We Were Meant to Be: On Tech, Hype, Being Human, and Making a Future — Resources

Maybe you got into tech because you loved tinkering with computers. Maybe it was the promise of stability, good pay, and meaningful work. Now, after waves of layoffs, return-to-office mandates, and AI reshaping everything around us, those promises feel shaky, and many of us feel uncertain about what it all means — and what it means for us.

This is an invitation to sit with that uncertainty, look at it, and find something unexpected on the other side. It speaks to what a lot of people in tech are feeling but struggling to say out loud, while the world around us demands enthusiasm. Drawing on the history of our industry, art, and poetry, combined with my own history, I trace how we got here — and where we might go from here.

This content was first presented as an opening keynote at a software engineering conference in May 2026.

It includes a personal story in which some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

"We Were Meant to Be" was a labor of love that involved lots of reading and research. In this post, you’ll find the books, poems, and other sources I mentioned.

---

Books, Poems, and Other Recommendations

Reading material and poetry referenced in my keynote.

• The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence by Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres

• 404 Media

• Technik als Trost: Verheißungen Künstlicher Intelligenz by Stefan Selke

• Other, by R.S. Thomas

• Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

• This Spring, by James A. Pearson

• Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba

• The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul

• The Body Digital: A Brief History of Humans and Machines from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT by Vanessa Chang

• How to AI: Cut Through the Hype. Master the Basics. Transform Your Work by Christopher Mims

• Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford

• Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

Sources: statistics, references, and other media mentioned in my keynote

• Census III of Free and Open Source Software

• Facebook and Genocide: How Facebook contributed to genocide in Myanmar and why it will not be held accountable by Daniel Zaleznik

• OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic by Billy Perrigo

• The DRC Mining Industry: Child Labor and Formalization of Small-Scale Mining by Michele Fabiola Lawson

• OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters by Maxwell Zeff

• OpenAI’s Sam Altman: Global AI regulation ‘urgently’ needed

• Layoffs.fyi (Data from a startup founder who’s been tracking tech layoffs since 2020)

• Rob Pike on Bluesky

• Why the Web Won’t Be Nirvana by Clifford Stoll

• Elon Musk shares 4 bold predictions for the future of work: Robot surgeons in 3 years, immortality, and no need for retirement savings by Orianna Rosa Royle

• “The dumbest person you know…”

---

While writing the keynote, I shared my personal notes and other resources compiled along the way. If you’re curious how this talk came about and want to see more interesting content about the topic, I invite you to read my working log.

Check out “The Making of: a Keynote on Tech, Humanity, Crisis, And The Future” by clicking the button below.

As always,
Lena

---

This keynote will soon be presented at ffconf 2026.

---