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As both a much published poet and cultural critic, Adam Kirsch brings an etymological sensibility to the great issues of our day. In his new book, On Settler Colonialism, Kirsch excavates the nonsense now taken for granted by many academics about the supposedly twin intrinsic evils of American and Israeli history. Unlike the European colonialists in America, Kirsch reminds us, Jewish settlers in Palestine didn’t wipe out the “indigenous” peoples of the region. While that doesn’t necessarily excuse the violence of the Zionist state, Kirsch acknowledges, it does remind us that packaging America and Israel as the evil “settler colonial” twins of world history is both childishly simplistic and wrong. Words matter in politics, Kirsch reminds us. Particularly in a conflict as irresolvable as the Palestine/Israel tragedy. Adam Kirsch is the author of several books of poetry and criticism. A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Kirsch is an editor at the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review section and has written for publication

Bloomberg columnist, Parmy Olson, won the FT Business Book of 2024 for Supremacy, her story of the race between Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Demis Hassabis’ Google DeepMind for control of the AI ecosystem. Given that Parmy Olson finished writing Supremacy at the end of 2023, I asked her what she would have added to her narrative with the hindsight of knowing what actually transpired in 2024. And what, exactly, does Olson expect to happen in 2025 - a year which will, no doubt, rival 2024 in determining which multi trillion dollar Silicon Valley behemoth will control our collective AI fate.Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.” which won the Financial Times best business book for 2024. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN

Yesterday, we featured a conversation between Andrew and That Was the Week newsletter publisher Keith Teare looking back at the major tech events of 2024. Today, Andrew and Keith look forward to the upcoming year for big tech. What will be the fate of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft in 2025? And who, if anyone, will win the multi trillion dollar race for AI supremacy in 2025?Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broad

So how will future historians think about 2024? In tech terms, 2024 will probably be remembered as the year when AI began to become ubiquitous. Although, as Keith Teare and Andrew discuss in this special 2024 edition of THAT WAS THE WEEK, only hardcore techies like Keith are currently making the use of AI central to their lives. For mainstream users like Andrew, AI in 2024 remained an abstract promise. More concretely, however, 2024 - in Trump’s gamble that the multi billionaires of Silicon Valley can make America Great Again - has set the stage for 2025. So 2024 - in the most compelling narrative tradition of Trumpian reality television - has set the stage for 2025. 2024, then, will be remembered as the year before 2025. A prelude to the sequel. Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the aut

As Elon Musk continues to plot, with Trumpian glee, against the American Federal government, it is important to remind ourselves of the essential value of this state bureaucracy. As the founding president and CEO of the Washington DC based Partnership for Public Service, Max Stier has spent the last quarter century focused on making American government more efficient and accountable. And Stier’s warning about the incoming administration is critically important. Yes, he acknowledges, some of Musk’s misgivings about the inefficiencies of the Federal bureaucracy are fair, but that isn’t an excuse for a descent into what Stier describes as the patrimonial politics of MAGA in which the interests of Trump and of the American state are treated identically. The American Republic was founded against the 18th century absolutist conceit that L'État, c'est moi. So all Max Stier is doing, at the Partnership for Public Service, is defending the values of the Founders who, wanted to protect the Republic from a patrimonial s

The supposed “science” of eugenics is one of the most dangerous myths of the modern age. As Erik Peterson, author of The Shortest History of Eugenics explains, it not only was used by Nazi thugs to justify the Final Solution, but also has been deployed by American racists to justify slavery and inequality. And today, in a brave new world increasingly shaped by advances in biotech, Peterson warns, eugenics persists, having adherents who mistakenly believe that it can be used for the betterment of society.Erik L. Peterson, PhD, is Associate Provost and Associate Professor of the History of Science & Medicine at The University of Alabama. He publishes and teaches about the historical relationship between race and science in the United States and abroad.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of

There is a counter intuitive school of thought - represented by Tyler Cowen, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen - which suggests that America, for all its technological innovation, remains trapped by long term economic stagnation. So it’s no coincidence that the Austin based investor, consultant, and writer, Byrne Hobart’s co-authored new book, Boom, comes with enthusiastic blurbs from Cowen, Thiel and Andreessen. If we are to escape our current stagnation, Hobart explained to me when we met in Austin, then we might welcome economic bubbles such as our current AI craze. To get to a boom, he even seems to suggest, borrowing from the ideas of the great economic historian Carlotta Perez, we may even need to celebrate bubbles.Byrne Hobart is an investor, consultant, and writer. He is the author of The Diff, a daily newsletter covering inflection points in finance and technology. He is also a founding partner at Anomaly, a frontier tech investment firm.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andr

The iconic DLD conference will be holding its twentieth annual event in Munich next month. Founded in January 2005, DLD has hosted many of the world’s leading tech thinkers and entrepreneurs from both Europe and the United States. What most distinguishes DLD, however, is its community of loyal regulars whose presence in Munich in January promises a degree of certainty in an increasingly uncertain world. One of the most loyal DLDers is Jeff Jarvis, the prolific tech gadfly, always to found in the front row of the DLD auditorium, listening with great care to all the speeches. And in this conversation in celebration of DLD’s 20th anniversary, Jarvis both looks back to evaluate how the world has changed since January 2005 and looks forward to imagine the next twenty years. Jeff Jarvis is a national leader in the development of online news, blogging, the investigation of new business models for news, and the teaching of entrepreneurial journalism. He writes an influential media blog, Buzzmachine.com. He is author

Yesterday, we ran Bethanne Patrick’s five best novels of 2024. Today, we feature her top non-fiction of the year including new books about reality television, Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife and Handel's Messiah. ‘Tis the season. Enjoy!Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addi

Pity the novelist. In a year which brought us the unbelievable non-fiction of a second Trump victory and the establishment of Luigi Mangione as an American folk hero, what can novelists do to stretch our imagination? But according to the LA Times literary critic, Bethanne Patrick, novelists do, indeed, still have something to tell us. And to make her case, she discusses her five favorite works of fiction of 2024 from masterful novelists like Percival Everett, Yael van der Wouden and Danzy Senna. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner

For all the hysteria about misinformation and disinformation, maybe we prefer ignorance. That’s the intriguing thesis of the illustrious Columbia University intellectual historian, Mark Lilla, in his new book, Ignorance is Bliss. It all begins, of course, inside Plato’s cave in his Republic, that metaphorical preface to Western thought where we are subjected to illusionary shadows and delusional reflections. And, for Lilla at least, it may end in the America of late 2024, where many of us appear to relish being back in Plato’s cave, staring - sometimes even perhaps knowingly - at illusionary shadows and delusional reflections. So if ignorance is bliss, then what, exactly, is knowledge?Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide. His books include The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics; The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction; The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern

It’s been coming a while. But now it’s official. Keith Teare has declared his love for Elon Musk. In this week’s THAT WAS THE WEEK newsletter, suitably entitled “I’m With Musk”, Keith argues that without Musk “I have no idea what a positive narrative about modernization and growth would be.” America, Keith argues, needs “builders” like Musk who will enable “a real conversation about change”. I’m more ambivalent, but then Ambivalence is my middle name. While I agree with Keith that Musk has been childishly vilified by progressives, I disagree with his Randian argument that innovators are naturally progressive because they claim to want to improve the general lot of humanity. In tech, there are right-wing (Musk, Sacks, Thiel &Andreessen) and left-wing (Moskovitz, Hoffman & Moritz) builders. Some builders are better than others. I know which I prefer.Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based globa

On May 24, 2022, a 18 year-old walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and shot to death 19 students and 2 teachers. In Uvalde’s Darkest Hour, the owner of the local Uvalde Leader-News, Craig Garnett tries to make sense of these tragic events. Although making sense might be the wrong words to describe either the book or Garnett himself. While this mass murder occurred more than two years ago, the stoical Garnett still appears frozen in a kind of uncomprehending grief in the face of this terrible crime. As he confesses, the writing of the book was intended as a kind of catharsis. But there’s still an intense anger there - especially toward the local police chiefs who allowed the gunman to remain in the classroom for an hour and fourteen minutes.CRAIG GARNETT has owned the Uvalde Leader-News, the local newspaper, since 1989. He moved to Uvalde in 1982 to begin work with the Leader-News, where his weekly editorials and columns have won dozens of awards from the Texas Press Association and South Texas

While many of us fear a future in which all our online interactions are with algorithms, the young Florida based programming prodigy, Michael Sayman, actually looks forward to this brave new world. In fact, earlier this year he started a controversial social media app called SocialAI which exclusively feature bots responding to its human users. For Sayman, our ubiquitous interaction with smart machines is the inevitable future of the internet and so we should embrace it. It’s a generational thing, Sayman believes. Old people, he argues, are still clinging to so me nostalgic version of “humanity”, whereas people of his generation, who grew up online, understand that AI is just media - no different from books, movies, video games or music. Teen entrepreneur, programmer, and student MICHAEL SAYMAN created an iOS app development company at thirteen, after teaching himself to code. Since then, he has gone on to create dozens of apps, which have been downloaded more than 3 million times worldwide.Named as one of th

Yesterday, we featured a conversation with Jonathan Taplin about the dearth of high quality contemporary music and movies. The music writer, David Rowell, agrees with Taplin, but goes one step further, suggesting that we no longer even like new music. In his new book, The Endless Refrain, Rowell the rise of music streaming and the consolidation of digital platforms has so decimated the musical landscape that all we want to listen to now are the old hits of our youth. New music then, for Rowell, is being destroyed by new technology. The internet has frozen culture into a nostalgic mixtape of greatest hits. David Rowell grew up in North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For nearly 25 years he was an editor at The Washington Post Magazine and has taught literary journalism in the MFA department at American University. He is currently a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. His books include the novel The Train of Small Mercies, Wher

A few months ago, I interviewed David Leonhardt, author of Ours Was the Shining Future, about the death of the American dream which, he argued, can be dated from on 5 June 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. And it’s on that infamous date that I begun my conversation with Jonathan Taplin about the rebirth of the American dream. According to the Los Angeles based Taplin, who is now working on a book about an upcoming renaissance of American culture, the vehicle for a revitalized United States will come from a Sixties style explosion of cultural vitality. Bright new music, film and books will create a bright new America, Taplin predicts. I hope he’s right.Jonathan Taplin is a writer, film producer and scholar. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School from 2003-2016 in the field of international communication management and digital media entertainment. Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 a

On the week that the price of Bitcoin rose above $100,000 and Trump appointed David Sacks as his “AI and Crypto Czar”, has Silicon Valley finally succeeded in conquering Washington DC? In today’s That Was The Week summary of tech news, Keith Teare and Andrew review what appears to be a tectonic shift in power between Silicon Valley and Washington DC. Are “right-wing” Trump supporters like Sacks, Elon Musk and Mark Andreessen being invited to Washington by the MAGA movement to ransack the Federal bureaucracy? Or is this that grand historical moment when the real powers-that-be emerge from behind the curtain and impose their own digital neo-liberal regime in DC?Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publi

Yesterday, we featured a conversation with Mozilla co-founder and Internet Hall of Famer, Mitchell Baker, one of the great champions of an open web. Today’s guest, the prolific writer and journalist Jeff Jarvis, is another leading defender of the internet. In his new book, The Web We Weave, Jarvis explains how we can reclaim the internet from moguls, misanthropes and moral panics. The Web, Jarvis argues, is a mirror of all the best and worst aspects of society. It’s us. So only we can reclaim the internet from the Musks, the bots and the moral hysteria now threatening to destroy it. Jeff Jarvis is the author of six books, including currently "The Web We Weave," "The Gutenberg Parenthesis," and "Magazine." He cohosts the podcasts "This Week in Google" and "AI Inside" and blogs at Buzzmachine. Jarvis is the Tow Professor of Journalism Innovation Emeritus at CUNY's Newmark School of Journalism. In a long career as a journalist, he was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly, president and creative di

Few people deserve their place in the Internet Hall of Fame than Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker. Since co-founding the Mozilla Project in the late Nineties, Baker has been one of the most consistent and articulate champions of an open internet. So looking back over the last quarter century, what does Baker make of the history of online freedom? And is she hopeful that new technologies like AI can regenerate the promise of an open internet?Mitchell Baker co-founded the Mozilla Project to support the open, innovative web and ensure it continues offering opportunities for everyone. As Chairwoman of Mozilla, Mitchell Baker is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide, collective of employees and volunteers around the world who are building the internet as a global public resource, open and accessible to all. Mitchell is deeply engaged in developing product offerings that promote the mission of empowering individuals. She also guides the overall scope and direction of Mozilla’s mission. Mit

Few people are better at demystifying the byzantine complexities of the American healthcare system than the former CEO of Kaiser Permanente, Robert Pearl, MD. So what does Pearl make of Trump’s nomination of RFK Jr for Secretary of Health and Human Services? Is this a thinly veiled excuse to go to war with the current American healthcare system? Or does RFK Jr really have the acuity to responsibly reform a system in desperate need of reinvention?For 18 years, ROBERT PEARL, MD served as CEO of The Permanente Medical Group (Kaiser Permanente). He is also former president of The Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group. In these roles he led 10,000 physicians, 38,000 staff and was responsible for the nationally recognized medical care of 5 million Kaiser Permanente members on the west and east coasts. He is a clinical professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses on healthcare strategy, technology, and