Peter Evans-Greenwood
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peter.evans-greenwood.com
Peter Evans-Greenwood
@peter.evans-greenwood.com
Thinking out loud about hybrid agency, crooked paths & coordination without stories. Essays → thepuzzleanditspieces.substack.com
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My latest Substack post, 'Technologies Don’t Wait', the one where I argue that the lag between invention and impact isn't the technology getting better. It's everything else catching up.
These Hacker News comments buff.ly/q6WPcnI on ai;dr.

A year ago they would have been solidly negative. Now, half the comments are “why do you care?”

The normalisation is unfolding in real time. What’s most interesting is the fatigue—“not another one of these posts.”
ai;dr | Hacker News
So I get the frustration that "ai;dr" captures. On the other hand, I've also seen human writing incorrectly labeled AI. I wrote (using AI!) https://seeitwritten.com as a bit of an experiment on that front....
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February 12, 2026 at 10:04 PM
Current fav counterintuitive concept of the moment: numbers came before counting, not after.
February 11, 2026 at 8:57 PM
Most "productivity-boosting" policies are like trying to make a plant grow faster by pulling on its leaves.
February 11, 2026 at 8:56 AM
Unfortunately many of the commenting class these days are innumerate, unable to even sort out basic orders of magnitude in their heads, and confuse basic concepts.

buff.ly/UFuwZbF
PEG (@pevansgreenwood)
Unfortunately many of the commenting class these days are innumerate, unable to even sort out basic orders of magnitude in their heads, and confuse basic concepts. The essay's point about economics…
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February 10, 2026 at 9:34 PM
Excellent overview, and what we should expect about now. 50 Shades proved you don’t need publisher blessing. AI accelerates that dynamic.​​​​​​ ​And calls for “authentic human text” are just admitting that they can only judge a wine by its label.

buff.ly/jA8aulD
Can AI Chatbots Write Emotionally Rich Romance Books?
The romance industry, always at the vanguard of technological change, is rapidly adapting to A.I. Not everyone is on board.
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February 10, 2026 at 9:08 AM
My latest Substack post, 'The Discipline of Finding Zeros', the one where I explain why Starbucks lost $500M trying to optimize its way out of a problem optimization created.
February 10, 2026 at 1:15 AM
This is wonderful! Just the sort of thing the internet was invented for.

Those photos of Mechner's workspace covered in movement studies! I also love the insight that making believable animation wasn't really about tech, it was an artistic problem.

buff.ly/dVQN0xL
How the Little Guy Moved
Plus: news.
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February 9, 2026 at 8:47 PM
A frontier AI model is an asset that depreciates almost as fast as a banana.
February 8, 2026 at 9:17 PM
‘Builder’ used to vaguely mean something but seems to have become a tribal signifier—a way to claim membership in tech culture regardless of what you actually do.
February 6, 2026 at 7:24 AM
“Firms learned to reorganise around the technology.”

Okay, but what does that actually mean? What was learned? By whom? From where? How did it move from one person to another? How did it become reliable enough to deploy at scale? What was the mechanism?
February 3, 2026 at 9:08 AM
My latest Substack post, 'Technologies Don’t Wait', the one where I argue that the lag between invention and impact isn't the technology getting better. It's everything else catching up.
February 3, 2026 at 2:08 AM
Current mood: Music Has the Right to Children by Boards of Canada buff.ly/a3QgzpW
Music Has the Right to Children by Boards of Canada on Apple Music
Album · 1998 · 18 Songs
music.apple.com
February 3, 2026 at 12:16 AM
History repeating itself, beat for beat.

Feigenbaum's 1988 "The Rise of the Expert Company" reads exactly like today's AI economics papers: success stories, adoption barriers, job displacement concerns, calls for government infrastructure.
January 30, 2026 at 7:24 AM
My latest post, "What Happens in the Gap". The one in which I show what actually has to happen between 'this technology works' and 'productivity explodes.'
January 28, 2026 at 12:27 AM
The AI-Powered Web Is Eating Itself
buff.ly/d1sXhtv

The commons was already enclosed. We're just watching different landlords fight over who gets to charge rent. None of them actually want to tear down the fences.
The AI-Powered Web Is Eating Itself | NOEMA
Without a framework of “Artificial Integrity,” AI search platforms risk collapsing the information commons that made the web possible.
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January 25, 2026 at 9:17 PM
You start in AI trying to build intelligent systems, realize you need to understand what intelligence is, and end up reading Damerow on how cuneiform tablet accounting practices generated the concept of number.
January 23, 2026 at 7:24 AM
Current mood: Evil In Oslo by Hedvig Mollestad Trio music.apple.com/au/album/evi...
Evil In Oslo by Hedvig Mollestad Trio on Apple Music
Album · 2016 · 4 Songs
music.apple.com
January 20, 2026 at 4:09 AM
My latest Substack post, 'LLMs Are Following the Expert Systems Playbook—But the Score Is Different'. The one in which I explain why AI-skilled workers earn 56% more while 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail—and why both signal the same economic retreat.
January 20, 2026 at 12:28 AM
It is fascinating how Damerow’s work strips away the "inevitability" of math. We often treat numbers like universal truths we simply discovered, but he shows they were hard-won cultural artifacts—tools forged to solve specific administrative and accounting crises in Mesopotamia.
January 18, 2026 at 9:17 PM
Current mood: loveless by my bloody valentine on music.apple.com/au/album/lov...
loveless by my bloody valentine on Apple Music
Album · 1991 · 11 Songs
music.apple.com
January 18, 2026 at 1:32 AM
Current mood: Houdini by Melvins music.apple.com/au/album/hou...
Houdini by Melvins on Apple Music
Album · 1993 · 13 Songs
music.apple.com
January 15, 2026 at 10:21 PM
My new Substack post, the one where I trace the 30-year journey from 'motors as fire hazards' to 'networks as infrastructure."

If you like thermodynamic efficiency, historical insurance data, and debunking standard economic myths, this one is for you.
January 13, 2026 at 12:52 AM
An expert isn't someone who knows how things work; an expert is someone who possesses a comprehensive library of how things fail.
January 11, 2026 at 9:17 PM
“aviation emissions could be halved without cutting journeys”

buff.ly/rgbOMNm

The study's real value isn't a roadmap—it's a metric. As Gössling suggests, requiring public efficiency ratings (like "F-grade airlines") might pressure change.
Revealed: how aviation emissions could be halved without cutting journeys
Exclusive: Getting rid of premium seats, ensuring flights are near full and using efficient aircraft could slash CO2, analysis suggests
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January 9, 2026 at 7:24 AM
A characteristically thorough and grounded piece from @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social with his Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01.

What makes it solid is his methodical tracking of predictions against reality, combined with his deep historical perspective (50 years in AI/robotics).
January 8, 2026 at 10:15 AM