The One Percent Rule

Lessons from the abolitionists on reclaiming our attention and agency

We are currently at a hinge of history, facing a choice between, what some claim will be an automated abyss, and others claim a human-centered renewal.

• The first task is definitional, to establish that human attention and judgment are not commodities but boundaries that cannot be negotiated away. Our equivalent task is to define which uses of technology violate the conditions of human agency.
• The second task is organisational. We require a skin-in-the-game elite, small groups of committed citizens who treat the protection of human agency as a non-negotiable objective. Historical movements built networks that translated ideas into action.
• If the argument is true, then someone must act.

Change is constructed through persistence, even when the surrounding environment appears indifferent.