// 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.
Subscribe on Substack →
// Start Here
New to Engines of Change? These three essays are the best introduction to the work.
Oct 18, 2026
The Switch Moved Again
Watch now (47 secs) | Skydance bought the biggest library in Hollywood. It still can't say what that library is allowed to become.
Oct 16, 2026
Terms of Entry
Disney steers demand to screens it doesn't own, TSMC names its condition for Musk's fab, Anthropic cuts off extraction, and Character.AI goes to auction.
Oct 11, 2026
Own the Ends
Why media companies should stop trying to merge the middle and take over the two doors instead.
Oct 09, 2026
Who Answers the Door
Meta and Sierra draft the handshake, OpenAI redraws the screen, SpaceX rents the model, and Meta prices the way out
Oct 04, 2026
Split Decision
Legitimacy, Part II
// 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