Once I begin to see that the maze was made rather than given, I cannot help asking whether the road that led into it was ever inevitable. I have come to…
In the previous chapter, I suggested that the algorithm has begun to function like a new priesthood: a mediator of judgment, calm, technical, and often…
When I think about the age of algorithms, I keep returning to a set of ordinary rooms at night. In one, a woman sits at her kitchen table, lit by the soft…
For a time, the market’s right to dictate mass suffering seemed to have been checked. That was the old promise at the heart of many rich societies after…
As I move through this history of divine power, I keep returning to one thought: great ruling stories rarely disappear all at once. The promise explored…
That sense that economic arrangements can be changed, and need not be worshipped as fate, leads me naturally to Roosevelt in the winter of 1944. I…
If the last chapter paused at the moment when invisible thrones trembled, this one steps back to one of the shocks that made that trembling possible. When…
As I move through the long history of divine power, one pattern keeps returning: elites are shaken, but rarely displaced for long. Thrones fall, yet the…
As I move through this history of divine power, I come to the moment when the old faith in steam, competition, and self-correcting markets begins to fray.…
In my journey through the history of divine power, I keep returning to one simple realization: every age relocates the sacred. Some peoples imagined the…
When the altars begin to break, the throne does not remain empty for…
Having widened the lens in the previous chapter, I return now to the Western road. Here, the struggle over divine power takes a form that will help shape…
