// Writing
Engines of Change.
Engines of Change explores how media evolves when the systems underneath it change. AI is the loudest of those changes right now. It isn't the only one. The essays follow what's shifting in production, distribution, archives, and identity, and what that means for the people doing the work.
Published from Portland, with a cocktail at the end of every Deep Cut.
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// Start Here
New to Engines of Change? These three essays are the best introduction to the work.
Nov 08, 2026
Who Can Object
A new essay says AI's fortunes will go to whoever owns the crossings. In media, the people whose work passes through can change the terms, even when they can't stop the deal.
Nov 06, 2026
Run Their Test on Media
A widely shared new essay says AI's money will settle at the crossings. Run its test on media and owners land on opposite sides of it, one losing part of a toll and another collecting one.
Nov 01, 2026
Told, Not Heard
Legitimacy, Part IV: Nikon's email told photographers why their photo credentials were revoked. It described no way to answer.
Oct 30, 2026
Nobody There to See the Ads
Cloudflare, Amazon, the big banks and Meta are each deciding what an AI agent is, and some ad-funded websites got their answer in a settings migration
Oct 25, 2026
Who Can Be Wronged
Legitimacy, Part III
// Editorial Arcs · 2026
Series 01
The Inheritance Shift
What media inherits from its past and what gets discarded as machine intelligence rewrites the creative process. Fully published.
CompleteSeries 02
The Human Layer
Where people fit in a media stack that increasingly runs on software. What roles persist, what disappears, what gets harder to do well. Fully published.
CompleteSeries 03
The Control Layer
The infrastructure questions. Who controls the systems, who can audit them, who gets to write the rules of operation. Fully published.
CompleteSeries 04
Persistence
How systems carry decisions forward past the conditions that produced them. Libraries, formats, and archives that outlive the people and the deals that made them. Fully published.
CompleteSeries 05
Legitimacy
When a system makes a decision people have to live with, how would anyone question it? Provenance, credentials, and the right to challenge them. Two essays published.
In progress