“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
- George Box
As some of you may have seen, the blog and podcast I ran for 7 years ended but the rebirth is here.
The short description for All Models Are Wrong is:
“Technology is never just technology. All Models Are Wrong examines who controls and benefits from these systems and how they might be organized differently.”
My thesis is that the continued development and introduction of “frontier technologies” will (as it has already) bisect traditional political camps in ways that will surprise us. The models that we’ve grown up with to make sense of the world have increasingly failed us and do not reflect our current reality.
Given Box’s aphorism, this is not per se a surprise as no model can encapsulate all the complexities of existence, but the goal of this platform is to figure out which are the useful models we should be looking to, given ongoing technological disruption (knowing they too are wrong). Neoliberalism provides no answers for a world where half of knowledge work is automated and companies are forcing workers to wear video cameras to record how they do their work to train AI models for robots to do it in the future.
We are in a strange interregnum where the contradictions of the system are being made bare for all to see but not easily make sense of. The question of ownership of these technologies was always pertinent, but we’ve reached a new tipping point.
Similar to my last platform, my goal is not to just provide a cathartic critique of the system, but to outline viable alternatives based on the best map of the territory we can possibly make. All Models Are Wrong is for people who truly want to grok the truth, see the world for what it is, and play a part in changing it.
Some of the categories of technologies that I see already here and on the horizon of potentiality for disrupting how we see the world, make a living, fall in love and more:
Various forms of advanced cryptography (ZK, FHE, etc.)
Neurotechnology (surface EMGs, silent speech interfaces, neural wristbands, etc.)
Biotech (synthetic biology, genetic engineering, peptides, life extension, etc.)
Death and rebirth of narrative technologies (platforms, social media, etc.)
Quantum (breaking many cryptographic schemes, next gen computers, etc.)
Robotics (drones, automation, kill chains, etc.)
Continued financialization (real world assets, stablecoins, tokenization, etc.)
Personalized computing (personal UIs, local hosting, surveillance, etc.)
Expansion of open source and decentralized options (blockchains, CRDTs, etc.)
New infrastructure (data centers, energy, compute, etc.)
These are just some of what I have in mind. I don’t feel the need to add AI specifically here because it feels too obvious that one way or another, people will be looking for ways to leverage it as an accelerant for likely all of these categories if not already.
The introduction of these technologies will force us to ask ourselves difficult questions that we may or may not have much time to come to grips with or come with an appropriate response. It’s not that all the technologies the industry hypes is FOR SURE coming and we all need to completely change how we live our lives RIGHT NOW because of existential risk, but too many times, progressives have been caught on the back foot and working people have been hurt because of it.
It’s been a hectic but fun past couple of months preparing for this launch and I’m VERY excited to kick it off. You can follow along by subscribing here on Substack and on the Youtube channel. Other social media accounts are on Twitter, BlueSky, and Instagram.
I have already recorded 4 interviews from my time at DWeb Camp including:
Brewster Kahle - founder of Internet Archive
Wouter Tebbens - founder of the Free Knowledge Institute and Democratic Tech Fund
Rene Pinnell - founder of Artizen
Daniel Erasmus - founder of Digital Thinking Network
The experience at DWeb Camp was incredible, and not just because my lovely partner was one of the main organizers. To have contact with people who have been fighting the good fight for a decentralized web for so long in order to learn from them was a real privilege.
With this platform I plan to publish podcasts, video essays, and writing just like before. However this time, I have access to my own recording studio and will focus on interviews in-person here in Berlin. So if you know anyone around that you think would be a good candidate then let me know.
Thanks to all of you that have been supporting me throughout this journey and continue to do so (financially or not). First interviews coming soon!