David Orban

Thriving in cycles of jolting technological change. Flowing in wonderment. What is the question that I should be asking?

[David Orban @davidorban]

Full article https://t.co/zuzURYMM08

[David Orban @davidorban]

I was interviewed by @Adnkronos about the phase change we’re living through. A few of the ideas we covered:

Recursive self-improvement in AI, the threshold the “technological singularity” actually names, is arriving in a matter of months, not decades. The question is no longer whether the moment is exceptional, but what we do with it.

My core conviction: refusing technology is the only way to lose with certainty. A billionaire doesn’t own a better smartphone than you do; the gap isn’t capital, it’s imagination. And optimism isn’t naïveté, it’s strategy. The optimist, when right, makes things better for everyone; the pessimist, when right, makes them worse for everyone.

Grateful to @roberta_lanzara for the conversation.

Link to the article in the replies (in Italian).

[David Orban @davidorban]

My keynote “Who Wants To Live Forever?” on human longevity at @ISIAfirenze is about the promise of longer human lifespans, common growth, broader opportunities, and greater flourishing for all

[David Orban @davidorban]

I will be in Florence on June 16-17. Let me know if you want to meet

[David Orban @davidorban]

UX feedback for the @antigravity team: the "Are you sure you want to quit?" warning should check if there are actually active agents/tasks running before showing. Right now it prompts even when everything is completely idle. Let us exit cleanly without needlessly sowing doubts!

[David Orban @davidorban]

https://t.co/Pd295wjtIc

[David Orban @davidorban]

An accessible explanation is on @gistdotscience, designed to help students, journalists, and curious non-specialists understand it, available in 10 languages.
https://t.co/wNcew0lyR4

[David Orban @davidorban]

My paper "Civilizational Metamaterials" has been accepted for publication my Springer and will be presented at AGI-26 in San Francisco

[David Orban @davidorban]

The paper converts a slogan ("AI governance is a coordination problem") into an engineering discipline with a stability criterion, a measurement protocol, and a falsification path.

[David Orban @davidorban]

https://t.co/vmusV0kcLl

[David Orban @davidorban]

https://t.co/lC5vPZtVkH

[David Orban @davidorban]

I listen to podcasts and non-fiction audiobooks when I do something that requires a moderate level of physical concentration, some chores around the house, or even a good level of attention that I think I can handle, like driving the car. I never felt that I could give fiction audiobooks the attention they require in these situations.
I wonder: do you allow something to slip by as you only give the audiobook partial attention, or you listen to it in a situation where you can dedicate 100% (sitting still in front of the fire)? I think my attention would drift, and I would find myself having to go back a minute or two and listen again after realizing that I retained nothing.

[David Orban @davidorban]

Here's the video of the talk (in Italian) https://t.co/hjbXt9dPv3

[David Orban @davidorban]

https://t.co/Cif3qyUHhR

[David Orban @davidorban]

And now superhuman again

[David Orban @davidorban]

Back to being merely human

[David Orban @davidorban]

Met @barabasi at his exhibition Formula to Form: The Art of Dataism at Budapest's Kunsthalle (Mücsarnok), where he walked me through a three-year project that translates data into paintings using custom-built paint rollers.

The piece he showed me belongs to his Fake News series: he identified the 12 individuals on X most responsible for misinformation, a group accountable for roughly 70% of fake messages on the platform. For each of the twelve, Barabási's lab fabricated a unique roller, then used them to transfer that data directly onto canvas.

The result sits at the intersection of network science and visual art: not a chart, not an illustration, but data physically inscribed into the medium that "knows how to appreciate it."

Barabási, the physicist who pioneered network science and now teaches at Northeastern in Boston, has been pushing this dataist methodology through galleries from Postmasters in New York to Mücsarnok here in Budapest, treating the canvas as a mediating surface between scientific truth and civilisational reflection.

🎥 Recorded May 3, 2026, Budapest
🔗 https://t.co/pqjvQ3b5fy

[David Orban @davidorban]

Most sci-fi sounding alert of 2026 so far: "WARNING: connection is not using a post-quantum algorithm."