I started writing The Future, Now and Then in 2022. I was in a bit of a rut, and decided to see if I could write my way out of it. The plan ever since has been to write something every week, and just see where that takes me.
This will be my 43rd and final post of the year. I took a few breaks to work on the book manuscript. Readership growth has tailed off a bit — I started the year around 9,000 subscribers, and will end just north of 11,000.
Conceptually, I’ve noticed that my writing here has gotten shorter and more take-shaped. In 2022 and 2023, I was mostly using this venue to work through some big ideas that were destined for the book. I would spend several days per week trying to wrestle those ideas into shape, and the essays were usually in the 2,500-3,500 word range. This year, while I refined those earlier ideas into book-shaped form, my blogging was more focused on immediate reactions to political or tech news. They tended to fall in the 1,000-1,500 word range, written in a single writing session. That’s… fine. But I’d like to get back to taking bigger swings in 2026.
Professionally, next year is going to be an odd one for me. The book will be in production all year, slated for an early 2027 release. I’ll be occupying that awkward liminal space where the work is done, and all that’s left is the waiting. This has been my main intellectual project since the summer of 2018. I’m going to need to find some interesting ways to distract myself.
I don’t quite know what shape those distractions will take. I have a few ideas. Stay tuned… it could get pretty fun.
And in the meantime, thanks to you all for reading.
Here are the top five posts from The Future, Now and Then in 2025:
Number 5: The Three Types of Money In Silicon Valley
I’ve come to believe we can only understand Silicon Valley if we pay attention to the money. This post, from February, articulated the different types of money that contribute to the rise of Big Tech.
there are effectively three distinct types of money that have fueled Silicon Valley’s rise to dominance. There’s (1) government contracts, (2) direct product revenues, and (3) there’s investments and financial speculation.
(…)
I suspect that there is some mix of these three inputs that would be, well, healthy. If everything is government funded, we would not have nearly the rate of growth and technological development that competitive markets can spur. If everything was consumer products, we would have no internet access in rural areas, and nowhere close to enough basic research. A great many social goods are only achieved with government subsidy. And with no speculative finance — no IPOs, no VC funding rounds, the inputs for launching and scaling new companies and products would barely exist.
But I am quite confident that the current mix is deeply unhealthy. Speculative finance completely overshadows the other two. Companies are valued on the basis of their vibes — their aura of futurity. If the Keynesian beauty contest is just a sideshow, then it is really just a quirk.
Number 4: Every generation gets to recreate what environmentalism means
The New York Times wrote a big piece about the Sierra Club that, it seems to me, completely missed the mark. I wrote a piece highlighting the three main points that they got wrong.
the least-interesting-possible-version of this formula is oh no did the movement go too woke? Did the Sierra Club lose its focus?
If you know your movement history, the answer ought to be “which focus? Determined by whom?”
The people who drive the Sierra Club’s agenda are the people who show up and do the work. Every generation gets to decide what environmentalism ought to be. They respond and adapt to the moment, and do the best they can with what they have.
Number 3: Abundance is a book for an alternate timeline
I read and reviewed Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book, Abundance. In this review, I tried to grapple both with what the Abundance Agenda gets right and also what it gets wrong. But, for the most part, I noted how it seemed like a theory ill-suited for the moment we actually find ourselves living through.
ONE of the reasons it is hard to build an abundant future today is that we have too many legacy veto-points. Responsive government, by design, tends to move at a plodding pace. (As Dan Davies put it: “Of course things are slower and more difficult now – the reason that it’s more difficult to build the second million homes is that the first million homes get in the way!”)
But another, trickier reason is that if you reduce the veto-points that make it hard to build, and you don’t shift the incentives for Exxon and private equity, then what they will end up building will be godawful for the rest of us.
Number 2: Balaji Srinivasan wrote the worst book I have ever read.
I also read and reviewed Balaji Srinivasan’s The Network State. I will never get over how bad this book is. I’m glad I read it, if only so I could more authoritatively say how ridiculous the whole thing is.
It’s essentially just Galt’s Gulch, plus blockchain.
If you want to know what the Tech Barons are attempting to replace democracy with, then it is important to take Srinivasan seriously.
But Balaji is not a serious person. The book is manifestly ridiculous. It is a blueprint drawn in crayon. Balaji’s ideas are stunningly undercooked, offered with such conspiratorial self-certainty that you have to wonder whether anyone has bothered to ask him if he’s alright.
Number 1: It’s Giving Enron
And (drumroll, please…) my most-read piece from 2025 was “It’s Giving Enron,” which articulated the three main stories that were wrapped up in the dotcom crash, and had some pointed notes about what sort of AI bubble we are currently brewing.
There are three big stories that one can tell about the dotcom crash. The first is an overvalued-startup story (Think Pets.com). The second is a telecom story. The telecom industry flooded the market with cheap fiber, underestimating the costs and overestimating demand. And then there’s the Enron story. The Enron story is fundamentally about accounting fraud, but it was very complicated accounting fraud.
…The AI Bubble is giving Enron vibes.
That’s it for 2025. Thanks for reading. See you in 2026.
-DK