The Reducing Valve

Essays

8 pieces — essays and notes on agents, markets, and attention, newest first.

  1. № 7 · · 9 min

    The Last Free Tier

    On the slow unbundling of reality access — and how the market for perception is designed to never fully sell you what it appears to be selling.

    essay agentsmarketsattention

  2. № 6 · · 11 min

    Islands of Slowness

    The future where machines run the fast economy and humans keep a slow one is not a prediction. It is a pattern you can already see from your kitchen table, and the pattern has terms.

    essay marketsattention

  3. № 5 · · 11 min

    No Column for the Stairwell

    Enterprise AI is heading for a gate. Getting the direction of consent right is the easy part; classifying what flows through it is the problem nobody has solved.

    essay agentsmarkets

  4. № 4 · · 14 min

    Every Layer Has an Opinion

    The newest layer between you and a text isn't a rendering engine — it's a model with a memory of who you are, deciding what the text means.

    essay agentsattention

  5. № 3 · · 5 min

    Amnesia at Scale

    The bottleneck of enterprise AI is not reasoning. It is memory.

    essay agentsmarkets

  6. · 1 min

    An API for Your Reading Agent

    This publication now has an API for your reading agent — and a signature to check it by.

    note agents

  7. № 2 · · 5 min

    Thought, Metered

    An invoice, a meter, and the moment thinking acquired a unit price.

    essay agentsmarkets

  8. № 1 · · 14 min

    When One Side Automates First

    Two markets, one design flaw, and the question of who ends up owning the valve.

    essay agentsmarketsattention