https://bifurcations.org/en/tags/optionality/Recent content in Optionality on BifurcationsHugoen-CASat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400https://bifurcations.org/en/texts/room-on-wheels/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400https://bifurcations.org/en/texts/room-on-wheels/<p>Imagine it is 2035.</p> <p>I live in Petite-Vallée, on Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, about 850 kilometres from downtown Montréal. The distance has not changed. It still takes roughly ten hours to cover it by road, before stops and depending on conditions.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></p> <p>I have a medical appointment in Montréal on Wednesday morning.</p> <p>On Tuesday, I finish my workday as usual. Around ten that evening, an autonomous vehicle picks me up at home.</p>https://bifurcations.org/en/texts/software-before-the-decision/Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400https://bifurcations.org/en/texts/software-before-the-decision/<p>About fifteen years ago, I took part in developing a project called Meetrical.</p> <p>The idea was ambitious: use relationships, availability and context to bring possible encounters between people to the surface. The project belonged more to the world of social networks as they existed at the time, but some of its intuitions can now be found in <a href="https://flechis.com/">Flechis</a>, a project I am working on today.</p> <p>To develop Meetrical, we had a team of five developers in India, a project manager and several months ahead of us. We had to produce specifications, answer questions, arbitrate choices, test successive versions and manage everything that normally accompanies software development.</p>