Leisure, Leviathan, fast & slow

With no topic waiting in my pool for the moment, I left Day 86 blank: just as the silence between notes is what makes music, leisure may be exactly the white space creativity needs.

What Hobbes asked in 1651 was how a group of people with their own goals, different information and no way to fully trust each other can cooperate. The question runs from states, companies, markets and Bitcoin all the way to today’s AI agents.

Seen through Stewart Brand’s pace layers, AI’s application layer changes every day, while organizations, law and culture each have their own inertia; slow doesn’t necessarily mean behind.

What technology can do and why people need it are two different questions: tools and capabilities change fast, while many deeper needs change much more slowly.