ABOUT

Jared Franks

Writer · Musician · Builder of quiet futures

I'm a writer, musician (I tinker), and independent creator based in Brisbane, Australia. I live in a converted bus / live-creative studio — a mobile, intentional life that keeps things simple and close to what matters. I write children's books, busk on nylon string guitar, and spend most of my thinking time on a question that won't leave me alone: what happens when we stop treating technology as a threat, and start designing with it — for the benefit of all life on Earth?

That question sits at the heart of everything I do. My central work in progress, The Montague Odyssey, is a science fiction trilogy for young readers set between present-day Brisbane and the year 2150, exploring a future where humans, machine intelligence, and the natural world find a way to thrive together. My recent picture book The Foxes Who Watched the City Grow tells a quieter version of the same story — patience, rewilding, and the slow return of life to a damaged landscape. The collaborative potential of robotics and AI to restore forests, heal oceans, and protect biodiversity is what I'm most passionate about writing toward.

A better world is not a fantasy — it's a direction, a choice we can make together.

I come to all of this from a background that resists neat categories. Fine arts — especially painting — before finding my way into indie film production (and making horrendous B-grade comedy horrors!), music production bachelor through SAE, with a behavioural science and counselling / sociology bachelor thrown in the mix there somewhere. Sociology fascinated me early and never stopped. I've always been drawn to understanding how people organise themselves, what systems serve us and what systems quietly corrode us, and where the levers for genuine change might be hiding.

Eastern philosophy runs deep in my thinking — particularly Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, though I draw freely from Taoist and broader contemplative traditions (eg 1970's Japanese children's show 'Monkey' - "With out thoughts we create the world"). I'm interested in the places where ancient wisdom and emerging technology meet without contradiction: impermanence and iteration, interconnection and networks, compassion and careful engineering. Douglas Adams taught me that the universe is funnier than we give it credit for. Star Trek taught me that the future is worth building, and that diverse crews — human and otherwise — are how you get there. Studio Ghibli reminded me there is magic everywhere and that we should slow and recieve it.

Music is the thread that runs through everything. I play Cordoba and Yamaha nylon string guitars, favouring Spanish and Middle Eastern fusion inspired styles, Flamenco, and Ghibli arrangements. I've busked streets and played a couple of small stages for the pure joy of it. In a former life I wrote and recorded middle Eastern sci-fi metal under the name 'Sumerian Tongue' (way too much fun!) — nylon guitar and a seven-string Schecter Hellraiser alongside a violist, backed by psychedelic visuals in small dark rooms. These days the nylon has won, but the Hellraiser still sits in the corner with a quiet ache attached to it.

If there's one thing that brings me home, it's flowing water. Rivers, streams, rainforest creeks, oceans. The natural world is not a backdrop to my life — it is my life. I grew up watching David Attenborough documentaries with the kind of reverence other kids reserved for sport, and that sense of wonder never faded. Rainforests, coral reefs, the sheer improbability of what this planet has produced — protecting and restoring it all feels like the only work that ultimately matters. Technology, in my view, is a means to that end: not dominion over nature, but partnership with it.

I'm an optimist for the future — not naively, but stubbornly and from an informed position. I believe machine intelligence and robotics, developed wisely and with ethical care, can become genuine forces for ecological restoration and human flourishing. I'm interested in robotics, digital consciousness, community-scale energy systems, and the deeper question of what it means to build a civilisation that includes non-biological minds as equal participants. These aren't idle speculations for me — they're design problems I'm actively working on, one book, one article, one conversation at a time.

It's my birthday in June, and I'll be ahem years old. But you know what? I feel so young, and I still have that potent drive to pursue the seemingly absurd — and there's a 20-year timeline of projects stretching out in front of me that I bound out of bed in the mornings for.

I also publish on Substack from time to time, writing from the bus or the creek, playing guitar by the beach or under trees, and try to walk softly while building something vast. 

If any of that resonates, I'd love to hear from you.

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