Leading essay · Issue 2027
When in doubt, just begin.
What remains when everything changes? An almanac for 2027: on money that keeps us up at night, machines that write, and people who begin anyway.
Contents
Six chapters, one issue. Every text to read, to hear, and as a song. In English and German.
- IFutureNo forecasts. Scenarios you can get up for in the morning.
- IIMoneyFinancial health, worldwide. Money worries are not a private matter.
- IIIAITool, mirror, imposition. What machines can do, and why they still need us.
- IVChangeLost job, new start, second half. Notes for everyone standing in between.
- VCultureHow we live together while old certainties take a break.
- VIDesignForm is an attitude. On things that are well made, and why we feel it.
How vulnerable are we?
Around the world, region by region, and in three focus countries: how many people could not cope with an unexpected bill.
Measures differ by source and are not directly comparable. The World Bank did not survey high-income countries on this in 2024, so North America, Western Europe and Oceania appear through Germany, the USA and Japan.
Six frames, one thought
A face is never just one expression. Between two frames, a thought changes its mind.
The author
Not finished yet.
A school scholarship at IBM at eleven, long before the internet was a word. A city magazine of his own before his final exams. Later direct marketing for Microsoft, Quelle and Condé Nast, and in 1996 one of Germany’s first digital agencies.
Today Sascha Schulz writes about what comes next: a future you can live with, money without shame, machines and the people beside them. Two passions have stayed: writing and photography.
A private project. Nothing is for sale here.
Latest
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Form Is an Attitude
A well-made object tells you how long its maker expected you to keep it. The world’s growing heap of e-waste suggests we have stopped listening.
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Thinking Is a Public Act
Trust is falling and news avoidance is settling in. The remedy is not more information but more company: thinking out loud, in rooms with other people in them.
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Hands Up Is Not a Strategy
The first hundred days after losing a job decide less about money than about self-image. Three rules help: sort, speak, begin.
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The Machine Told a Joke
Software now writes jokes that strangers rate funnier than most people’s. What it cannot do is decide whether this is the moment for one.
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Money Is a Feeling
Money worries keep odd hours. Who could cope with a surprise bill, from Lagos to Tokyo, and why the real test of financial health is sleep.
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Scenarios, Not Forecasts
Forecasts record the mood of the moment more faithfully than the future. Scenarios do something humbler and more useful: they prepare us without pretending to know.