Essays
The Journal253 essays
Long-form writing on AI, philosophy, psychology, and systems thinking.
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The first principles of system design: What software architecture can learn from philosophy
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Designing for Graceful Degradation in Uncertain Environments
Systems designed for graceful degradation recovered user-facing functionality much faster during major cloud outages than all-or-nothing systems. Degradation is honest architecture.
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The architecture of meaning: How the tools we build shape what we think is possible
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Tillich’s Ultimate Concern and the Idol of Productivity
Paul Tillich defined idolatry as elevating a finite thing to ultimate significance. When technology workers measure their self-worth by productivity, productivity has become the industry's idol.
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The Absurdity of Optimizing Deprecated Systems
Enterprise systems live only a few years before deprecation. Camus's absurdism shows that engineering meaning comes from the quality of the work.
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The Ethics of AI Art Is a Labor Economics Problem
AI image generation has displaced commercial illustration work since 2023, with losses concentrated among early-career artists. This is a labor economics problem, not a copyright debate.
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The Difference Between Data and Evidence
Having data is not having evidence. Most proposals reviewed presented data as evidence without the analytical chain from observation to inference.
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The Regulatory Gap Between AI Capability and Governance
Regulation trails AI capability deployment by years. During that gap, organizations have a moral obligation to self-govern rather than exploit the vacuum.
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Designing systems for resilience, not optimization
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Red Teaming AI Systems Is Not Optional
Red teaming has to be a deployment requirement. Few of the AI systems I evaluated had adversarial testing, and the untested ones held exploitable flaws.