We live surrounded by tools that promise to enhance life. Most do, in small and measurable ways. But very few seem to understand what a life actually is. It's a fracture so obvious it’s invisible: we’ve optimized everything except the thing we’re optimizing for. Life
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang recently described the future of artificial intelligence in three neat stages: generative, agentic, and physical. First, systems that create content. Next, systems that act as agents. Finally, machines that move through the world. He’s not wrong. We are on the brink of humanoids folding laundry
Every era produces a few moments when technology rewrites the logic of life itself. Print. Electricity. The internet. Now, artificial intelligence. Most of what the market calls “AI products” are, beyond the theatre, mere fragments dressed up as revolutions. At best infrastructures of optimization. But AI is not a tool
AI is not an add-on. It’s a medium. The logic by which systems sense, adapt, and act. When it’s truly embedded, the old boundaries dissolve: interface and backend, user and system, product and technology. The moment you see AI this way, you stop building tools and start building
The hustle-as-virtue narrative is everywhere. Bragging about 4 a.m. work sprints. Wearing exhaustion like a badge. Pretending that motion equals momentum. It’s easier than ever to spin up a ghost venture. A few lines of vibe-coded code, a landing page, a social post, and call it progress. Pair
In The Culture, the drones are more than machines. They breathe an emotional aura, carried by shifting color that speaks before thought. It made me reflect on how essential emotional resonance is for AI to move beyond utility. Without it, AI remains a clever companion. With it, it dissolves the
Every major shift in technology has quietly rewritten the way we live. Electricity brought light into the night. Electromagnetic waves carried voices across oceans. The cloud made knowledge weightless and accessible from anywhere. Over time, each of these became so natural we stopped noticing them. They weren’t tools we
Hi, I’m Ruben — thinker, father, and founder of mā. I started this blog to keep my mind engaged in a world where more and more thinking is being done for us, and to start a dialogue with those who see the world in similar ways. I’m a techno-optimist