Writing Archive
Essays and reflections on building companies, technology, and the things that stay with me — 15 posts, oldest from 2010.
- The Illusion of Free Play: Can We Ever Truly Monetize AI Skills?
Why the current trend of open-text AI skills is bound to fail, and how cryptography, TEEs, and the agent-to-agent economy are quietly rewriting the rules of intellectual property.
- Shopify, DTC and the Creator Economy — an Inevitable Union
$SHOP trades 75% off its high, yet six million stores still build on it. Why Shopify, DTC brands and the creator economy are converging on each other.
- Creator economics, network effects and a decentralised future
How the world's largest businesses have used network effects, why that moat is not future-proof, and what it could look like on a decentralised internet.
- Technophobia vs AI: Are We Handing Over the Keys?
From Deep Blue's defeat of Kasparov to modern AI, an essay on humanity's recurring technophobia and whether we're really handing over the keys.
- Where Does Creativity go to Die?
Creative thinking is measurably in decline — a look at the data behind the Creativity Crisis and where original, out-of-the-box thinking goes to die.
- Glimpses of an Old Friend
After 1,562 days away from the blog, an introspective piece on meeting an old friend — myself — and how priorities, situations and people quietly shift.
- Perception
On perception as the lens that defines us moment to moment — why we resist change even as adaptability and evolution quietly demand courage and time.
- When Tom finally met Harry
A short parable about Tom — a gifted boy held back by disability yet certain he's destined for greatness — and the moment he finally meets Harry.
- Which Hood are you wearing?
An appreciation of Noel Clarke's Kidulthood and Adulthood, and how they capture the brutal, real choices of growing up as an adolescent in the UK.
- The Opposite of Left
An exploration of how 'right' and 'wrong' have lost any clear meaning, and why the old argument over righteousness now plays out inside a single mind.
- Eternal Glory
A reflection on what truly makes life worth living — not money, cars or status, but the quiet satisfaction most people chase without ever recognising it.
- Holy Wars
A candid, unfiltered essay on how religion has been misinterpreted for centuries — and the divisions it still sows across a fractured society.
- The Anti-Mediocrity Principle
On a new-age Renaissance and the price of independent thought — why every real change demands bold people willing to defy comfortable mediocrity.
- Your Glass House is under attack Mr. Stone Hurler
On why criticism is necessary for growth — from Steve Jobs' firing to the people who hurl stones while living in glass houses of their own.
- Mah Kewlst Po$t Evah’
A tongue-in-cheek rant against the attention-seeking 'kewl' internet lingo that social networks popularised, and why it leaves the rest of us despairing.