Future of Work
4 entries- Mar 8EssayWorld Machinesnewest The End of Identity: AI, Plasticity, and the Divergence Machine
Over the past year, the Contraptions club has been reading through history—from Giordano Bruno and Montaigne to Spinoza, Adam Smith, and Hume. We are now using using Venkatesh Rao’s Divergence Machine …
4 min - Jan 11EssayWorld Machines The Kernel and the Ark
I. The Wall and the Infinite # It is possible that the history of the modern West hinges on a single, melancholic misreading of Voltaire. When Candide, exhausted by the Lisbon earthquake and the …
12 min
- Dec 8Essay The Tortured Artist Is So Yesterday
41 years ago, Samuel Lipman wrote that an artist’s life is a “constant—and constantly losing—battle” against one’s own limits. That image has lasted because print culture taught us to imagine the …
3 min - Jul 19Essay What do platforms really do?
In 1986, David S. Landes wrote the essay, ‘What Do Bosses Really Do?’. He argues that the historical role of the ‘boss’ was an essential function for organizing production and connecting producers to …
3 min