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Contraptions

contraptions.venkateshrao.com

Janky, wobbly models of everything from philosophy to technology and everything in-between. Click to read Contraptions, by Venkatesh Rao, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Essays / personalTech news / industryAI / ML

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480 from 14 Aug 2015 to 25 Oct 2026
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2026 47

  1. Cognitive Mercantilism
  2. On Learning to Ride Your Brain
  3. Choose Your Own Monster
  4. Divergence with a Vengeance
  5. Humanism without (All) Humans
  6. EA Safety
  7. The Accelerationist Case for Frontier Pacing
  8. Our Eukaryotic Moment
  9. The Curiously Playable Universe
  10. Walter Mitty Effects in AI Incident Analyses
  11. August Break
  12. Cognitive Farmsteading
  13. Join me in Jamverse
  14. Can the (Social) Oobleck Dance?
  15. The Taste Essay
  16. A Tale of Two Theories (of Coordination)
  17. Dead Forest Theory
  18. Monitoring the Situation: from 1950s-2020s
  19. Strange Knowledgeability
  20. Search, Discovery, Pills, and Portals
  21. A Camera, Not an Engine II
  22. Touching Time
  23. Mindmap June 6, 2026
  24. From Cannons to Chronometers to Factories
  25. Time, Enlightenment and Romanticism Between Modernity and Divergence
  26. Commodity Intelligence
  27. Many Act 2 Games are Afoot
  28. Capital Must Seek Delight
  29. Ribbonfarm Resurrected
  30. Getting Gooier
  31. AI in World Machine Theory
  32. Writing Liveness
  33. Intentions have a surprising amount of detail
  34. On Cooling America Out
  35. The World Machines Project
  36. Rediscovering Irony
  37. Contraption Mansion
  38. Archival Selves
  39. The Divergence Machine II
  40. Protocolized Writing Workshop
  41. vgr: The Twitter Years (2007-22)
  42. New Ferality
  43. Engineering Liveness
  44. Robot Auras
  45. New Nature
  46. Lost in Bugspace
  47. The Divergence Machine

2025 63

  1. The Modernity Machine III
  2. 2025 Book Club Hangout (Transcript)
  3. Revenge of the Dilettantes
  4. Bucket Art
  5. Configurancy
  6. What if bigger models, like bigger stars, fail faster?
  7. Causal Why vs Teleological Why
  8. The Yakverse Chronicles
  9. The Ethics of Meaning-Making
  10. Be Slightly Monstrous
  11. Fall Break
  12. The Band Theory of Societies
  13. Gaslit Courage
  14. Beyond Szabo Scaling
  15. Hysteresis and the Mark-Makers
  16. Memento Salis
  17. Dark Age Stylesheet
  18. A Tale of Four Supermans
  19. Towards the Cosmopolitan Supergrid
  20. Art as Memory
  21. Welcome to the Cosmopolis
  22. Tab Budget
  23. Texts as Toys
  24. Summer 2025 U.S. Vibe Brief
  25. Occam’s Shaving Cream
  26. The Beekeeper's Dilemma
  27. Tripwire Minds, Clockwork Days
  28. Be History or Do History?
  29. The Modernity Machine II
  30. The Dilemma of the Pacifist Lion
  31. Prompting is Managing
  32. Not Just a Camera, Not Just an Engine
  33. The Right Side of History
  34. Traveling, Thinking, and Thinking About Traveling
  35. Three Pieces, May 2025
  36. In Search of Liveness
  37. Three Great Pieces
  38. A Random Walk Down Meme Street
  39. Bangkok Diary, 2025
  40. The Ecstasy of Deep Influence
  41. Autoamputation Flow
  42. The Poverty of Abundance
  43. Terms of Centaur Service
  44. To Know is to Stage
  45. The Starfish and the Goose
  46. LLMs as Index Funds
  47. What Makes a Good Teacher?
  48. Knowledge Under Siege
  49. Deep Teaching
  50. Low Roads to High Places
  51. Strength-Liquidity Tradeoffs in Beliefs
  52. Video Recording: Protocols Preview 2025
  53. The History and Future of Memeing Things Into Reality
  54. Discworld Rules
  55. Manichean Realpolitik
  56. Modernity Viewed from the Other End
  57. Every Story is a Degrowth Story!
  58. Principles for the Permaweird
  59. The Steppe Function
  60. The Modernity Machine
  61. Monsters and Mediocrity
  62. The Gramsci Gap
  63. Contraptionist History Book Club

2024 43

  1. Mappy New Year
  2. Engineers and the New Technocracy
  3. We Are the Robots
  4. As Above, So Garage
  5. Miniaturized Economies
  6. Two Little Contraptions
  7. Between Mandala and Machine
  8. Placemaking vs. Mission-Shaping
  9. Can Machines Slip on Banana Peels?
  10. Ribbonfarm Studio --> Contraptions
  11. Fall Break
  12. Life is Pain, Only Potato
  13. Contraption Theory
  14. The Societal Machine
  15. Learning in Dreamscapes
  16. Cozytech
  17. The New Systems of Survival
  18. Bullshitization and Common Indifference Problems
  19. The Art of Pretending to Govern
  20. An Important Question
  21. Summer Reverie
  22. Striver, Seeker, Icon, Leader
  23. The Ooze Grows
  24. The Flaubert Frontier
  25. Where Are the Elites?
  26. Many Other Shoes Are Dropping
  27. Bangalore Diary
  28. Of Mangoes and Solar Panels
  29. Nusantaraphilia
  30. Monolith!
  31. Benefit of Doubt Calculus
  32. War Rooms and Peace Rooms
  33. We Are All Dennettians Now
  34. From Words to Watts
  35. CFA: Summer of Protocols 2024
  36. Spring Break
  37. Does Reality Have a Surprising _Lack_ of Detail?
  38. Massed Muddler Intelligence
  39. Brains, Chains, and Vibemobiles
  40. Towards a Metaphysics of Worlds
  41. Glued Time, Forked Time
  42. A Map for AI Town Planners, 2024-29
  43. The Importance of Not Being Earnest

2023 47

  1. State of the Studio 2023
  2. We Just Have to Set Up the Planetary Dev Environment
  3. In Search of Hardness
  4. A Camera, Not an Engine
  5. Boundary Intelligence
  6. The War of Incredulous Stares
  7. Istanbul Diary
  8. A Tale of Two Cycle Memes
  9. Oozy Intelligence in Slow Time
  10. You've Been Matrix-Multiplied
  11. A Whole New Cope
  12. A History of Narrative Environments
  13. Blithe Spirits and Heavy Souls
  14. Fear of Oozification
  15. Fluid Fogs and Fixed Flows
  16. This is the New Real World
  17. What we seek to save when we seek to save the world
  18. Sweating Solarpunk
  19. My Climate Posture
  20. Adventures in Narrative Time
  21. Never-Ending Stories
  22. Protocol Narratives
  23. Rediscovering Narratability
  24. Thick Time
  25. Unnarratability
  26. Grimdark-Hopepunk With a Chance of Icecream
  27. Cafes and Grand Narratives
  28. Magic, Mundanity and Deep Protocolization
  29. The Titan Affair
  30. Book Review: Slouching Towards Utopia
  31. Summer Break
  32. The Puzzle of the Permaweird
  33. History After History
  34. The Firmament
  35. The Physics of Intelligence
  36. The Priest in the Arena
  37. Silicon Valley Generation Shift
  38. Courage in Computing
  39. The Bones of Time
  40. Truth in Inconvenience
  41. Text is All You Need
  42. The Mediocre Computing Trilemma
  43. Economic Reveries
  44. Contours of Thawing Time
  45. Disturbed Realities
  46. The Permaweird
  47. Logics of Caring

2022 49

  1. State of the Studio 2022
  2. Computing as an Infinite Game
  3. Mediocre Computing
  4. Two Black Holes
  5. The Dawn of Mediocre Computing
  6. The Muskening, Part II
  7. The Art of Gig is Out!
  8. The Muskening
  9. Silicon Valley Vibe Shift
  10. A Territory and a Map
  11. Vivid Abstractions
  12. Scintillation Points
  13. Hello Again, World
  14. The Anthropic Cheat Code
  15. The One Trading System
  16. Mutualism
  17. Globalism 2.0 Service Pack 3
  18. The Long 2022
  19. The End of Alpha
  20. Beyond Hyperanthropomorphism
  21. Eventfulness
  22. August 2022 Core Dump
  23. Memiads
  24. Future Tables
  25. Inner Graph Monologues
  26. The Depth of Time
  27. What Graphs Want
  28. Year One Review
  29. Getting to Gnome Mode
  30. Graph Vitalism
  31. Anatomy of a Graph Mind
  32. Surrender and Assimilation
  33. Big Graph of Mud
  34. Graph Minds Notebook
  35. Graph Minds
  36. Ozymandias Problems
  37. Can Robots Yearn For Phantom Limbs?
  38. Towards Management Metamodernism
  39. Mopium, Copium, Hopium
  40. Dark, Gray, and Light Lore
  41. Epics vs. Lore
  42. On Lore
  43. Raw Lore
  44. Lore as Imaginative Irony
  45. Lands of Lorecraft
  46. Transaction-Cost Utopias Reconsidered
  47. Teeth and Identity
  48. Theory-Shaped Debris
  49. Derangements

2021 50

  1. Winter Break
  2. The Backstopper Economy
  3. Magic Beans
  4. Through a Scanner, Darkly
  5. The Best of Times, The Worst of Times...Again
  6. Here We Go Again
  7. Coordination Headwinds
  8. Baby Eons
  9. The First Terraforming
  10. Remystifying Supply Chains
  11. On Robots
  12. Goalposts-Complete Problems
  13. Pitchdark Futures
  14. Low-Level Vitalist Memeing
  15. Summer Break
  16. One Tenth of a Second
  17. Superhistory Redux
  18. Accidental Designs -- 2
  19. The REALIST Stack
  20. Accidental Designs -- 1
  21. Perpetuated Beta
  22. Welcome to Ribbonfarm Studio
  23. After Westphalia
  24. The Great Weirding
  25. The Clockless Clock
  26. Upcoming Changes
  27. Maker Studio, Manager Studio
  28. Living With Problems
  29. Good People and Wicked Problems
  30. Superhistory, Not Superintelligence
  31. Illusions and Collisions - 3
  32. The Meaning Crisis Conspiracy
  33. Late-Style Thinking
  34. Illusions and Collisions - 2
  35. Welcome to the World of Tomorrow
  36. Digital Homelessness
  37. Illusions and Collisions -- 1
  38. Moving to Tuesdays...
  39. Demiurgical Businesses
  40. Late Sceneification
  41. Shadowland -2
  42. Mars and the Meaning of Money
  43. Shadowland - 1
  44. Tick-Tock Talk -- 2:
  45. Weird Moneys
  46. Anti-Network Effects
  47. Involvement Music
  48. Selfies in Vaporworlds
  49. Alert: Breaking Smart Billing Problem
  50. Tick-Tock Talk - 1

2020 37

  1. Complete 2020 Roundup
  2. Darker Things
  3. In the Wake of the Eighties
  4. Involvement Capitalism
  5. Hitting Pause
  6. Notes on Textual Capital
  7. Tunnelhead
  8. Fifth-Generation Management
  9. Control Failure -- 2
  10. A Bad Prequel
  11. Post-Covid Circularity
  12. No newsletter this week
  13. The State of (Business) Play
  14. Control Failure -- 1
  15. The Descent of the Public
  16. Operating in Time - 2
  17. Thinking Out Loud: Year One
  18. Operating in Time
  19. The Next Experiments in Elitism
  20. After Westphalia: Introduction
  21. Indoors in Time
  22. Big Moods, Little Moods
  23. Farcaster Mansions
  24. Into the Weirding -- Part 2
  25. From Story to Setting
  26. Into the Weirding -- Part 1
  27. A little gift
  28. The Medieval Future of Management
  29. Reimagining Publics
  30. How, What, and Where to Build
  31. Pandemic Time: II
  32. Pandemic Time
  33. Defaults and Defaults
  34. life go brrr
  35. The New Breaking Smart
  36. Beyond Optimism and Pessimism
  37. A Very Slow Takeoff...

2019 30

  1. Inventing Time
  2. Econtalk and Zion 2.0 Podcasts
  3. Spacewalks and the Species
  4. The Ascent of Conflict
  5. Charisma Neutrality
  6. The Direction of Maximal Derangement
  7. Like Riding an AI Bicycle
  8. Technological Charisma
  9. Investing in Your Ordinary Powers
  10. Towards Subtractive Social Media
  11. Memes, Brands, and Missions
  12. Planning to Start, Planning to Finish
  13. Following the Scenius
  14. A Wabi-Sabi Technology Age
  15. Can "Tech" Die?
  16. Appointments With Ideas
  17. The Extended Internet Universe
  18. The Life Equation
  19. The Waiting Place
  20. The Art of Gig
  21. Against Waldenponding: II
  22. Life Spirit Distillation
  23. The Playflow Challenge
  24. What "Executive Sponsorship" Actually Means
  25. Omega Learning
  26. Politically Opinionated Platforms
  27. The Breaking Smart AMA, Part 2
  28. Season 1 Online Workshop
  29. The Breaking Smart AMA, Part 1
  30. Good Afternoon Internet, I'm Listening

2018 25

  1. Kudos fellow earthlings, on a 2018...done.
  2. Let's Make Things Boring
  3. I don’t care to die on any hill I’m actually capable of climbing
  4. The Algorithmic Bonus Mindset
  5. Self-Interest and Seized Initiatives
  6. Against Waldenponding
  7. Destruction is a Choice
  8. How to Not Lose at 4d Chess
  9. So You Think You're Customer-Driven?
  10. The Zeroth Mile
  11. Eddies in the Informational Continuum
  12. Eigenyou Theory
  13. Jonathan Livingston Corporation
  14. Life After AI
  15. Stream Time
  16. The Use and Misuse of the OODA Loop
  17. When Business As Usual Ends
  18. In the Eye of the Time Storm
  19. How Circled Are Your Wagons?
  20. The Splintering of the Second World
  21. GUTS: The Grand Unified Theory of Striving (or Slacking )
  22. The Art of Laser Focus
  23. Intellectualism in a Digital Milieu
  24. Why Cities Fail
  25. How To Ride Your Brain Bicycle

2017 38

  1. 2018: The Year of Global Creolization
  2. When Every Path is a Critical Path
  3. The Other Societal Inequality
  4. The Free-Agent Diverarchy
  5. The World is Not Enough People
  6. Continuous Deployment into History
  7. Intelligence Reconsidered
  8. Maxwell's Historian
  9. Good Forecasting Takes Strong Nerves
  10. The Politics of Productivity
  11. The Punchshake Economy
  12. Corrections to 8/4/2017 Issue
  13. Hashpower, True Names, and Dysonian Gods
  14. Malware is Choking the World
  15. Eagles Don't Flock, Elephants Don't Dance
  16. Semicolon-Shaped People
  17. Gradatim Ferociter
  18. The Cyberpaleo Ethic and the Spirit of Postcapitalism
  19. Roadmapping for Flatlanders
  20. Frankenstacks and Rhizomes
  21. Electric Monks and Fast Transients
  22. Betting the Spread on Inexorables
  23. The Universe Will Now Explode For Your Pleasure
  24. Multiverse Navigation for Universe Denters
  25. The Anatomy of the FutureFly
  26. Talent, Genius, and the Fog of Intention
  27. A Most Useful Misunderstanding
  28. Politically Opinionated Products
  29. Software "Adoption" is Bullshit
  30. Unbundling the Manager
  31. The Birth of Magic
  32. The Six Modes of Dangerous Curiosity
  33. The First Law of Psychohistory
  34. Life in the Time of Choleric
  35. The Rise of the Caves of Steel
  36. Rediscovering the Lonely Planet
  37. Your Passport to the Metabrain
  38. The Challenge of Arendtian Action

2016 36

  1. The Season of Great Works
  2. The Fortune at the Edge of the Network
  3. The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Small Optimizations
  4. The Internet Has No Trash Cans
  5. The Inner Game of Exploding Minds
  6. Lean Thinking vs Fat Thinking
  7. Can the Germanic World Break Smart?
  8. Vacationing Smart
  9. Solving Beats Planning
  10. Flame Wars Are a Good Thing
  11. Premature Synchronization is the Root of All Evil
  12. The Fingers of Your Mind
  13. Cosmopolitanism, It's a Beautiful Thing
  14. A Cambrian Explosion of Consensual Realities
  15. Can Software Eat God?
  16. The DAO Affair and the Future of Blockchains
  17. When is an exit not an exit?
  18. Basic Income is Already Here, It's Just Called Digital Nomadism
  19. Pizza and Purpose
  20. Is there a there there? You'll know when you find it.
  21. The Only Millennials Who Matter
  22. A Thousand Different Drums
  23. Too Big to Nail
  24. The Situated-is-Incremental Fallacy
  25. So You Think You Can Retire, Punk?
  26. Nurturing Your Unquestions
  27. Incorrect Maps and Broken Territories
  28. No-Brainers, Deal-Killers and Anomienomics 101
  29. A Snowball's Chance in Hell
  30. The Cognitive Science of You
  31. Unicorns, Bandwagons and Networks
  32. What Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Regular People
  33. Management is Mostly an Impossible Problem
  34. Are You Graph Garbage?
  35. The Internet is One Big Grey Pill
  36. Significance Alchemy: How to turn "trivial" into "important"

2015 15

  1. The Breaking Smart Holiday Spectacular
  2. Book Smarts, Street Smarts and Stream Smarts
  3. To Derp is to Die
  4. The Internet has an Oral Culture
  5. How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change a Person?
  6. The Unholy Monster that turns Uncertainty into Certainty
  7. Sisyphus is a Miserable Role Model
  8. Someone is WRONG on the Internet!
  9. Promethean Depression
  10. Life without goals
  11. Solution Aversion
  12. Smart Cities vs. Breaking Smart Cities
  13. Can You Disrupt Yourself?
  14. The Next Silicon Valley
  15. More School or Less School?