Can you notice the present before everyone agrees on what to call it?
Several earlier arguments about work, sovereignty, and AI are becoming less speculative as events catch up. The question is whether we can notice the present before consensus names it.
By Vishnu Rajkumar · Marginalia
marginalia · V10R
I’ve been noticing something slightly uncomfortable in my own archive.
Some arguments I wrote before they felt particularly fashionable are beginning to look less speculative.
In When Work Stops Meaning the Same Thing , I argued that Gen Z wasn’t simply changing its attitude to work. It was changing its relationship with authority, endurance and institutional legitimacy.
Then came a Gen Z movement at Jantar Mantar.
In In Technology, Sovereignty, and the New Globalization, I argued that technology was never truly global, it remained territorial; and that nations would eventually treat control over technology, data and infrastructure as questions of sovereignty.
Today, “sovereign AI”, domestic compute, indigenous models and data control are becoming part of national strategy.
And in AI Is Too Important to Be Left To Its Believers, I argued that AI was becoming dangerous precisely because the technology was real: belief, inevitability and enormous capital were beginning to outrun ordinary judgment.
Now the conversation is slowly moving from How much AI can we build? to carefully evaluating how much of the AI hype and narratives are crafted by AI-investors to create liquidity for themselves.
I don’t think this means I predicted anything. What interests me is something else; can you notice the present before everyone agrees on what to call it?
That is increasingly what I’m trying to do with f(AI); writing about AI, technology, work and power while the arguments are still unsettled. If that kind of thinking interests you, subscribe to the newsletter here on LinkedIn.