The winds of change are blowing at Warp News. So hard that the name Warp News is blowing away.
There are several reasons for this.
But first, a quick word on the thinking behind the name “Warp”.
In early summer 2015, I had lunch with Kristian Hultqvist and we talked about how exaggeratedly negative everything was around new technology and progress in general. The news media were especially negative, but the phenomenon was almost everywhere.
Problems are made up or exaggerated, and they linger in people’s minds long after they’ve been solved. This holds new technology back, because many believe it is worse, more dangerous and more expensive than it really is.
It’s the same thing Hans Rosling showed us about the state of the world. In area after area, most people believe that important things like child mortality, hunger and education have gotten worse, when in fact they have gotten dramatically better.
Someone should do something
Over lunch we vented about this and concluded that “someone” should do “something” about it.
The idea took root in me.
Over the summer I decided that I was that someone, and that the something might be a kind of think tank (which later became a non-profit foundation instead).
A name was needed!
I wanted a name that symbolized forward motion.
The naming process was highly sophisticated.
I sat in an armchair in the cottage and wrote down name ideas. Then I went for a walk, often down to the lake. Stood there staring. Came up with more ideas. Went home and wrote them down. Repeat.
Somewhere in there, warp popped up.
From warp speed in Star Trek and other science fiction. A speed faster than the speed of light.
On top of that, I loved the word warp. Short, good and simple.
Perfect!
So the foundation was later named Warp Institute and the news site became Warp News.
Come again?
But I was wrong. The name wasn’t perfect.
I don’t know how many times I’ve had to repeat it. “No, warp, w a r p. As in warp speed. Star Trek, you know?”
Nor is it a name people easily remember. “What was your news site called again?” is a common question.
Blinded by my love for the name, I pushed on anyway, telling myself that nobody could pronounce Google at first either. Or ChatGPT, for that matter.
But eventually another name started creeping in.
Once, after I got visibly upset about someone’s resistance to a new technology (I don’t remember what it was), I got a comment along the lines of:
“You sound like an angry optimist,” with the emphasis on angry.
Yes, I thought, that’s exactly what I am.
What Kristian and I talked about at that lunch, which led to the founding of Warp Institute, was exactly that: Anger.
When I hear some doomsday prophet on AI, I get furious. Or when convoluted, excessive rules hold back self-driving cars in the EU, I get irritated. I see progress we have to wait for, or, in the worst case, never get to experience at all.
When he called me an angry optimist, it was a direct hit. That’s me, one hundred percent.
And over time, as I started using it myself, I noticed something else: it was the angry optimist people remembered, not Warp News.
Also, more and more of the people I talked to confessed to the same feeling. They were optimistic, but angry at the resistance to science, to exploration… yes, to the new, to the future.
There are many of us angry optimists!
So I’m now changing the name from my old love, Warp News, to my new love, The Angry Optimist.
The publication will be called The Angry Optimist, or formally The Angry Optimist Publication.
This also gives me the chance to be an angry optimist a bit more often in my writing.
The foundation, which is the largest and controlling owner of Warp News The Angry Optimist, will however keep its beautiful name, Warp Institute.
New logo
As you may have seen above, I’ve made a new logo. There are some fun details in it. Can you find them?
New home
At the same time, I’m taking the opportunity to switch publishing platforms to Substack. A service many of you already use to subscribe to newsletters. I believe it will help us grow.
For you, nothing changes unless you want it to. You’ll get everything in your inbox as before and can keep reading the articles on the web.
But you can also read directly in the Substack app. Download the Substack app for iPhone or Android here. Sign in using the same email address that receives our newsletter.
Already have a Substack account with a different email address and want to keep your subscriptions together? First sign out, then sign in through your browser using the address that received this email. Open your account settings, change the email address to the one used for your existing account, and confirm the change through the emails sent to both addresses. This transfers the account’s subscriptions and other data to your existing account. Then sign in using the new address.
Or you can simply carry on as usual.
If you run into any trouble, need help, or have a comment or question about the name change or anything else, you’re very welcome to contact me directly at mathias.sundin@warpinstitute.org
The same old fact-based optimism
Beyond that, it stays the same.
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Mathias Sundin
The angry optimist