Essays for living
with intelligent machines.

A mineral paper ribbon unfolds through translucent architectural planes toward an amber light — FIG. E/01UNFOLDING THOUGHT

Long-form reflections on attention, intimacy, work, truth, learning, and power.

Human value · 20 Sept 2026

The futures we make easier

Technology does more than open possibilities. It makes some ways of living easier to enter, repeat, and defend—and leaves others requiring unusual effort.

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Power · 20 Sept 2026

When the manager is a model

A system can allocate shifts, set targets, and judge performance without ever meeting the people whose days it arranges.

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Agency · 19 Sept 2026

When the machine causes the harm

An AI can hurt someone without touching them. A changed record, a silenced warning, or a command issued at machine speed can carry harm from a screen into a body.

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Moral status · 06 Sept 2026

Machines in the moral circle

Today’s systems do not suffer. Our treatment of them may still shape the kind of moral agents we become.

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Memory · 23 Aug 2026

When memory becomes a service

A perfect external memory could free us from repetition—or place the story of our lives in someone else’s infrastructure.

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Identity · 23 Aug 2026

The self that fits the profile

A profile is built to predict what we will do. Once it begins arranging our opportunities, it can become a life we are expected to repeat.

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Public life · 16 Aug 2026

The quiet politics of personalisation

Personalisation promises relevance. It may also weaken the shared surfaces on which public life depends.

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Human value · 08 Aug 2026

AI is changing. What about us?

The most important story about artificial intelligence is not what happens inside the machine. It is what happens between intelligent systems and the people, institutions, and choices surrounding them.

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Judgement · 26 Jul 2026