, and pressure on those in power. Let’s not wait for a better future—let’s make it livable starting now. 📸: Susan Wilkinson, Oliver Kwembe, Leonardo Basso, Francesco Ungaro.
Elsie Ralston
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The system has always talked about productivity, growth, and efficiency. But it has rarely talked about who truly sustains life. Care is also infrastructure. Care is also the economy. Care is also the future. Invisible, feminized, and often unpaid, care sustains households, communities, and entire cities. Ignoring it is not only unfair—it’s unsustainable. 📸Photos: Sahaj Patel, Sushanta Rokka, The New York Public Library, BenjaminChambon.
Elsie Ralston
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There are other ways to think about the future: more local, more collaborative, and less dependent on systems that prioritize extraction over life. Community innovation shows that technology can also strengthen social ties, knowledge sharing, and help build collective autonomy. Photos: Andres Kishimoto
Elsie Ralston
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The infrastructures that sustain life—water, soil, networks, care—and why innovation must strengthen them.
Elsie Ralston
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What if innovation doesn’t come from where we’ve always been told it does? The Global South has been, and continues to be, a vibrant source of knowledge, adaptation, and innovation: agroecology, community governance, cultures of restoration. It’s not aid. It’s learning. The future is built through dialogue 🤝 Photos: Jacqueline Munguia, Oliver Kwembe, Leonardo Basso.
Elsie Ralston
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For centuries, we have designed without considering our interdependence with nature, but today it is not enough to simply reduce harm: we must design to restore. The challenge is to transform our practices to regenerate ecosystems, communities, and economies through technology that coexists in harmony with nature. From carbon-capturing architecture to urban planning that transforms cities into living ecosystems, the key lies in revaluing ancestral knowledge and fostering a regenerative mindset. 📸 Ricardo Gómez Ángel, Pim de Boer.
Elsie Ralston
More from ElsieEditorial · November 2026
The word resilience comes from the Latin resilire: to leap back. A resilient steel takes a blow, deforms, and recovers its shape. Applied to people and cities, the metaphor carries an uncomfortable assumption: that someone is going to keep on hitting.
Read the editorial →Editorial · April 2026
The global conversation about technology and artificial intelligence takes place in English and raises questions that do not necessarily include the "Sures" of the world.
Read the editorial →Editorial · March 2026
In this issue, we explore how alternative futures are constructed. We have redesigned SurGlobal’s identity as a system capable of accommodating multiple territories and voices. We reflect on how cinema challenges power structures and sparks political imagination through…
Read the editorial →Editorial · February 2026
This month at UNTOLD.ink, we’ve brought together four essays that explore the same question from different angles: What kind of technological future are we building—and for whom?
Read the editorial →Editorial · January 2026
En este primer boletín del año, te traemos cuatro miradas que nos invitan a pensar el presente y el futuro desde territorios, cuerpos y prácticas que desafían las narrativas dominantes.
Read the editorial →Editorial · December 2025
We close out the year by exploring four texts that deconstruct the idea of progress and propose futures rooted in the ancestral, the situated, the underground, and the visual. It is an invitation to look back, to challenge the status quo, and to explore other possible worlds through the freedom to imagine—and…
Read the editorial →Editorial · November 2025
This month, we arrived with hearts full and minds sharp. Sesiones Sur Global 2025 reminded us that futures are not imagined in silence or from a distance: they are built in community, through difficult questions and with a kind of hope that does not deny reality, but rather…
Read the editorial →Editorial · October 2025
October invites us to rethink the ethics of creation and care. This issue brings together voices that challenge certainties, highlight the dangers of individualistic superficiality, and sow the seeds for new ways of imagining the future.
Read the editorial →Editorial · September 2025
September reminds us that design can also be seen as an act of defiance.
Read the editorial →Editorial · August 2025
August calls on us to listen to tensions that remain unresolved. From AI that will determine who governs tomorrow to dilemmas born of uncertainty, this issue brings together four essays that explore how we inhabit and transform fragile systems. It’s not just about…
Read the editorial →Editorial · July 2025
July forces us to read between the lines of systems. From Latin America to global industry, reality reminds us that innovation doesn’t always stem from flawless plans, but rather from detours, instinct, and classrooms that refuse to follow someone else’s script. This issue weaves together…
Read the editorial →Editorial · June 2025
Join us on the margins, where uncomfortable yet necessary questions arise: Who defines the future? Which bodies and forms of knowledge are left out? How do we navigate complexity?
Read the editorial →Editorial · May 2025
In the May issue of UNTOLD, we examine the myth of progress and its influence on our perception of change and development; we present indigenous design frameworks that challenge colonial notions of the future; we delve into the strategic construction of futures…
Read the editorial →Editorial · April 2025
This month, we continue to explore the margins to imagine possible futures from our own territories, languages, and intuitions.
Read the editorial →Editorial · March 2025
This month’s stories explore how innovation, memory, and resilience are shaping the present. From technologies with social impact to narratives that challenge the status quo, at UNTOLD we remain committed to amplifying voices that broaden the conversation.
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