Historical Case Studies

How social media platforms and digital services use sophisticated algorithmic optimization to maximize engagement and extract human attention as a commodity.

A critical exploration of how optimization—from product design to platforms to labor—has shifted from serving human flourishing to extracting it, and how a doctrine of necessary margin offers a way forward.

Examining how engineering philosophy shifted from building products to last generations to designing for rapid replacement and profit maximization.

The story of Sir John Mandeville's fabricated travels that shaped European exploration for centuries.

The story of John Law's paper money system that created Europe's first speculative bubble.

The story of Maximilien Robespierre, whose pursuit of virtue led to the Reign of Terror and his own execution.

Exploring how leaders and thinkers created systems that led to their own downfall through overconfidence in planning, ideology, finance, and narrative.

The story of Sir John Franklin's meticulously planned Arctic expedition that became a catastrophic failure.