Agalia Tan

We mock Romanticism in theory yet consume it in bulk, binge-watching love stories, quoting torch-song lyrics, planning weekends around destination weddings. The posture is ironic, the appetite sentimental; we want to feel deeply but also to appear impervious, indulging the fantasy while keeping a cynical alibi in case anyone accuses us of believing... See more

We can keep reaching for metaphors of the past - tools, assistants, minds, intelligences - and keep getting the politics they encode.

Or we can choose terms that encode the politics we want: human agency, collective benefit, individual sovereignty, honest assessment of what this is and isn’t.

Fork. Construct. Ansible. Daemon. Symbiont. Cognitive... See more

I believe the “ tyranny of numbers ” has atrophied people’s abilities to listen to their body. Numbers can be helpful, but often cause me to lose the plot. I’ve found that I feel better when I let my body tell me what I really want, instead of the non-actionable anxiety associated with metrics.

The companies thinking furthest ahead are already prototyping for this world:

• Commerce will be conversational, not navigational.


• Brand interactions will be proactive, not reactive.


• The frontline of loyalty will be invisible.

In the ambient future, brands will compete not for screen real estate, but for mental bandwidth and emotional resonance.

“To live externally is to live more dangerously,” Moskowitz writes, of giving up the constant inward gaze. “It is to live a life that takes up public space, a life that is messy and confusing and thus a life that is often frowned upon, especially in an era in which everyone is accustomed to control and curation over social space and affect.”

News and sports-betting firms have lined up for a piece of the action. In December, Kalshi signed a deal with CNN giving the cable news channel access to its betting data and providing for a “Kalshi-powered real time news ticker” that will run on the CNN screen Kalshi also reached a deal to become the National Hockey League’s “official prediction... See more