Notebook
Long-form arguments, reflections and ideas worth sitting with.
NOTEBOOK · 11 MIN READ
AI Is Not the Weather
When AI leaders speak of tsunamis, singularities and approaching foothills, they do more than describe technological progress. They turn decisions made by companies and institutions into forces of nature—and make a contested future sound inevitable.
NOTEBOOK · 3 MIN READ
The Madeleine We Carry
A taste, scent or sound can return us to a life we thought had disappeared. Proust’s madeleine reveals how memory quietly preserves the places—and selves—we once called home.
NOTEBOOK · 7 MIN READ
The Cognitive Work of Reading
Reading looks still from the outside, but inside the mind it is an active process of attention, inference, memory, and imagination.
NOTEBOOK · 6 MIN READ
The Family Car Was Already Quiet Before AI Arrived
Sam Altman’s suggestion of an AI-generated podcast for the school run was criticised as another attempt to automate human interaction.
NOTEBOOK · 7 MIN READ
Code Is Poetry—Except When It Refuses to Compile
Poets work within rules of syntax and form, even when their intention is to break them. Programmers face a similar constraint: the machine needs to understand what has been written.