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
Hopwood DePree: What One American Learnt From Restoring His Family's English Castle
Aaron Friedberg: Why China, Not Russia, Is Our Greatest Threat And What We Should Do About It
Sasha Issenberg: What America's Long Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage Can Teach Us About the Possibility of Gun Control
Erin Swan: How a First Novel About America's Vanished Earth Took 6 Years to Write and 30 Years to Plan
Nirit Weiss-Blatt: Why the Techlash Has Gone Too Far
Helene Munson on Hitler's Boy Soldiers: Can Germans Ever Forget the Second World War?
Kerri Arsenault and Bathsheba Demuth: How to Tell Effective Stories About the Environment
Jon Taffer: Why the Real Power of Conflict Is About Respect Rather Than Violence
Hal Weitzman: Why Delaware Is At the Root of Everything That Is Wrong With America
George Stevens, Jr.: Remembering (And Mourning) The Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington D.C.
Dov Seidman: How to Make American Capitalism Moral (Or, At Least, Try To)
Marcus Buckingham: Why Work Sometimes Does, Indeed, Love Us Back
Arthur Grace: Photographing Communism(s) and What Life Really Looked Like in Cold War Eastern Europe