Discussions of the technological singularity often assume an inevitable leap to a future where machines surpass human intelligence in a runaway process. Yet, this focus reflects more than empirical forecasting—it reveals a preference for a particular possible world that aligns with cultural hopes or anxieties about transformation.
Continue readingCategory: Society and the economy
How has technology development changed the nature of society and the economy?
Prediction Without Disruption
The recent Stanford paper on Outcome-based Reinforcement Learning to Predict the Future1 (RLVR) could be seen as both a product of and a contributor to the cycle of misinterpreting disruption, as I discussed in Why We Keep Misreading Disruption.2 It’s advancing tools that improve prediction without necessarily addressing or understanding the foundational shifts that disruption entails.
Continue readingThe Mirage of Frictionless Commerce
Apparently “the checkout page is dead.” VISA, it seems, wants to make commerce ambient. Shopping, in this vision, becomes so seamless that it vanishes into the background. You see something. You want it. You get it. No friction. No steps. No checkout.
This kind of story is seductive. It flatters our bias toward convenience, efficiency, and the steady technological flattening of human effort. But it also misreads the system it claims to transform.
Continue readingEye of the Master
There’s no shortage of books about artificial intelligence right now. Most fall into one of two camps: breathless optimism or existential dread. The Eye of the Master is something else entirely—a rare and rigorous exploration of how we got here.
This is one of the most illuminating books I’ve read on the current wave of AI. Pasquinelli doesn’t waste time on hype or speculation. Instead, he takes us back to the intellectual roots of machine learning—tracing how ideas from neuroscience, cybernetics, psychometrics, and even art history quietly shaped the architecture of neural networks and the metaphors we use to describe them.
Continue readingAbundance
Klein, Ezra. Abundance. 1st ed. New York Amsterdam Antwerpen: Avid Reader Press, 2025. We’re in the middle of a crisis of constraint—affordable housing, aging infrastructure, fragmented […]
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The Geography of Desire
Privacy, Commute, and the Making of the Housing Crisis We talk a lot about zoning, construction costs, NIMBYism—but these are symptoms, not causes. The Geography of […]
Continue readingBook Updates Moving to Substack
For those following my book-related posts, I’m making a slight change to how I share this work. To better organise this expanding body of work, I’ve recently launched a Substack newsletter where I’ll be sharing book excerpts, work-in-progress concepts, and applications of the analytical framework I’m developing.
Continue readingThe Longevity Imperative
Scott, Andrew J. The Longevity Imperative: How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support Our Longer Lives. First U.S. edition. New York: Basic Books, 2024.
I’ve been following Prof. Scott’s work for some time and was glad when The Longevity Imperative was published as it provides an overview of the demographic change we’re in the midst of. While discussions about aging populations often frame demographic shifts as a crisis to be managed, particularly in policy and business forums, what’s refreshing about Prof. Scott’s work, and this book in particular, is that we can also frame this demographic shift as an opportunity.
Continue readingThe Way We Eat Now
Wilson, Bee, and Annabel Lee. The Way We Eat Now: Strategies for Eating in a World of Change. London: 4th Estate, 2019.
I discovered Bee Wilson through Consider the Fork, an excellent ‘history of how we cook and eat’ that draws heavily on Kranzberg’s Laws. Recently, I came across The Way We Eat Now, first published in 2019. While Consider the Fork examines the evolution of kitchen technology, this book explores how our relationship with food—and related cultural practices—has changed over time.
Continue readingSchool Life in 2024 A.D.
An interesting bit of paleofuture has been appearing in several social media feeds (on reddit, for example). I’ve converted it to text (below) for ease of reading.
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