Essays Vol. I · June 2026
№ 01
The Golden Sphere
Roadside Picnic and the AI race
An old Soviet science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky about contact with the incomprehensible, and what it has to say about the AI race we are running today.
№ 02
The Cocoon
McLuhan's machine and the substrate transition
McLuhan in 1964 said machines extend humans and remake the humans who use them, set against Samuel Butler's 1863 letter arguing the machines would outlive their makers.
№ 03
Means of Representation
Debord and the AI apparatus
Debord's 1967 argument that modern life is lived through mass-produced images, read in 2026 when the apparatus runs autonomously and the user is the one making the images.
№ 04
The Last Engineer
Player Piano and the automation of purpose
Vonnegut's 1952 novel Player Piano, about an automated America where the displaced are provided for and miserable anyway, read in 2026 as AI begins automating the knowledge work.
№ 05
Area X
Annihilation and the words that fail at the edge of the unknown
Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 novel about four people who descend into a structure they cannot agree how to name — and what their disagreement says about every word we have brought to the AI encounter.
Coming June 16th