Cultural Trend Analysis and Future Thinking from Nextatlas Experts

Luca Morena – Cultural Drifts (LinkedIn)

Luca’s newsletter, Cultural Drifts, is described as “a field guide to how good ideas drift into traps, and what that reveals about the systems shaping our culture.”

Trained as a philosopher with a PhD from the University of Bologna and a former Postdoc at the University of Turin Laboratory of Ontology, Luca approaches culture not as a surface phenomenon but as a system of structures, assumptions, and feedback loops. His research interests in the philosophy of technology, algorithmic culture, and AI are not abstract concerns; they are the invisible architectures shaping how we decide, design, consume, and imagine the future.

In Cultural Drifts, he examines how promising ideas become ideological traps, how algorithmic systems reshape agency and taste, and how AI reorganises power, authorship, and truth. His essays move beyond commentary into structural diagnosis, asking not only what is changing but what needs repair. What began as a few essays has grown into a defined space for reflection, grounded in the belief that there is something to uncover in these drifts and something to rebuild within the systems that produce them.

Debora Bae – Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know (Substack)

If Luca maps systems, Debora maps blind spots.

Her Substack, Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know, begins from a simple but powerful mechanism. She notices something she did not realise she was missing — a word, a trend, a connection — and that absence becomes the trigger for investigation. From there, she unpacks the concept, tracing its cultural implications and reframing how we see it.

Her trajectory is deliberately non-linear. After studying architecture, she pursued a Master’s in Cultural Management at the Université libre de Bruxelles, worked in the curatorial department at Istanbul Modern, and contributed as an exhibition organiser at the European Cultural Centre. Today, as Head of Insights at Nextatlas, she brings that interdisciplinary sensitivity into consumer and cultural analysis.

Her writing connects language and power, design and ideology, institutional frameworks and everyday behaviour. Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know is less about predicting the next big thing and more about expanding cognitive territory. In a world saturated with information, the ability to recognise what you are not seeing becomes a strategic skill, and her Substack trains that capacity.

Greta Cappellini – The Lore Behind (Substack)

Greta’s Substack, The Lore Behind, is where data meets lived experience.

After nearly two years inside the Nextatlas Insights Team, she opens the curtain on what a Gen Z trend researcher sees both in structured research and in everyday life. Her perspective is shaped by formal studies in future thinking across Italy and Finland and by her Master’s in Integrated Product Design from the Politecnico di Milano. It is also shaped by being part of the generation so frequently analysed in reports and headlines.

The Lore Behind explores what sits beneath the surface of trends. Greta analyses consumer behaviour and innovation patterns while reflecting on how these shifts feel from the inside. She examines how Gen Z is framed by brands and media and contrasts that framing with lived realities. The result is a perspective that bridges structured foresight and generational intuition, connecting quantitative insight with cultural subtext.

If you want to understand how a generation so often discussed in the trend world interprets itself, The Lore Behind offers that lens from within.

Joanna Damaszko – reading the room (Substack)

With reading the room, our Senior Insights Manager, Joanna, turns her analytical lens toward the subtle shifts that often precede mainstream change. The newsletter looks at what people are into and where those signals might be taking culture next.

Her perspective is grounded in deep cultural training. After studying cultural education in her native Poland, she completed a Master’s in Semiotics at the Università di Bologna. Since 2014, she has worked as a researcher, trend consultant, and semiotician, developing a sharp sensitivity to the symbolic codes and behavioural undercurrents shaping contemporary culture.

Reading the room exists for what does not always fit inside a client brief. As Joanna explains, not every compelling signal can be fully explored within the constraints of a project. Some trends appear too early, some sit at the margins, and others are simply observations that refuse to disappear. This newsletter becomes the space where those fragments are examined, articulated, and tracked over time, to see whether they evolve into structural shifts or remain cultural footnotes.

Trend lines, data, and information described in this article emerge from the ongoing analysis performed by Nextatlas on its global observation pool made of innovators, early adopters, industry insiders expressing their views on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit.

To learn more about our AI, discover Nextatlas Methodology here