Dear Future Creators

Last night, I found myself on my rooftop—as I often do—watching the wind chase the last light off the treetops and the scattered buildings below. I was prepping for my panel—“Preparing the Next Generation for Emerging Technologies”—at the Gatherverse Youth Summit.

But mostly, I was thinking back.

Asking: What would I tell my younger self now—about tech, the future, and becoming?

Here’s what surfaced—and what I now want to share with you.

🌱 Start Here: Know Thyself

Not the version of you shaped for clicks.
Not the polished avatar of resume lines.

I mean the real you. The one who’s listening inward. The one who senses that this moment—this era of rapid emergence—isn’t just a wave to surf… it’s a pattern to shape.

In the world we’re entering, we can either be reactionary or responsive. One pulls you along. The other invites you to compose.

Rather than urge you to master specific tools, fear AI, or chase market trends, I want to say something different:

You can shape the plot. This is your turn to take agency and accountability.

You don’t have to wait for permission. It’s your turn! You just have to begin living the story you want to tell.

🛠 Three Principles I Wish I Had Known Earlier

1. Figure out what you need, and prepare for that.
Not what the world says you should want.

This requires an unwavering focus on knowing yourself.

Ask what kind of ecosystem supports your growth—and go build it.

The wild thing is: the tools are literally available. For free. Or for a few dollars a month. On the web. Right now.

The question is: can you stay present to your needs long enough to design around them?

2. Be happy in the moment, regardless of what you have.
Not because everything’s perfect. But because this moment—this messy, open, in-progress moment—is where your life is actually happening.

If you’re always waiting for the next milestone to allow joy, you’ll miss the whole damn thing.

Happiness isn’t a trophy. It’s a way of inhabiting your own unfolding.

Learn to enjoy your own becoming. That’s how you develop a center that’s still—even when the world keeps spinning.

And this requires that you love yourself.

3. Live the story you want to tell.
Not for performance. Not for likes. But because when you inhabit the story, it writes itself—truthfully, artfully, over time.

If you can glimpse the kind of story you’d want to look back on—a year, three years, seven years from now—you’ve given yourself a compass that can guide your choices through every plot twist. And every moment of doubt.

That’s not branding. That’s becoming.

🌐 Consider the Web—Our Most Underrated Tool

The web is the canvas. The field. The medium where much of our future will unfold.

But it’s also fractured, extractive, siloed.

That’s why we’re co-creating the Meta-layer Initiative—a collective invitation to reimagine the web as shared infrastructure, where you don’t just participate—you shape the rules of presence, identity, and trust.

It’s not just for developers or technologists—it’s for storytellers, organizers, educators, artists, and anyone who’s ever felt locked out of shaping the digital spaces they live in.
The tools are already here. What’s missing is a shared layer of meaning, trust, and coordination—something only we can build together.

And let’s be real: leaving this to my generation? Probably not your best bet.

And if we don’t design this layer with intention, it will be designed for us—by extractive systems we never chose.

This emerging digital world needs your design sense, your imagination, your values.

The Meta-layer is a place for protocol dreamers, artists, developers, educators, weirdos, and organizers.

It’s not a product.

It’s a playground for the possible.

🚀 Three Big Questions for You, the Future Builders

1. How can young innovators use emerging tech to truly serve humanity?

The question isn’t just “What can this technology do?”—it’s “What kind of world are we building together?”

Emerging technologies like AI and AR can amplify creativity—or deepen fragmentation.

They can centralize control—or distribute possibility.

It all depends on what you design for.

Start with connection.
Start with care.
Build for your community—and beyond the default.
Let your tools reflect your values, not the other way around.

2. What mindset shifts will help you thrive in a world of constant change?

From that rooftop last night, I remembered how I used to crave clarity—answers, maps, outcomes. But the deeper work isn’t certainty—it’s learning to be in right relationship with change.

Don’t aim to master the next new thing. Aim to master how you move through change itself.

In a world shaped by AI and emergence, develop reflexivity. Cultivate protocols of presence. Learn how to slow down, reframe, re-choose. Think in systems, act in flows, hold paradox with grace.

That’s how you stay grounded and visionary—rooted in a center that doesn’t flinch.

3. What futures are adjacent to us right now—and which ones are worth working for?

The future is not distant—it’s just to the side of now, waiting for us to shift slightly and see it.

Your adjacent futures live in your choices, your collaborations, your courage.

And that’s not just a personal idea—it’s planetary. For each of us, it starts with our inner trajectory, which is inextricably connected to the macro trajectory of all existence—like a single thread in a vast cosmic loom, weaving futures through intention, attention, and care.

When you live a big bold story that you want to tell—you build a bridge between your becoming and our collective unfolding.

To help you explore this connection, I made a tool for you:
👉 Live the Story GPT —a space to reflect on the story you’re becoming, and the futures it opens.

So maybe don’t ask: “what will happen?”
Ask instead:

What future are you ready to live into? And what story will it tell back to you?

🌀 You Are the Meta-Generation

You don’t just scroll—you remix.
You don’t just follow—you co-create.
You’re not waiting for the future.
You are the emergence.

So take the mic. Occupy the Meta-layer.
Build the tools, trace the presence, sculpt the story.

We’re listening.

– Daveed