Keen On America

Douglas Rushkoff has spent decades warning how each new digital technological “revolution” has promised liberation but actually only compounds social and economic injustice. Six months after describing AI to me as the "first native app for the internet," the New York City media theorist and author returns with a provocative historical parallel: AI as the next "dumb waiter." Just as Thomas Jefferson's mechanical food elevator appeared automated but relied on hidden slave labor, today's artificial intelligence presents itself as magical automation while depending on vast networks of invisible human workers in developing nations like Kenya and the Philippines. Rushkoff argues that slowing down AI development—not accelerating it—might be our most revolutionary act. And that successfully harnessing AI to our needs and desires might represent our "last chance" to rewrite society.

1. AI is the "Dumb Waiter 2.0" - Like Jefferson's mechanical food elevator that appeared automated but depended on hidden slave labor, AI presents itself as magical automation while relying on invisible human workers. "So today you see AI is pitched to us as if you just put out a query and something comes back and there's been no human involved. There's tons of humans... it's not without humans, it's just that the human labor is hidden."

2. The "Pedal-to-the-Metal" AI Deployment is Actually Reactionary - Tech billionaires pushing for rapid AI development aren't revolutionaries but reactionaries. "The tech bros who seem to want the most rapid deployment of this stuff... They are not the revolutionaries. They are the reactionaries. The reason they want to do this pedal to the metal, rapid deployment of AI is to prevent change."

3. Jobs Were Invented and Can Be Reinvented - Employment as we know it was artificially created and can be reimagined. "Jobs were invented. Jobs were invented in the 11th and 12th century. When the charter monopoly came and said you're not allowed to be in business for yourself... jobs were invented. It means they can be reinvented or the economy can be re-invented."

4. We Have a "Last Chance" Window of Opportunity - AI represents a brief moment when fundamental change is possible. "There's also the same opportunity, which is why I'm excited that same 1991/92/93 opportunity, there's a new technology that hasn't quite settled, the clay is still really wet. And the possibilities are really are wide and many."

5. Slowing Down AI Development is More Revolutionary Than Speeding It Up - Rather than rushing deployment, we need time for thoughtful implementation. "What if we slow down enough to have distributed access to this technology? To look at more environmental ways of doing it... but really look at what do we want to do and have enough time to... ask deeper questions."

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So who killed privacy? It's the central question of Tiffany Jenkins' provocative new history of private life, Strangers and Intimates. The answer, according to Jenkins, is that we are all complicit—having gradually and often accidentally contributed to privacy's demise from the 16th century onwards. Luther started it by challenging Papal religious authority and the public sacraments, thereby creating the necessity of private conscience. Then came Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Hobbes who carved out bounded private political and economic spheres establishing the foundations for modern capitalism and democracy. Counter-enlightenment romantics like Rousseau reacted against this by fetishizing individual innocence and authenticity, while the Victorians elevated the domestic realm as sacred. Last but not least, there's Mark Zuckerberg's socially networked age, in which we voluntarily broadcast our private lives to a worldwide audience. But why, I ask Jenkins, should we care about the death of private life in our current hyper-individualistic age? Can it be saved by more or less obsession with the self? Or might it require us to return to the world before Martin Luther, a place Thomas More half satiricizes Utopia, where “private life” was a dangerously foreign idea.

1. Privacy is a Historical Accident, Not a Natural Human Condition

"There was a sense in which you shouldn't do anything privately that they wouldn't do publicly... This wasn't a kind of property-based private life." Jenkins argues that before the 17th century, the very concept of leading a separate private life didn't exist—privacy as we understand it is a relatively recent invention.

2. Martin Luther Accidentally Created Modern Privacy Through Religious Rebellion

"Luther inadvertently... authorized the self as against, in his case, the Catholic Church... if you follow the debates over the kind of beginnings of a private sphere and its expansion, whether you're reading Locke or Hobbes, there's a discussion about... the limits of authority." Luther's challenge to religious authority unintentionally created the need for private conscience, sparking centuries of development toward individual privacy.

3. The Digital Age Represents a Return to Pre-Privacy Transparency

"I think we do live in a period where there is little distinction between public and private, where the idea that you might keep something to yourself is seen as strange, as inauthentic." Jenkins suggests our current era of social media oversharing resembles pre-modern times more than the Victorian peak of privacy.

4. Modern Loneliness Stems From Social Fragmentation, Not Individual Psychology

"I sometimes wonder if we're pathologizing, actually, what is a social problem, which is a society where people are fragmented, not quite sure how to go beyond themselves... I would see that as a social problem." Rather than treating loneliness as a personal issue, Jenkins argues it reflects the breakdown of intermediate institutions between family and state.

5. Technology Doesn't Determine Our Privacy—We Do

"Can't blame the tech, tech isn't the problem... It comes down really to what sort of society we want to live in and how we want to be treated. That's not a technical thing. That has not to do with technology. That's to do humans." Jenkins rejects technological determinism, arguing that privacy's fate depends on human choices about social organization, not inevitable technological forces.

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Is Mohammed bin Salman a tyrant or an enlightened despot? According to the former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Man Who Would Be King, a new biography of MBS, he might be both. Or neither. House who spent years reporting from and writing on Saudi Arabia, offers a complex (and unofficial) portrait of the Crown Prince's ambitious transformation efforts, his deeply troubling human rights record, and the uncertain fate of his grand vision for modernizing the oil kingdom. Drawing on extensive access to MBS himself, she explores whether his reforms can succeed or will ultimately crumble like the ruins in Shelley's "Ozymandias." Rather than Lee Kuan Yew or Saddam Hussein, that’s probably MBS’ fate. A ruler neither sufficiently enlightened or tyrannical to leave a historical footprint.

1. MBS as an "Enlightened Despot" Shaped by Personal Experience

"He is an enlightened despot. He grew up in that period when you couldn't do anything... all this trying to put the religious police aside is personal, not just policy for him."

House argues that MBS's reforms stem from his own frustration with Saudi Arabia's religious restrictions, making his changes deeply personal rather than merely strategic.

2. The Khashoggi Murder: A "Rendition Gone Wrong"

"I do believe that he too smart to order somebody to do that. I think what he ordered, that it was a rendition gone wrong. He said, bring the guy back... I don't think it would have happened if the crown prince had said, bring me that guy, but you know be sure he gets here alive."

House suggests MBS likely ordered Khashoggi's return to Saudi Arabia but didn't intend for him to be killed, though she acknowledges the brutal outcome.

3. Human Rights Have Worsened Under MBS

"Yes, absolutely. But, you know, the only countries probably that are worse... basically Iran, China, North Korea, countries like that."

When asked if Saudi's human rights record has deteriorated under MBS, House confirms it has, placing the kingdom among the world's worst offenders.

4. Ambitious Projects Face Reality Checks

"Some of his ideas are like the line in Naom... I mean that's a, you know, some might say a monstrosity... it's now down to there will be a mile and a half of it by 2030."

House describes how MBS's grandiose vision for NEOM has been dramatically scaled back, suggesting his ambitious projects may be unrealistic.

5. Uncertain Legacy: The Ozymandias Question

"I quote in the book, the poet Shelley's poem, Ozymandias, about dirt and the look at me, mighty and despair, that it could all turn to dirt... if it were me and I had all of these issues that he faces now, I'd probably crawl under the bed and take a sleeping pill."

House remains uncertain about MBS's ultimate success, comparing his potential fate to the fallen ruler in Shelley's poem while acknowledging his determination to persist despite enormous challenges.

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Sociocide is a chilling word. Coined by the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, it means the deliberate destruction of a society's social infrastructure and capacity to function as a cohesive unit. According to Boston College sociologist Charles Derber, this kind of social suicide is now destroying America. In his latest book, Bonfire, Derber argues that America is slipping and sliding into a sociocide of broken social and political relations. Drawing on decades of research, Derber connects rising isolation—people eating alone, losing friends, living in "civic deserts"—to the rise of authoritarianism. When social bonds collapse, he warns, isolated individuals become vulnerable to strongman leaders who exploit their fear and loneliness.

1. Sociocide is Social Suicide at the Societal Level

"We're kind of breaking apart into individual atomized individuals who have no sense of real enduring connection with each other... When societies commit suicide, unravel, it breaks down the possibility of sort of a normal, humane community and life and opens the door to what we're facing today, which is an authoritarian sort of dictatorial kind of leader."

2. Americans Are Becoming Dangerously Isolated

"More and more people are eating all their meals alone. I've seen data that has up to 68% of people say they eat most of their meals alone. The numbers of people who claim to have close friends, the numbers of who get married or stay married. The number of people who feel connected at their workplace to other workers or to their employers is all on a downward path."

3. Isolation Creates the Perfect Conditions for Authoritarianism

"Hannah Arendt, de Tocqueville, many great thinkers have recognized that isolation and atomization is a foundation for authoritarianism and strong labor who capitalize on the fear and disconnection. When people are isolated, they look to strong leaders who will protect them."

4. Trump Voters Aren't Choosing Death—They're Choosing Survival

"The people with the lowest integration into society have the lowest relationships, eat more alone, have fewer friends. The Trump base is, at least according to the data that I've been able to collect, is the part of America most characterized by sociocide... They're scared economically, most of them say they're one paycheck away from poverty."

5. The Solution Requires Coming Together in Sustained Ways

"The answer to social side is coming together... People have to persevere in public protest together. I mean, you have to come together... I think it's only by trying to build in every phase of your life these connections that give you a sense of hope and caring and possibility."

It’s the fantasy of countless Wall Street analysts. Amran Gowani traded his lucrative career in hedge funds for the scarily solitary world of novel writing. His debut satirical novel Leverage draws from his insider experience at investment banks and hedge funds, exposing the toxic culture and perverse incentives that drive corporate America's financial sector. In this bracingly frank conversation, Gowani confesses his transformation from organic chemistry PhD dropout to pharmaceutical marketing executive to Wall Street analyst, and finally to full-time novelist. He reveals the harsh economic realities of publishing fiction, the challenges of first-time novel writing, and how he channeled his corporate experiences into satirizing the very system that employed him.

1. Publishing Economics vs. Wall Street Profits "The money I made in the mid 2010s on my Wall Street Bank dwarfs the money I made on the advance I got for my novel and that's and I actually got a pretty good advance... You don't write novels because you want money or at least you shouldn't if you're looking for money."

2. Structural Problems Drive Toxic Behavior "When you run companies and you tell people that the only thing that matters in your company as shareholder value. Then people are gonna do everything they can to maximize shareholder value... When you create perverse incentives, I mean, you're gonna get perverse outcomes."

3. Writing as Processing and Understanding "I wrote my book and I write in general because I think it helps me process the world around me. It helps me understand the world round me... that's my way of processing the world and and communicating ideas that I think are important using the the satirical framework."

4. Modern Authors Must Be Marketers "I don't think that you can just be like, I'm going to sit it out. I'm not going to be on social media. I'm Not going to have a newsletter, and just be like, I'm just going to write a great book, and I'm going to get found. Like, I don't think that's really viable anymore."

5. AI Won't Replace Human Storytelling "Nobody wants to read, no serious reader wants to read a novel written by a computer... It's not a person, it's not a living entity behind the words, no matter how realistic they might seem... when you're looking to connect it like a human experience... people wanna read a book written by basically a linear regression machine."

No, not everyone can or will be Michael Lewis. But Gowani should be applauded for both his bravery and honesty. We should all wish him the best of luck with Leverage.

How can anyone forget those photos of Trump’s sons celebrating over the carcasses of dead animals that they shot in Africa? Fortunately, not all sons of American Presidents behave so tastelessly in the wild. As Nathalia Holt argues in her new history, The Beast in the Clouds, Teddy Roosevelt’s sons found redemption - and regret - in their (peaceful) 1928 quest for the giant panda in northwestern China. Holt argues that their remarkable expedition marked a pivotal moment in conservation history, transforming scientific thinking from hunting endangered species to protecting them, while simultaneously offering the troubled Roosevelt brothers their greatest achievement and deepest source of remorse. We should all give thanks for Teddy and his boys. Where would the wilderness or endangered species be without them?

1. The expedition transformed scientific thinking from hunting to conservation

"The story that I'm telling is all about the birth of conservation biology and how scientists changed their minds, how they went from believing that endangered animals needed to be hunted and killed to be studied to instead be described and to be photographed and to given far more protections."

2. The Roosevelt sons were escaping personal and professional failures

"Both the sons at this point in their lives, they are 41 and 39 years old, they're in a way running away from life... Ted, the eldest son, has just been what his wife called politically obliterated... Kermit Roosevelt, who has struggled. He does not have a successful business. He suffers from alcoholism."

3. The panda was genuinely mythical to Western science

"The panda was this animal that was mythical. Many people did not believe it even existed in the Western world... Many people believe that the panda would be a cross between a polar bear and a black bear, a very aggressive, dangerous animal."

4. The expedition's success led to immediate regret and conservation efforts

"When they come back after this trip they immediately regret their actions with the panda... And the Roosevelts are devastated by this because they know that they are the ones that have caused this."

5. The expedition pioneered modern species protection policies

"The panda is really the first animal to gain these protections. It's a real turning point, because you've had many endangered animals previously, that they're just, they go extinct and nobody makes any laws... But the pandas, because they know how rare they are, they decide to change things."

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The last time Peter Wehner, who I’ve always imagined as America’s conscience, appeared on the show to talk about the “ethical darkness” that has fallen upon America, I suggested that this was an “important” interview. Today’s conversation is much more important than being simply important. Based on Wehner’s recent Atlantic piece about why MAGA evangelicals have turned their back on PEPFAR, the American relief agency saving the lives of millions of Africa’s AIDS victims, this is a conversation about America’s heart of moral darkness. It’s not just Trump who has African blood on his hands, Wehner argues, but most of his evangelical supporters who are unmoved by the destruction of PEPFAR. For the first time in my many conversations with Wehner, he was visibly moved by both the cruelty of Trump and the indifference of his supposedly Christian supporters.

1. Trump's Destruction of PEPFAR is "Wanton Cruelty" "This to me was an act of wanton cruelty. You really had to go out of your way to think how can I kill millions of people quickly inefficient. And they found one way to do it, which is to shatter USAID, which is the main implementing agency for PEPFAR."

2. The Scale of Death is Staggering and Real-Time "There is an adult being lost every three minutes, a child every 31 minutes. And ending PEPFAR could result in as many as 11 million additional new HIV infections and nearly 3 million additional AIDS-related deaths by the end of the decade."

3. Trump's Hold on Evangelicals is Unlike Anything in American Politics "I think it is closer to a cult of personality than it is to a normal political party... I think in some senses, the truest thing Donald Trump said in the 2016 campaign was when he said that he could go on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn't lose support. And I think that turned out to be not hyperbole but prophetic."

4. Evangelical Silence Reveals Their True Moral Priorities "In 2014, World Vision announced that they would hire at some levels of the organization, people who were in same sex marriages. And it was like a bomb going off in the evangelical world... Between 3,000 and 3,500 sponsors of kids primarily in Africa... Were ended... And now you have a situation... about what destruction of PEPFAR has done and will do and you can get barely get a peep out of them."

5. This is About Mass Death, Not Policy Disagreement "Yeah, no, that is what I'm saying. I'm saying there will be a lot, lot more before this is done. There will be millions... We're talking really, really significant numbers. And that's an enormous amount of death, an enormous of suffering, and it's completely unnecessary."

I hate the term “moral urgency”. But this is a morally urgent conversation about America’s descent into a heart of darkness. Wehner exposes the cruelty and stupidity of destruction of the PEPFAR program. Even in the time you’ve spent reading this, a couple of African children will have died because of the callousness of MAGA disregard for human life.

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From suburban swimming pools and SUVs to White Lives Matter rallies, the Johns Hopkins anthropologist Anand Pandian has been exploring the everyday walls of American life. In his new book, Something Between Us, Pandian travels across the United States in his search to both climb and overcome these walls. What he finds is a nation tragically at war with itself. Through intimate portraits of communities divided by race, class, and ideology, Pandian reveals how ordinary public spaces have become literal battlegrounds for identity and belonging. From gated suburban neighborhoods in Florida to online echo chambers, his ethnographic journey exposes the invisible barriers that shape American social life. But he concludes with a degree of optimism. We can overcome those walls, he says, with the kind of collective political action that brings people of different ideological persuasions together.

1. Anthropological Method Reveals America's Hidden Divisions

"Ethnographic research is based on the idea that the best way of understanding the life of people in a particular social, cultural, historical situation is to immerse [in] the day-to-day circumstances of those people as much as possible, to imagine what it's like to live in those environments... and to try to see what the world would look like from that concrete point of view."

Pandian applies traditional anthropological methods—typically used to study distant cultures—to examine contemporary American society, revealing how divisions operate in everyday spaces.

2. Personal Experience Sparked Academic Investigation

"My own father was yelled at one day when he was walking down the road in Santa Monica, California, go back to your own country. I recount in the book an incident that my own son faced that fall of 2016 at the swimming pool where he was learning how to swim at the age of eight."

The 2016 election cycle and personal encounters with racism motivated Pandian to turn his anthropological lens on America, particularly after his son faced racial taunts at a historically segregated Baltimore pool.

3. Understanding Radicalization Through Everyday Logic

"I think it's really important to try to figure out how it is that radical positions, sometimes even monstrous positions, can grow out of really everyday banal circumstances... that gentleman in particular, I remember him making sense of this idea of the ethnostate by talking about how it is that when you're on an airplane, you're always advised to put your own mask on before you take care of anyone else."

Rather than dismissing white nationalists, Pandian seeks to understand how ordinary reasoning can lead to extremist positions.

4. Walls Are Both Physical and Mental

"I talk about circumstances that are really difficult. I talk the fact that a fifth of all Americans who live in residential communities now live in communities that are gated. I talk about what the 80 percent market share that SUVs and light trucks now enjoy in the American automotive market represents with regard to the zenith of certain ideas of protecting oneself at any cost."

The book examines how physical barriers (gated communities, SUVs) combine with mental walls (social media echo chambers) to deepen American divisions.

5. Unlikely Coalitions Offer Hope for Change

"I focus on... The certain kind of paradox that we might see, how do we make sense of the fact that in the same years that we saw the tightening of restrictions on reproductive rights in a state like Ohio, we saw a rollback of this particular measure [the pink tax], which advocates argued was discriminatory... that political opening grew out of some pretty unlikely coalitions that formed between people on the right and the left."

Despite deep polarization, Pandian finds examples of successful cross-partisan organizing around specific issues, suggesting possibilities for bridging divides through shared concerns rather than comprehensive ideological agreement.

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So what, exactly, is the AI wedge? According to Ewan Morrison, author of For Emma, an already acclaimed novel about our dystopian biotech future, it means a “V-shaped” force that starts small but gradually drives people apart, replacing human connection with technological mediation."It starts off really small. You end up with something like internet dating... it begins as a novelty and then people become dependent on it," Morrison explains. What seemed harmless in the 1990s has evolved to the point where 60-70% of people now use dating apps, with younger generations saying they "don't wanna meet anyone outside of using an app because they don't trust anyone." But the wedge doesn't stop there. The final stage, Morrison warns, is the replacement of the humans completely by AI friends, partners, even therapists. The metaphor captures how each technological "solution" creates new dependencies while eroding our capacity for direct human interaction. As Morrison puts it, technology "removes that sort of tactile sense that humorous, trusting, improvisatory, make do sense that we have when we deal face to face with people." Morrison notes that "for some, it's easier. It's easier to have an AI friend because it's always going to tell you, you're wonderful." This highlights how the wedge works not just through dependency, but through the seductive appeal of artificial relationships that never require the messy, challenging work of real human connection.

1. AI is Pure Hype, Not a Real Revolution

"I think you just have to break it down and look at AI from a PR perspective and see what we were promised. We were promised human level AI by Marvin Minsky in 1970... And I think we're seeing the same cycle happening again."

Morrison argues we're experiencing the third "AI winter" - a pattern of overpromising and eventual collapse that's repeated since the 1970s.

2. The AI Wedge Drives Human Separation

"They're a bit like a wedge, like a V-shaped wedge... So it starts off really small... and then the final stage of that wedge is the replacement of the humans completely by Mark Zuckerberg's AI friends, by AI partners, AI therapists, these human surrogates."

Technology gradually separates us from authentic human connection through a three-stage process: novelty, dependency, replacement.

3. Neuralink Represents Dangerous Human Experimentation

"When it's a dirty operating table with surgical glue being squeezed into your skull as electronic treads have shaken themselves loose from deep in your brain... then it starts to become a different story entirely."

Morrison warns that Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" mentality becomes morally problematic when applied to human bodies and brains.

4. We Shouldn't Ask AI Life's Big Questions

"The tragedy that I'm trying to put forward in the book is that we shouldn't give that big question to computers to answer. We shouldn't ask AI, why are we alive?"

His novel For Emma explores the danger of outsourcing fundamental human questions about meaning and purpose to artificial intelligence.

5. The Utilitarian vs. Romantic Struggle Continues

"We're never gonna solve this, but what will happen will be there will be periods in history where one side takes dominance over the other... And now we are seeing the return of the utilitarian mindset once again with the new technologies enabled by AI."

Morrison sees current tech development as part of a historical cycle between utilitarian planning (Bentham-style) and romantic individualism, with AI representing a new form of surveillance society.

I’ve know Morrison for many years and generally share his take on Big Tech. But I differ on his view about what he calls the coming 3rd “AI winter”. There’s too much capital and technology now to imagine this kind of sharp freeze on the AI economy. For better or worse, this thing is happening now. The threshold has been crossed. It’s already radically changing the nature of education and work. And we are still in the earliest chapters of the revolution. That AI wedge is going to get seriously painful.

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You've heard it before and you'll hear it again. AI is a gold rush. It will change everything. But 2025 is different, That Was The Week tech newsletter publisher Keith Teare argues. This is the year that the AI gold rush is changing everything. In our reflection of the first six months of 2025, Keith argues that we're witnessing a fundamental "phase shift" - not just another tech cycle, but an inflection point where scale becomes a necessity for survival. From Meta's $100 million developer deals to the consolidation of 80% of venture capital into just five firms, from Cloudflare's revolutionary "toll booth" economy replacing advertising models to the tokenization of private markets through platforms like Robinhood, the rules of Silicon Valley are being rewritten. As graduates face an employment crisis and AI superstars command unprecedented compensation, Keith and I debate whether this transformation represents capitalism's natural evolution or a dangerous concentration of power that could reshape the global economy forever.

1. Scale Has Become a Survival Requirement

2025 marks a shift where scale isn't just advantageous—it's necessary for survival. With 80% of venture capital flowing to just five firms (Andreessen, Sequoia, Cotu, Lightspeed, and one other), and late-stage investors writing billion-dollar checks for 3-5x returns instead of traditional smaller bets for 100x gains, the venture capital game has fundamentally changed.

2. The "Toll Booth" Economy is Replacing Advertising

Cloudflare's "paper crawl" initiative represents a seismic shift from advertising-based revenue models to direct payment systems where AI companies must pay publishers for content access. This could create new revenue streams for content creators while giving them control over how their intellectual property is used for AI training.

3. Tokenization is Democratizing Private Markets

Robinhood's tokenization of companies like SpaceX and OpenAI allows European retail investors to buy shares in private companies through crypto-backed tokens. This convergence of private markets, public markets, and crypto could fundamentally change who can access high-growth investments.

4. AI Superstars Command Unprecedented Value

While AI eliminates many jobs, it's creating extreme value concentration among top talent. Meta's $100 million deals for individual AI experts and OpenAI's $6 billion deal with Johnny Ive illustrate how differentiated developers are becoming incredibly valuable in an age where most workers face displacement.

5. 2025 is the Inflection Point, Not the Future

Unlike previous tech cycles, Keith argues this isn't about future potential—the transformation is happening now. With companies like OpenAI reaching $14 billion in annual revenue and AI's economic impact becoming undeniable, 2025 represents the moment when AI shifted from promise to reality, making it a true inflection point rather than just another tech trend.

Where Keith and I fundamentally disagree is over jobs. He seems to skate over the implications of jobless consequences of AI, believing in some sort of magical age of abundance in which we will all be free to pursue our hobbies. I think this is entirely wrong. This is where his Silicon Valley language about having to “scale or die” is so terrifying. Over the next couple of decades, tens of millions of people are going to lose both their jobs and careers to the AI revolution. Some might find other kinds of work, but most won’t. The age of abundance is total a myth. Instead of “scale or die”, the mantra of the coming age will be “scale or starve”. What we are about to experience is the kind of economic scarcity that will utterly transform our societies and politics. 2025 might be an inflection point for Silicon Valley. But that existential moment for the rest of us will come in around 2030.

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