Tom White

Although AI can provide support and assistance in managing tasks related to communication, in the long run, choosing to evade the effort of thinking for ourselves and settling for artificial statistical compilations threatens to diminish our cognitive, emotional and communication skills.

I spend 90% of my time thinking about stories and narratives, and like so many other things, narrative formation is getting decentralized. This is my attempt to figure out what’s happening and where it’s heading.Crafting and telling stories is part of what makes humans humans. Stories let us coordinate across time and space. Stories are undeniably... See more

This allows us to pop the algorithmic bubbles—the weapons of math destruction—used by the Twitters, Facebooks, Googles of the world to lull us to sleep. It shuts off the intermittent dopamine drip to which we have become tethered and addicted.Though I do not lead a life so interesting to write about each and every day (partly why this newsletter... See more

Material is a collaborative NFT art project. The canvas is a pair of jeans. That I wear. The artist is you. Or you. Or Yu Darvish. Who knows?Whenever I wear the jeans, the canvas is live. When a person impacts me in a certain way, we forge a deep connection, or we share a memorable experience together, I may invite them to add a piece—an... See more

Despite this grandiose fervor, venture capital is not changing.Like a word’s denotation, it is unchangeable — an absolute, a fixed paradigm.Venture Capital, very simply, funds:The test of a true, novel hypothesis with…Enough capital to definitively prove or disprove said hypothesis so as to generate…Supporting data that makes it clear that the... See more

Technology is changing one of the most powerful forces in shaping society: ambition. What the most ambitious people choose to do with their lives has a profound impact on society, the economy and culture. It’s changing, fast.First, that digital technology is the most recent in a series of ‘technologies of ambition’ that have enabled ambitious... See more

I would sum up that history in a Hegelian framework: Adenauer supplied the thesis – anchoring his country in the West; Brandt added the antithesis – stabilizing relations to the East; and Kohl achieved the synthesis – a fusion of the two Germanys in a reconciled Europe. Brandt gets Cooper’s special acclaim. Although he doesn’t mention Angela... See more

Diplomacy, in Cooper’s view, is high-stakes drama. An admirer of Shakespeare, he approaches it as a playwright would. Or a screenwriter. For example, here’s how he sets the scene for Kennan’s epoch-making Long Telegram, the embryo of the U.S. policy on containment: “February, 1946. Moscow. George Kennan is sick in bed . . . His ambassador is away... See more