Joseph P. Weakland, Ph.D.

Technical communicator and corporate futurist. Atlanta.

Thought leadership

Since my doctoral research I have written about emerging technologies as a critical futurist: how new technologies change the way people write, work and imagine what comes next. Today that is my job: I am a corporate futurist at Honeywell, focused on physical AI.

Essays

  1. 2026

    “Physical AI: The Next Phase of Industrial Intelligence.” How physical AI moves industrial operations from monitoring to intelligent action. I wrote it on my own, before I joined my current employer. Also as a PDF (52 KB).

Research and publications

  1. 2019

    Rhetorical Speculations: The Future of Rhetoric, Writing, and Technology, edited by Scott Sundvall. Utah State University Press. I wrote the plan for the collection and co-wrote its introduction.

  2. 2017

    Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education. Co-editor, with Peter Blaze Corcoran and Arjen E.J. Wals, and co-author of the introduction. Wageningen Academic Publishers.

  3. 2017

    “Augpunk: Imagining Alternative Futures for Augmented Reality through Science Fiction.” A chapter in Augmented Reality: Innovative Perspectives across Art, Industry, and Academia, edited by Sean Morey and John Tinnell. Parlor Press.

  4. 2015

    “ ‘Forked Tongues’: Languages of Estrangement in China Miéville’s Embassytown.” Science Fiction Studies 42.1.

  5. 2015

    Composing Futurity: Writing Technologies, Ecology, and Science Fiction. My dissertation, University of Florida.