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Plum Plum Land (WIP) | 2025

Illustrative Work

My passion project. Coming together bit by bit, moon by moon.

PLUMPLUM.LAND is a make-believe place where we (the Earthlings) can collectively take stock of how we're feeling about the dawn of "AI". It's also a place where we try to build nicer relationships with ourselves, each other and our digital tools.

🍄‍🟫 In the REAL.WORLD, everything is made of atoms. The Earth orbits the Sun. The Moon orbits the Earth. We Earthlings are born, then we live and work together in all kinds of groovy configurations. We eat yummy food and dance around and take care of each other as best as we know how. Eventually we die and that's really sad but it's kinda just part of it.

Most of us use screens every day. They're like magical portals that connect us through space and time in good, bad, and sometimes weird ways. Some of us have started to resent the constant hum of our digital lives. We're not really sure we want our kids using these things. Now AI is here and it's technically amazing, but it's disrupting our workplaces and schools UNCOMFORTABLY FAST. There's no real roadmap for how this plays out. We're all making sense of it in real time.

🍄 In PLUMPLUM.LAND, everything is made of data. A digital Earth orbits a digital Sun. A digital Moon orbits the digital Earth. We control our digital selves and navigate our digital villages. We live a slower digital life. We send mail to each other, tend to our files, and go surfing on the world wide web. We get to see how the data moves through our infrastructure, and take back control of our machines (Spoiler: it's not as complex as the tech bros make it sound). Then we make up the rules together.

From the safety of our villages, we watch the billionaire earthlings scrape the world wide web and cook up PLU*Ms to hang from the sky. They gobble up everything they see and poop out slop on command. Some of the slop has potential to impact the real world for good. Their little slop babies come down to Earth to help the Earthlings with all kinds of jobs. It takes some experimenting, but eventually we figure out what kind of boundaries we want to have with our slop-pooping alien colleagues. Then we build in the safeguards we need.

🍄‍🟫 In the Real World, context is everything and everything is context. 🍄 In Plum Plum Land, we control our digital contexts together.

FAQ

OK, but what is it really?

• An illustrated wiki that teaches Aussie Earthlings about coding, AI systems, and the magical world of software design. I'm growing it into a website + set of print material so we can start having meaningful conversations about this in the real world.
• At some point, I'd like to build this into an illustrated OS wrapper that encourages mindful interaction with digital systems. But I'm inviting critique and collaboration from Real World Communities and inter-disciplinary experts before building that out.

How are you doing it? I use a lot of visualisation techniques from software engineering to create more accurate mental models about how our technology actually works. I use realistic characters and scenarios to tell a more hopeful story about our relationships with data and technology. I sprinkle in a good bit of whimsy because it's more fun that way. But also because I wanna give a special shout-out to the girlies to join the party.

Why? Great question! Basically, I want more earthlings to be able to come together and meaningfully discuss what a safer AI future might look like for Australia. I believe AI is an incredible feat of computer science and I wanna see it used for good. I want to paint a picture of the world we could have alongside technology, if only we reclaimed our attention and took a good look around.

When? Bloody yesterday! I'm feeling the hot urgency on this tangle of issues. But the creative process is fickle too. I hope to post bits and pieces here and there. I think it might form its way into some kind of canonical representation in one of the moons of 2026. Til then, I'll be doing my research and doodling away.