My photo of Alice Notley’s book. Words that stare back at you.
I finished a book of poems by Alice Notley, or a book-length poem, called For the Ride. I bought it right when the pandemic was getting started. I think it was one of the last books I bought in a store before everything shut down. Or, was it one of the last books I saw in a store? Memories can get fuzzy.
I just finished it, as best I could. It’s dense, it’s circular, it’s something I’m not even sure I understood. But it was also evocative of the idea of people, souls, memories, recorded after death. Knitted into a neural net by AI. Voices all blending. Some future. Is this life beyond death? Is this hell? Is it transcendence?
As I talked with Mikah Sargent on Tech News Weekly this week about my story on Apple in the next 50 years, I reflected on how every day feels impossible to predict. And yet, I hope for changes. Are these hopes a desire for acceleration past this moment? If so, is this also a dangerous dream too?
It feels like we’re between phases of the world. And I don’t know how anything will settle. I think tech’s overdependence on accelerated progress will backfire. I think we will touch grass. I think we will emerge from our distorted mental states that seem to be mounting and recalibrate. Or I hope for that.
I finally watched Mountainhead, the HBO Max film by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, a year after most people did. Its story of four tech bros on a retreat as the world literally burns feels even more appropriate for 2026 than 2025. Accelerationism, a term I hadn’t really fully absorbed but had heard about all the same, reared its head.
Progress can’t always be on fast forward. Disruption can’t be the constant. Right now that’s all I feel like I’m ingesting. The more I learn about AI, the less it helps. Even as someone who lives on the edge of new tech, I find it jarring. I hit my limit.
I hit my limit because I enjoy experiencing new tech as it bounces off me and I have a chance to reflect on its effects on my everyday life. What frictions do I see? What fascinates? What becomes boring? I love this process as I write about it.
But too much abstracted acceleration doesn’t feel like experience. It feels like an assault. I’m in a defensive state because of it.
This is a snapshot of emotions tonight, and they could change. But my new play I’m working on is as much a commentary on this distorted acceleration as it is a thought piece on the cognitive impact of AI. Where will I stage it? How? I don’t know.
Why have I been getting so existential lately? The moment seems to demand it. Books on philosophy, books on art. I wrote about two pairs of smart glasses, neither of which were particularly majorly notable, but had little iterations to ideas. I wanted to chronicle them. Report on the state of what I see. Hardware feels more tangible than AI. It’s what I like to look at. Maybe it grounds me. I’ve hit so many news-driven emotional states lately that I need to believe in change, but in a way that doesn’t feel like it spins out of control. Maybe this moment in time is making me an anti-maximalist. I don’t even know if I know what that means.
Between worlds, between books, between mindsets, between emotional states. Till next week.