Doctorow is really a sci-fi author but he got a name as a futurologist around the time of the dot-com bubble. This time, his comments on AI look more directly like prediction. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur It’s not so much about what AI can or can’t do, nor how it works. Doctorow writes about the business model by which AI is being pitched to financiers and investors. His point is that this model won’t, and can’t, work as claimed.

Hey guys, it's Jordan - Dr. Steve Keen's business partner since 2022, going on year 4 now. Whew. I've mainly been helping Steve manage his paid Challenge group and have accidentally neglected this Free Group. I'll take full responsibility for that. Let me make up for my mistakes now. For some reason the free book bundle was linking somewhere else, when it should've just shown the download files. As promised, below are the 3 books that were promised - usually $104.97 USD, but 100% FREE for you guys here. Below are the details copied from Steve's email: 1. Funny Money ($34.99) – A humorous, visual reality check on the world of money (made with talented cartoonist, Miguel Guerra). 2. New Economics Sampler ($34.99) – Groundbreaking realities that demolish outdated assumptions. 3. Macroeconomics for Engineers ($34.99) – The newest one. Often referred as the "Elon Is Wrong" Amazon category-bestseller. A deep dive into market dynamics from an engineer’s perspective. Thank you for your patience & trusting Steve in fighting the mainstream delusions today. I really hope you enjoy these books as much as everyone else has. P.S. I'm curious, which book are you going to read first?My fav is the cartoons from Funny Money but others really love the Elon one

This might seem well off-topic, but I think there is a strong underlying connection with economics. Two slightly-rebellious physicists make a case for the treatment of information as being fundamentally missing in current physics. During my career as a signal-processing engineer, I’d often thought the same. But in my part of that discipline, information always had the context of a human source and sink - so subjectivity was giving the raw, bit-based Shannon-measure its meaning, via an interpretation of human significance and purpose. See the Aeon article ‘Is information a fundamental force in the universe’ with 10-minute video at https://aeon.co/videos/a-radical-reimagining-of-physics-puts-information-at-its-centre and the Quanta article ‘Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex’ at https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-everything-in-the-universe-turns-more-complex-20250402/ Both Lee Smolin and Ilya Prigogine have argued for a reinterpretation of the role of time in physics, but not from an informational standpoint. For sure, the 2nd law of thermodynamics in a closed system demands a decrease in order with time. Yet the history of both the universe and of the life in it deals with open systems, and rather obviously is characterised by the exact opposite process - an increase of order over time. That’s what these two physicists suggest should extend physics, through finding another route to reach significance without requiring subjectivity, via what they describe as a functional sub-set of information in its Shannon-measure. I’d say the link with economics comes through the processes that the various schools of orthodox economics (Physiocrats likely excepted) have devised to move from observation of an individual trade or exchange to an overall, aggregated description of a whole sector or an entire economy. I’m thinking of things (at the macro level) such as:

Here's what looks like another successful cooperative to add to the list - small but impactful in areas well outside its original housing remit. See - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/26/giroscope-housing-cooperative-1980s-hull-thatcher One of its founders who is still there, Martin Newman, illuminates a failure implicit in modern politics - that Government policies change too often - saying: “You just can’t rock up and tackle deep-seated issues involving people – jobs, debt advice, health, social problems – in a few years. That’s where government schemes have failed. You’ve got to be in it for the long term.”

'Conversations in real-world economics' by Jamie Morgan of the World Economics Association has just been published. It features interviews with various heterodox economists of somewhat varying persuasions. I'd say it's useful for how it illustrates the breadth of the field and its vitality. I found the first two interviews especially interesting - 1) a view of ecological economics from Herman Daly 2) a view from finance to climate crisis from Steve Keen. ISBN 9798282878806 paperback Photos of the front and rear are attached.