An essay series
The Interior Frontier
Writing on the part of the AI decade no forecast measures: what happens inside the people living through it, and what could be built for them.
It begins with one person at the end of a long day, phone in hand, forty names in the contact list, and not one message worth the risk of sending. The story being told about this decade is dark and confident, and every version of it is about the world around that person. None of it is about them. The World Health Organization put a number on that person in 2025. Roughly one in six people alive.
The essays
Six essays and their interludes. The first, the second and the two interludes that follow them are out now; the last is held until the thing it describes exists.
What the essays refuse
Four things it will not do. Each one costs something. Each one is the point.
- Witnessed, not watched.It notices what you bring to it. It does not build a file on you while you sleep.
- You hold the pen.What it remembers, you can read, and change, and erase. Nothing is written about you that you cannot see.
- No streak. No badge. No number that resets.Nothing pays you for showing up. The only reason to come back is the one you walked in with.
- It will not be switched off on you.Its manner is its own, not leased. What is here today is here tomorrow, and if that ever changes you will hear it first.
Publication