week 35 / 2026: scholars and sandpiles
In this instalment, I try to rescue the baby of Kevin Munger’s vision for a more public-facing form of academic scholarship from the bathwater of handwavey “AI” enthusiasm.
"technology"
week 34 / 2026: boats and boxes
In this instalment: container shipping is starting to hit its logistical limits, at least on the land, even as it enables some seriously dirty business models. Plus: Byung-Chul Han, and E J Swift’s Clarke Award-winning novel When There Are Wolves Again!
week 29 / 2026: protocols and performances
In this episode: Scott Smith on “protocol communities”; the face as the site of surgical interventions into reality itself; and another look at “body futurism” as dark enantiodromia.
week 27 / 2026: progress and myopia
This week, a debunking of bio-factory protein production, which leads us to a broader look at solutionism, and the frustrating impossibility of simply swapping one metanarrative for another. Plus, the short fiction of Iain M Banks...
week 21 / 2026: empire and multitude
I’m pleased to announce a new publication: you can read a short story by yours truly in the just-released RISCS anthology! Meanwhile, feel free to hang around and discuss the shaky foundations of the USian technopoly, and the possible fates of the nation-state...
week 20 / 2026: regimes and revolutions
If “AI” is a revolution, as its ideologues would have us believe, then they might want to consider how unpopular revolutions tend to end. Are they sincere in their beliefs? I argue that it doesn’t really matter, but that we should nonetheless treat them as if they are.
week 19 / 2026: centres and edges
The openings of stories, and the titles we give them, have a huge effect on how they land with the audiences—but as always with stories, it’s an art rather than a science. Plus: in praise of living and working at the edges.