Hey!
I'm Nils—By day, I work with IT solutions; by night (and sometimes early morning), I think, read and write about moonshots, breakthroughs, and human potential across domains.
Most of my writing treads across three interconnected territories:
- Agency: How we exercise meaningful action within complex systems
- Moonshots: Ambitious transformations that require collective effort
- Wicked Problems: Complex challenges that resist simple solutions
I'm not an expert, but an ordinary person driven to ask questions, frequently annoying ones like: "Wait...why can't we do that?"
I believe in humanity's capacity to engineer solutions to challenges both current and those ahead, both individual and collective—not through magical thinking, but through rigorous analysis, incremental progress, and collective action.
The goal of "written by a human" is threefold:
- Learn. Writing clarifies what I know and where gaps remain. It's thinking made visible.
- Translate. Complex systems deserve honest, approachable conversations that neither oversimplify nor mystify.
- Understand. Beyond hype and doomsaying lies the human reality of problem-solving: the excitement, uncertainty, and how ordinary people push forward anyway.
I draw inspiration from science fiction not as escapism, but as a laboratory for examining possible futures. Stories like The Martian resonate because they show humanity at its best: collaborative, inventive, and driven by a can-do spirit when facing impossible odds.
This space examines both what is and what could be. I explore future studies, technological progress, and philosophical foundations that might help us flourish—as individuals and as a species—while maintaining a commitment to intellectual honesty.
I'm not here to give a masterclass—I'm learning in public, fueled by curiosity and a deep belief that real progress happens when regular people share ideas, swap resources, and lean on each other. Welcome to an ongoing experiment in possibility, wicked problems, bold ideas, and the stubborn belief that even as we persevere through difficulties, we flourish.
"written by a human" is an independent publication launched in April 2025. Your subscription makes this site possible and fuels this exploration of human potential. Thank you!
Access all areas
By signing up, you'll get access to the full archive of everything published before and everything yet to come—your very own private library.
Fresh content, delivered
Stay up to date with new content sent straight to your inbox! No more worrying about whether you missed something because of a pesky algorithm or news feed.
Meet people like you
Join a community who share the same interests.
Start your own thing
Enjoying the experience? Get started for free and set up your very own site and engage in the market place of ideas using Ghost, the same platform that powers this website.