Why subscribe?

Hi. I’m Nathan Taylor. I write about technological change and its impact to society. So subscribe if that’s of interest.

I write about the near future, roughly the next 5-20 years. I like to learn and write about tech that’s already here — just not evenly distributed. Venture capital overlaps this. But VC is a crazy difficult timing is everything game betting on particular people and companies. I'm interested in something slightly different: how tech trends play out at an industry or societal level.

So I’m interested in direct tech questions like what’s going on with LLMs, TSMC’s 3nm process rollout, polygenic scoring techniques, the economics of Falcon 9 reusable spacecraft, etc. But I’m more interested in the second order effects of tech on society. Not just how cars work, but how cars led to highways, suburbs, fast food, shopping malls. So things like social media’s impact on our current political realignment, how LLMs will shake up existing tech incumbents, how IVF + PGS for embryo selection will increase social stratification, how getting rid of the SAT helps the rich more than the poor, progress studies, gene-culture evolution, why the FDA avoids utilitarian calculations on its pandemic policies, the strong parallels between the printing press driving the 30 years war/reformation and the internet driving societal disruptions today, and why the heck did Acheulean hand axes remain stagnant for 1.5 million years. Of course I’ve written about the Fermi Paradox too.

The throughline I always come back to is attempting to understand how technology endlessly coevolves with society. Right now, in the past, in the future. Fascinating! All my research and writing tie back to that single touchstone, one way or another.

You can find my older posts from 2012-2019 at my wordpress site praxtime.com. Since 2022, I’m posting here at substack. This is a hobby, and my family and then work come first. So posts will come out when they come out. For now all posts are free.

If you’re wondering, I named my blog praxtime as a take on praxis, learning by doing. Where the doing is writing: the best way to drive thoughts to clarity. Often a post starts one way, but after rewrite and research goes another.

You can find me as @ntaylor963 on twitter, or ntaylor963@gmail.com on email.