He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Pace Layers, an annual print journal from The Long Now Foundation that explores the deep past and possible futures of civilization through nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and visual art.

His career spans media, technology, and the networked arts and humanities. As a founding team member of Zeega and co-creator of Pop (acquired by BuzzFeed), he pioneered new forms of digital storytelling, including mobile-first news and early “stories” formats. As the founding Head of Video at Timeline, he helped shape a distinctive voice for historical storytelling online, reaching tens of millions of viewers. He has also worked as a freelance journalist, writing reported features, profiles, and essays on Arab American identity, psychedelic history, and Bay Area subcultures for a constellation of now-defunct digital publications.

Earlier in his career, Ahmed was a researcher in the history of ideas, specializing in how concepts of being, time, and technology moved from Interwar European intellectual circles to the Beats and hippies of the American counterculture. He holds an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge and a BA in History from Reed College, and has been a metaLAB Fellow at Harvard University.

The recipient of a 2023 First Pages Prize, Ahmed is currently at work on his first book. He lives in Barcelona with his wife and son.