That Was The Year in Tech: When Nothing Happened (except Everything, Everywhere, All at Once)
That was the year in tech. When nothing and yet everything happened. A year betwixt and between, simultaneously revolutionary and uneventful. That's the ironic conclusion Keith Teare and I reach about Silicon Valley in 2025. It's as if the AI revolution is changing the world without us fully noticing. AI has become electricity—ubiquitous and essential, yet barely noticed. So what will happen on the tech front (or not happen) in 2026? Will it be another year in which nothing happened (except everything, everywhere, all at once). Or are we reaching 1789 or 1917 or 1989—a grand historical year where the logjam breaks and tech formally takes over the world? A true end and beginning of history. The first real year of the tech 21st century.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Orna Ophir: How a Pathology of "Schizophrenia" Might Reflect a Broken Society As Much as a Broken Mind
Leah McLaren: A Daughter's Memoir of a Mom Who Passed Down Her Trauma and Made Their Lives Impossible to Disentangle
Alice Mah on Plastics, the One Word That Best Describes Our Global Environmental Crisis
Harald H.H.W. Schmidt: Why "The End of Medicine As We Know It" Will Make All of Us Healthier and Happier
Ariel Ezrachi: How Cities, Rather Than Big Tech, Should Be the Engine for a More Equitable Digital Future
Monique Roffey: The Common Sense of Magic Realism and Why The Mermaid of Black Conch is a "Caribbean Novel"
Maureen Perry-Jenkins on Work Matters: How Parents' Jobs Shape Children's Well-Being
Saleem H. Ali: Do We Need a Science Party to Confront Existential Problems Like Global Warming?
Ari Mittleman: Does Criticism of Israel Inevitably Make One Guilty of Antisemitism?
Albert Fox Cahn: How Digital Surveillance In a Post-Roe America Isn't Substantively Different From Xi's China or Putin's Russia
Donald Robertson: Why the Graphic Novel Is an Ideal Form to Capture the Timeless Philosophy of Stoicism
Jacob M. Grumbach: Why the Crisis of American Democracy Is As Much a State and Local As a National Problem
Karen Cerulo and Janet Ruane: How We Can't Escape Social Class, Gender, or Culture in How We Dream