One after another, people have been mapping and naming the dynamics: Yanis Varoufakis’ technofeudalism paints the picture in a wide brush, Cory Doctorow’s unique command of language coined enshittification with compelling everyday examples, Tim Wu reports on a pervasive extraction. And now with the latest release of Epstein files, it’s becoming clear just how large power dynamics are intimately relevant to all of us, even in quotidian ways.

Carole Cadwalladr’s writes in We All Live in Epstein’s World (from which I borrowed inspiration for the title of this post):

“Epstein’s world is our world. That’s the darkest revelation of these files. He wasn’t an aberration. He was our culture made flesh. A culture that’s now encoded into 1s and 0s and is growing exponentially baked into the algorithms that power our social media platforms, replicated at scale and fed into the large language models that Epstein’s friends are building which are powering our future.”

It feels particularly real when read side-by-side with Charlsie Niemiec’s experience, which she shared on LinkedIn:

"Be nice, or I'll put this online."
That's what a guy wearing Meta glasses said to us at a bar.
I was out of town visiting friends. Fancy dinner, then martinis after. We're laughing, catching up—and then two guys appeared at our table.
They didn't ask to join. They announced it. Squeezed in. Started the routine: negging, weird comments, forced banter. Something felt off. Performative. Like we weren't people, we were content.
My friend finally noticed. "We can see your glasses recording us." He smirked and said, "Be nice or I'll put this online to show the world." Not embarrassed. Threatening. The glasses weren't a mistake: they were leverage.

…

Universities are issuing warnings. The University of San Francisco sent an alert about a man using Meta glasses to film women with "unwanted comments," then posting to TikTok. Women at ASU reported being recorded at campus jobs. A wax salon customer noticed her esthetician wearing them mid-Brazilian wax.

"Pickup artists" have discovered that Meta glasses capture "authentic" rejections—women who didn't consent to being filmed. The discomfort is the content. The violation is the hook.

It’s worth reading the whole post. She rightly asks, “When does a company become complicit?”

As I posted on LinkedIn in response to Niemiec’s Meta glasses post, from the founder of a platform that started as a way to rank women’s looks, and went on to be complicit in the Cambridge Analytica scandal and more… nothing surprises me less than total abdication of responsibility of the impacts of their business models and products.

This extends to much of the technological and economic structures of the world we live in. And Epstein had his hands in far more than we realize. Karen Hao reported how the Ben Goertzel, popularizer of the term AGI and head of SingularityNET congratulated Epstein his first day out of prison and asked for funding for AGI, and later wrote to Epstein re: "an AGI economy": "...for the AGI parasite to overcome to regular-human-economy host (so it can grow to be more than a parasite and eventually gain its own superhuman autonomy) it first needs to suck off the resources of the host." OpenCog, Goertzel's open-source AI framework, is used by Huawei, Cisco, and others. (source) Epstein funded Marvin Minksy and Itamar Arel’s AI work , and even subsidized Josha Bach’s position at MIT Media Lab. Esptein was also a huge backer of crypto, investing $3million in Coinbase, and facilitating almost $8 million dollars over two decades to underwrite MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative as Bitcoins principal home and funding source. The technolords of our times Thiel (Palantir) and Musk (xAI/Twitter/DOGE/Starlink/waves hands) were deeply involved with Epstein and the strategies he set in motion.

Epstein and Thiel exchanged more than 2,000 messages over five years, met multiple times, and Epstein ultimately invested $40 million in Valar Ventures, a firm co-founded by Thiel. Peter Thiel advised Epstein on investments, including in his own company Palantir. (source source) In August 2015, Reid Hoffman invited both Ito and Epstein to a dinner in Palo Alto with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel. This is the moment the MIT/crypto/Epstein network intersected directly with the core of what would become the Trump tech inner circle, (source) and what would build into a worldwide campaign. Documents show Epstein writing to Thiel in 2016, "Brexit, just the beginning," celebrating the onset of "tribalism" and the unraveling of globalization. Epstein appeared to view right-wing populism as an opportunity, and understood early how the internet could be used to accelerate it. (source) And this post shares a photo taken at Harvard University's program for evolutionary dynamics, studying how behaviors or traits spread and are difficult to undo, featuring Jeffrey Epstein, Martin Nowak, and Steve Bannon, who was or would soon after this photo become the White House’s Chief Strategist.

What does this mean for us? This little Substack piece of mine is an attempt to trace it, to bolster the efforts of others naming it, and to start pulling threads looking for a way forward.

Jasmine Bina puts it plainly:

The problem is we are still building for an economy of participation when we’re entering an economy where participation itself has become the liability. (Jasmine Bina)

One response: Scott Galloway’s Resist and Unsubscribe. Scott thinks the only way to be heard is through targeted economic strikes.

And, I think with the rise of AI, there is a compelling case that the technolords are doubling down on these patterns. We’re at the threshold of something seemingly more potent than the technologies we’ve seen so far by an order of magnitude, and once again we’re treating AI deployment like a product launch instead of what it actually is: building the infrastructure for a new technological / economic / social order. It will require more than just a targeted economic strike. I think the most hope comes in the actions that are available to us.

This (long, but worthwhile) excerpt from Anand Giridharadas on the Ezra Klein show (podcast, article) is meaningful and a thought provoking frame:

“This country is full of people today — and I’m speaking specifically of leaders and elites — with opportunities to form some sort of resistance to the loss of democracy in this country. Our elite, including some of the people we’ve talked about today, is full of people whose grandfathers stormed Normandy and who are lionized in those families and who don’t have the bravery, as the grandchildren of those people, to put out a statement at their law firm.

I mean it’s in the song: “Land of the free, home of the brave.” I think it’s a really important part of American self-conception — bravery, courage.

I think we have found out that it is in really short supply and that people who actually have the things that you would think would make you courageous — I think that if I had Harvard’s endowment at my back, I would be more courageous than Anand sitting here with you right now.

It turns out that’s not what it seemed to do for people. If I owned a law firm, I would think that would make me more courageous. But we found otherwise.

And then you look at these people in Minneapolis whose names no one even knows, except for the two who were shot. And people who, after they were shot, go out again and again and again, and you look at their courage. And it’s incredible that all of these people in academia, in law firms, in corporations — you and I go out enough, we hear these people talk about Donald Trump at parties. They have the same contempt for him that you and I might have. But no courage.

…

It’s great that you and I are talking about this and that, frankly, the whole country and world are talking about this story right now. This is a story of a magnitude that comes around but rarely. That’s progress in and of itself. All these women who risked everything to tell this story, who ruined their own lives to tell this story. Virginia Giuffre, whom I’ve been quoting, is not with us anymore, having committed suicide.

But talking about it or being angry about it will not on its own lead to a world that is different from this. This outrage could be harvested for clickbait and politicians who, exactly as you say, like Trump, could very much harvest this anger against the network only to get into power and deepen the hold of these networks.

Or this outrage could actually lead to transformative places, of saying: We don’t have to be run by people who operate in networks like these. Our political parties don’t need to be dominated by donors who are at the heart of these networks. There are so many amazing people in this country, including some who were exposed to the opportunity to be friends with Jeffrey Epstein, who said: No, thank you.

There are so many people outside of these networks, outside of these ways of thinking. And again and again, we turn to people to run our companies, to run our political organizations, who happen to have the mentalities, the kind of immorality, the mercenary mentality, the view of other people who don’t have power as kind of disposable things to kind of get past on the way to your own quest.

We have a choice of who we elevate in so many spheres of American life. And I hope this story doesn’t just become the greatest clickbait of all time and actually becomes a wake-up call.

…

I think we live in an age of — and there have been a lot of books about this — network power. That the way in which power works now has more to do with networks and the dynamics of networks.

And that has many implications. That means your connections are more of a source of power. If you go back a couple hundred years, the land you owned was a really big source of power.

I wonder if part of what is happening is, in an age of network power, courage becomes harder. Because if you think back to that person whose power came from being rooted in the community — they had some land, they were somebody in the town, maybe they were the deacon in the church on the weekend. They had multiple kinds of clout. They had some money they gave to the local civic thing. They maybe had a bunch of different things that might make them courageous about some other thing, so that if someone started to take over their political party who was a fascist, they would have support from their church community or from the sports league they were associated with — these other things.

A lot of those things have vanished. And your power really consists of your position and your number of connections and the density and quality and lucrativeness of those connections in the network.”

What I take from this conversation, is that power consolidates or disperses in one-off interactions. Every time we resist, refuse, or choose differently, we’re participating in creating alternatives and bolstering our own agency. And just as importantly, we have to do it together.

I’ll leave you with some hopeful alternatives.

You’re More Powerful Than You Think A Citizen’s Guide to Making Change Happen by Eric Liu

Reweaving the Web: How together we can create a human-centered Internet of trust by Richard Whitt

Lifehouse Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire by Adam Greenfield

The primary debate between opposing views I’ve heard in the killing of Alex Pretti lies in this question: is ICE in the wrong or are the protesters in the wrong? To weigh these different perspectives, I looked at which laws apply and which laws take priority. What I found is

1. ICE’s authority comes from immigration law. Their jurisdiction is over “aliens,” which raises the question of whether they had any legal authority to use force against U.S. citizens exercising their constitutional rights.

2. Federal officers are only protected when performing “lawful official duties,” and there’s a strong argument that you can’t be acting lawfully while violating someone’s 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendment rights. Constitutional rights sit above all other laws in our legal system.

3. It is reasonable to consider whether ICE is operating like what the Posse Comitatus Act was designed to prevent: federal forces occupying a state, using violence against civilians, blocking state investigators, and suppressing dissent. And if so, what the implications are for ICE of the law written using the language of military, yet intended for occupying forces.

If we follow the hierarchy of law - Constitution first, then federal statutes - it seems ICE acted outside their legal authority, which would mean they’re not protected by federal officer laws and could face prosecution under both federal civil rights law and state criminal law.

**There are many laws that can come into consideration. I am not nor have I ever been a legal scholar, and so I have deployed Claude to help me identify which laws are most pertinent here.

— FULL TEXT—

Following the second murder of a U.S. Citizen by ICE agents this week, the United States seems to be at a tipping point. Tensions are at the highest they have been - between federal and state just as they are between friends and family with different political stances.

I like many others am following the events through what the algorithms feed me, in the bubble they have created for me. I like many others am deeply disturbed. I like many others also have family members with drastically different perspectives and politics. Both have led me to despair and lost sleep in the last few days.

I’ve been looking for a constructive channel to balance all of this. What I’ve come to is an inquiry around lawfulness.

In the outrage surrounding the murder of Alex Pretti, the contention between views often boils down to: is ICE in the wrong or are the protesters in the wrong? While some (many, from my vantage point) see an unreasonable use of force by an armed and occupying force for a tyrannical state, others emphasize on the legality of impeding a federal law enforcement officer. How do we weigh the merits to each perspective? My only answer is to consider which laws exist in support of the arguments, and which of those laws has primacy.

There are many laws that can come into consideration. I am not nor have I ever been a legal scholar, and so I have deployed Claude to help me identify which laws are most pertinent here.

LAWS (Federal & Constitutional)

Most pertinent laws surrounding federal officer’s rights

Federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 111 - “Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees.” This makes it a crime to forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with federal officers while engaged in official duties.

This statute requires:

• Active interference with the officer’s duties. Pretti put himself in between another protestor (not immigration related) and the ICE agent attacking her for filming them. This is clear, BUT the fact that no immigrants were involved in the incident brings into question whether their duties were being carried out in this instance.

• Knowledge that the person is a federal officer. Pretti knew the ICE agent was a federal officer. No question here.

• The officer must be engaged in lawful official duties. The statutes protecting federal officers from interference only apply when officers are acting lawfully. Officers cannot be engaged in lawful official duties if they’re simultaneously violating constitutional rights.

Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385) - “Use of Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force as posse comitatus” states: “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.” While it specifically prohibits using the military (not specifically federal agents, which ICE agents are) for civilian law enforcement, it is still relevant conceptually in that it reflects a deeper constitutional concern: preventing federal forces from operating as occupying armies in states. This is a very unclear area. ICE is technically federal civilian law enforcement, not military. ICE’s technical duties involve “aliens,” not citizens. And there is room to interpret ICE is acting as a federal occupying force, which was core to the creation of Pose Comitatus. More to come on this below.

Most pertinent laws surrounding citizens rights

1st Amendment - “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This is largely carried out in the act of protest and in the documentation of ICE’s activities.

2nd Amendment - “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Alex Pretti was carrying a permitted loaded firearm as is legal in Minnesota, and never once brandished it in the situation with ICE. See the NYT frame by frame analysis. Many 2nd amendment advocates interpret it as Charlie Kirk once explained, “The 2nd amendment is not for hunting, it is not for self protection, It is there to ensure that free people can defend themselves if god forbid government became tyrannical and turned against its citizens.”

4th Amendment - “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Here the protestors have the right to not be seized unreasonably. In my view, this is largely where the uncertainty around the contention lies. I’ve raised the question of whether ICE was acting within their duty in engaging with citizens, and it seems for some it is worth considering that ICE was in the right to interfere with protestors closely documenting their actions as part of their 1st amendment rights. I’ll make sense of this more below.

5th Amendment - “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Regardless if Alex Pretti was acting unlawfully, the right to due process was violated here. This is black and white.

9th Amendment - “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This protects unenumerated rights that may include peaceful observation and documentation of government activity.

10th Amendment - “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Reserved powers of states raises a lot of questions and uncertainty about federal jurisdiction and state sovereignty in local law enforcement matters. This feels largely at the heart of the contention in debates I’ve seen.

14th Amendment - Citizenship Rights, Equal Protection, Apportionment, Civil War Debt. Due process and equal protection clauses prohibit states (and through incorporation, federal agents) from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

See the Constitutional Amendments in full.

18 U.S.C. § 242 (Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law) - “Whoever, under color of any law... willfully subjects any person... to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States” faces criminal penalties. Federal law itself criminalizes what ICE did.

And finally, the Proportionality doctrine (link) is a general principal in US law and international human rights law principles that excessive force violates fundamental rights, regardless of technical legal authority. Here in the U.S., Graham v. Connor (1989) established the objective reasonableness test for use of force under the 4th Amendment. The three factors are:

• Severity of crime at issue

• Immediate threat posed

• Active resistance or evasion

With videos showing Alex Pretti already on the ground surrounded by agents, was lethal force objectively reasonable? This was without a doubt excessive force.

ANALYSIS

Now that we’ve got that covered. The questions here are:

1. What is the hierarchy of authority of these laws?

2. Does the hierarchy of authority provide clarity in areas left uncertain?

   1. Were ICE agents violating constitutional rights?

   2. Does Posse Comitatus apply here?

   3. What is ICE’s jurisdiction?

What is the hierarchy of authority of these laws

1. Constitutional rights are supreme law of the land. Statutory law cannot override constitutional protections.

2. Federal supremacy (Article VI): Federal law supersedes state law in areas of federal jurisdiction, BUT (and again) this doesn’t diminish individual constitutional rights.

What can we interpret from the hierarchy of authority

1. Were ICE agents violating the constitutional rights?

If ICE agents:

• Conducted searches/seizures without reasonable suspicion (4th Amendment): clearly yes

• Used excessive force (4th Amendment reasonableness): clearly yes

• Violated due process (5th/14th Amendments): clearly yes

• Suppressed protected speech/observation (1st Amendment): clearly yes

Then they were not engaged in lawful official duties, and interference statutes wouldn’t apply.

Most importantly: Constitutional compliance is a prerequisite for lawful authority.

2. Does Posse Comitatus apply here?

As I wrote above, ICE is technically a civilian federal force, not military. So at first glance, it seems ICE would be exempt.

HOWEVER. While the letter of the law doesn’t cover ICE as civilian federal agents, the constitutional principle behind Posse Comitatus is very relevant. Posse Comitatus was enacted in 1878 to prevent federal military occupation of states, use of federal troops to control civilian population, military interference in local governance and elections, and use of federal forces acting as an occupying army.

Even though ICE isn’t technically military, their operation in Minneapolis exhibits all the hallmarks of what Posse Comitatus was designed to prevent:

• It operates like an occupying force. Agents are armed carrying tactical gear, in armored vehicles, blocking state and local investigators from crime scenes, refusing to coordinate with state/local authorities, and creating fear and intimidation.

• Federal forces are displacing state authority by blocking the state from accessing the Pretti shooting scene, not complying with state-issued warrants, making federal statements that are misinformation, and overriding state sovereignty in criminal investigation.

• And finally federal authority is being used to suppress dissent. ICE agents are attacking protestors filming them and using immigration enforcement as pretext for broader population control.

Even if courts say the statute doesn’t apply, the constitutional principle is being violated. It’s reasonable to view ICE as a de facto military force for the federal government, operating in a military capacity.

This is why multiple governors, including Republican Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, are expressing “deep concerns over federal tactics.” The National Governors Association called for a “reset of strategy” precisely because federal operations look like military occupation rather than civilian law enforcement.

3. What is ICE’s jurisdiction?

It’s also worth questioning where ICE’s authority lies and whether it applies in situations of protest and civil disobedience.

ICE was created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Pub. L. 107-296, enacted November 25, 2002), which reorganized the federal government after 9/11. ICE has never been formally authorized by standalone legislation. It was created administratively within DHS, and so it operates under the Homeland Security Act of 2002, pre-existing immigration statues inherited from the old INS, and executive branch regulations.

The core statute defining immigration officer powers is: 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a) - Powers Without Warrant. It states:

“Any officer or employee of the Service authorized under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General shall have power without warrant—

(1) to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States;

(2) to arrest any alien who in his presence or view is entering or attempting to enter the United States in violation of any law or regulation... or to arrest any alien in the United States, if he has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest...”

The determining word is: ALIEN.

ICE’s authority is specifically derived from immigration enforcement. Their presence in Minneapolis was ostensibly to arrest individuals for immigration violations. This creates several legal problems when they use force against U.S. citizens who are protesters:

1. Ultra Vires Actions (Beyond Legal Authority)

When ICE uses force against U.S. citizens engaged in constitutionally protected activity (filming, protesting, observing), they may be acting outside the scope of their legal authority entirely.

• ICE’s statutory authority comes from immigration law (8 U.S.C. § 1357)

• This authority is specifically for enforcing immigration violations

• U.S. citizens cannot, by definition, be subject to immigration enforcement

• Using force against citizens protesting ≠ enforcing immigration law

2. Loss of “Lawful Official Duties” Protection

Remember 18 U.S.C. § 111 only protects officers performing lawful official duties. If ICE agents attack protesters:

• They’re not enforcing immigration law at that moment

• They may be committing assault/battery under state law

• The “impeding federal officers” defense collapses because attacking protesters isn’t within their official duties

• They lose qualified immunity because violating clearly established rights (1st, 4th Amendment)

Given the above, as summarized by Claude, this “absolutely reduces ICE’s legitimacy and authority in several ways”:

Legally:

• Transforms them from law enforcement into lawless actors

• Makes them subject to state criminal prosecution

• Opens them to civil liability

• Potentially violates civil rights statutes (18 U.S.C. § 242 - deprivation of rights under color of law)

Constitutionally:

• Creates a 1st Amendment violation (suppressing protest/speech)

• Creates a 4th Amendment violation (unreasonable seizure/excessive force)

• Potentially violates 14th Amendment (deprivation of life without due process)

Practically:

• Undermines cooperation with state/local authorities

• Erodes public trust and consent

• Questions the “reasonableness” required for any of their other actions that day

Post Script: a word about RESPONSIBILITY and CONDUCT

Anyone trained properly in any military or law enforcement agency knows the position carries with it deep responsibility, and as a result, responsibility is drilled into them time and time again through extensive training. A key mechanism of responsibility: the capabilities of self control and control of the situation. When carrying lethal force in a public (non-war setting), it is the responsibility of the agent to de-escalate and control the situation.

As Mike Smith, former US Naval Officer and FA-18 pilot, wrote on LinkedIn: “We routinely held 19 year old Lance Corporals to higher standards for trigger discipline, de-escalation, and decision making than we are ICE agents in Minnesota. Worse, we swore an oath to uphold the Constitution - as did these agents, who seem intent to escalate conflict, and ignore 1st, 2nd, & 4th amendment rights of the people they’re supposed to be protecting. Please don’t invoke the military into this... it only spreads the dishonor of how ICE behaves upon others.”

There is ample evidence that ICE officers regularly use excessive force on citizens, like spraying chemicals into their faces when already on the ground and under the control of multiple ICE agents. They are either unable or unwilling to hold themselves to the standards that any other law enforcement body does (including being identifiable through name tag, and not wearing a mask).

I want weird, creative alternatives

Underneath all the buzz around optimization and efficiencies, I hear another, subtler conversation. Almost as if this AI moment has a quiet call: to step back from the half-vacant bleary-eyed gaze of enshittified platform economics that drive endless consumption and scrolling. And to instead reclaim (in truth, rebuild) our ability to actively participate in and create our analog and digital communities and world we live in.

Today, we’re all familiar with the platform economics that dominate the technologies that proliferate our day to day lives. Here in the U.S., the digital products that we interact with on a daily basis have increasingly consolidated into a uniform goal: concentration of time and attention into one or two dominant platforms.

Who has time to make anything? I haven’t made it to the end of my infinite feed!

But technology, and even these platforms, didn’t start out that way. According to Steven Levy in WIRED, “the burgeoning PC industry was a nerdy successor to the political and cultural activism of the late 1960s. Some of the first computer startups sprang from the Homebrew Computer Club, organized by an antiwar activist… Apple cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had barely grown out of their shaggy-haired days selling the “blue boxes” that allowed people to make illegal calls. Screw the Phone Company! The wizards I met were changing the world with tools designed to uplift us—to give the common person the power of an expert. The electronic spreadsheet was sold as a business tool, but it was ultimately an antiestablishment weapon, because anyone with a low-cost PC could challenge the calculations of the executive suite.” (The creative in this piece is excellent. Exhibit A below.)

The 1990s and 2000s were a weird, vibrant, and robust era of internet culture. I joined the online journey toward the end of that era, but the sentiment of the times by many is that it was a free for all of community-driven connection and creativity. GeoCities was one of the original website hosting service where people could explore various peoples’ websites by theme or interest. It focused on providing free tooling that fostered a the first generation of web designers and created flourishing community spaces that resulted in a platform for self-expression and the emergence of far ranging subcultures.

The internet culture of the 90s and 00s boomed because of the unrefined self expression, empowerment of the amateur, freedom to experiment, technical playfulness, and cultural permission for weirdness and niche communities it enabled. There’s something about AI that sounds familiar… this opportunity to create with capabilities and the ability to mitigate limitations in a way no one ever imagined.

There’s a but….

Corporations gotta centralize profit and value. And platform economics saw the end of these golden days of internet culture…. and the rise of enshittification. It turned into the corporate consolidation and attention extraction we’re all familiar with. Those forces are 100% at play with AI. In fact, at its start, there is already corporate capture of the foundational models. Unlike the 90s, we’re starting out in the dynamic of platform dependency here in the U.S.

Still. And. Maybe… AI is straddling a contradiction: Feed the hungry ghost tech CEOs; make something new. Lose yourself in infinite scroll; actively pursue alternatives.

They say history repeats itself. In this case, the cycle is in hyper speed, and rather than having to look back 100 years or more, we get to look back just 20-30 years. Can we better learn from it being so recent?

In that quiet call are counter responses and subcultures. First: countries are doing this open-source. Switzerland has also released a fully open-sourced “pro-social” AI, rather than pursuing general-purpose models that compete with ChatGPT. China’s open source strategy emphasizes ‘autonomous and controllable’ base foundation models to support sharing and collaboration. This is China’s strategic counter response to the U.S.’s approach, and it includes local and municipal AI initiatives to experiment with regulatory sandboxes and infrastructure tailored to regional strengths. There are technical counter responses, too. Community driven platforms like cooperative and mutual aid tech. There are distributed peer-to-peer networks via LocalAI, self-hosting ecosystems with the intent to democratize access by running models on consumer devices. And if we look at economic options, cooperative platforms provide an example how creators can own their distribution infrastructure. This is a whole rabbit hole I am just beginning to dive into.

There’s a buttoned up version of AI, then there’s a version that helps people tap into the weird and wonderful ways they show up in the world. I really want to see whats possible with more of the latter.

Collaboration calisthenics

In one of my recent projects, I’m collaborating with people who bring wildly different perspectives to mine in a norming / forming kind of environment. At times its invigorating, at other times, it really challenges me. For this reason on its own, being a consultant can be a roller coaster.

But, in net, this dynamic, and the variety of collaborators I get to work with, is one of my favorite things about being a consultant. As a researcher, it stretches the muscles of hearing what’s behind what is said and knowing which questions to dig deeper into. As a strategist, it requires being really thoughtful about the methodologies and approaches that will be useful not just for the context and outcome, but for the collaboration. And it’s one of the most consistent sources for learning new mental models and ways of doing things to try on and see how they work for me in various contexts. I find it invaluable.

I don’t mean to gloss over the challenging part. It’s why I’m writing this. Sometimes working with different working styles can create a lot of stress and self doubt. Without ways to manage it, navigating new dynamics and environments can significantly increase cognitive load. Our brains are made to want to go to autopilot and work in familiar territory. And, sometimes the new collaborator or environment aren’t the best fit with your own views or approach. Here’s what I have found to make the most of it.

• When I’m feeling out of my depth or experiencing some tension between working styles, I reframe that discomfort as a trigger to get curious. We often feel a strong response and focus on it. What’s underneath that response?

• At the end of the working session, work day or work week, I often take a minute to reflect on what’s unique about how they work and what I’m learning from working with them and in the context at hand.

• I reflect on how I am showing up in relation to them, and what new value my experience brings when working with them.

Design existentialism: are we all Schrodinger’s Designer?

Lately every other non-AI post that comes across my LinkedIn feed is thinking about design and its future.

There’s a website crowdsourcing ways of defining design. https://defining.design/

I’ve seen far more posts declaring that design is dead or some variation on that theme than I care to click on.

Others share that design is in its most strategic phase yet!

Design has ben fighting for its own existence for a while now. Through process. Via metrics. At the leadership table.

Design exists, in many forms, and depends on its context and who is looking at it. Maybe it’s more “Schrödinger’s Designer?”

In the C-suite, design is strategic vision and innovation leadership. In engineering, design is wireframes and user flows. In marketing? Brand and creative. In operations, design is process optimization and infrastructure strategy.

All are true until someone opens the box and demands specificity.

Taking it a step further, design in a startup looks nothing like design in government, which looks nothing like design in academia.

The existentialist element comes through in how this uncertainty creates anxiety for designers. We have to constantly construct meaning and purpose without clear external validation of what the profession “really” is. We have multiple simultaneous professional identities AND the burden of creating professional meaning in and across ambiguous contexts. This uncertainty isn’t going away any time soon.

[Special thanks to Claude for having slightly ridiculous conversations I’d probably never have without it. ]

Can’t look away if you tried.

This was the last week of #45’s term. We are three days away from inauguration, and one would hope that the tumult of his Presidency and the resulting failed coup ends there. Rather than a climax, the recent events were more like the Hollywood style ten minute opening chase scene of the long simmering fractures in systems and paradigms that don’t work in our modern way of doing things any more. Everything’s coming to a head.

This article quoting retired Army General and counterterrorism expert lays it out plainly:

“I did see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America,” McChrystal told Yahoo News. “...I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize. ... The fabric of something very dangerous has been woven, and it’s further along than most Americans care to admit.”

A loose correlation I’m noticing is: those people who most fervently supported and voted based on the politics that grew around terrorism/counter-terrorism since 2001 here in the U.S., many of those same people also voted in this administration or even align with platforms of the most present and dangerous domestic terrorist group. It’s ironic to me in that they have effectively aligned with the similar forces which they prioritized as a danger in policy in the past.

Clearly the lingering question is: what the hell do we do? I think there are deeper questions about our systems and whether they’re serving a rapidly, technologically evolving and pluralistic society. And I’m consistently thinking about what the stories and identities are that serve for our collective evolution.

A interesting provocation I recently came across, attributed to William Gibson, author of Neuromancer (but I can’t yet confirm the source), is: "One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real.” I think it’s safe to say we’ve underestimated the implications of what happens on social media. Rather than just castigating all social media as bad, a much more productive conversation was held this week on rethinking the commons, and how we can learn from physical common spaces to make our online common spaces safer and more robust.

And there’s reason for hope. As Anand Giridharadas wrote in his weekly news letter:

“We are falling on our face because we are jumping very high right now. We are trying to do something that does not work in theory. To be a country of all the world, a country made up of all the countries, a country without a center of identity, without a default idea of what a human being is or looks like, without a shared religious belief, without a shared language that is people's first language at home. And what we're trying to do is awesome. It is literally awesome in the correct sense of that word.”

I’ll wrap on this topic here, leaving you with this article from which we can potentially learn from one of the greatest pluralistic leaders of time, and this quote by Wendell Berry.

Getting on with business

As we create new businesses, we need to not just come up with new ideas, but new ways of building businesses that write a relevant story for the future we want to create. Signal is a great example. It’s a tech product that instead of looking for its exit, registered as a 501c3 non-profit. That structure has allowed it to unerringly build its product and business around privacy, and as a result promises to be the Zoom of 2021 with millions of users shutting down their WhatsApp accounts in response to the announcement that they would monetize data from the app. What’s particularly satisfying about this story is that Signal was funded by $50 million earned by selling WhatsApp to Facebook.

As Protocol writes: “It certainly looks like we're heading toward a rethinking and reinvention of some of the tools and technologies we use to run our businesses and live our lives. And if you want to build those tools and technologies, you're going to have to think hard about everything up to and including the basic corporate structure in which you operate.” The chorus is growing louder. (You’ll want to tune into upcoming Greater Than episode with the founder of the Zebra business.) I’m happy to see it.

Exploring the grey areas

Jacob Browning traces how “mindless learning” through distributed experiences of trial and error — instead of the “minded learning” of conscious forethought — is driving the far-reaching advances of AI in much the same way as natural and social evolution itself takes place. “Mindless learning is more natural and commonplace than the minded variety we value so highly,” he writes. “The history of human tools and technologies … reveals that conscious deliberation plays a much less prominent role than trial and error.”  via Noema

> How can we do more minded learning? Should we do more minded learning?

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We’re fostering a dog who’d recently birthed, breastfed, and been separated from her litter of puppies. We took her to get spayed yesterday, as it’s CO law that dogs must be spayed or neutered before being adopted out. On my mind leading up to the day was a lingering discomfort of deciding for another living being to completely alter their body and conduct major surgery, removing organs. I’d pushed it aside until after the surgery was done, and I was surprised at the discomfort others felts as well when I shared my thoughts with them, despite it being widely accepted and practiced. Yes, humans are largely responsible for the over proliferation of dogs, and we have a responsibility to these dogs. Yet:

Does that make spaying and neutering the only and most right option? What is it that makes us so comfortable to perform eugenics on other species that would be unheard of for humans?

Digital morsels

✌️Rent-a-person in Tokyo “who does nothing” now has 270,000 followers. Have I spent too much time isolated or is there something really heart warming about how this came to be?

🐶Now your dog can have a panic door of its own. Introducing the $3,000 automatic garage door for your dog. Seem outrageous? The pet industry is among the last to be disrupted by tech, and with basically everyone adopting a new furry family member, there’s lots more ridiculous pet parents in the world. Not going to pretend I wouldn’t consider it.

⏳We recently watched Christopher Nolan’s new movie Tenet, which led to us watching Memento. It’s fascinating to consider the trajectory of his craft has been fine-tuned over the years. Nonetheless, he’s always been a revolutionary filmmaker. His fascination with and brilliant exploration of time in turn makes me super curious about him as a person. Mind explodes.

🗣The latest Greater Than podcast episode with Dave-Inder Comar covers the how law and policy has a significant and creative role in company culture.