History on a Story Arc
Act I

The Question

What is wrong, and how can it be tested?

Act image — to be chosen
Chapter 1 · Setting

The Diagnosis

Why does every correction land a little beside the mark?

Abstract

Our time describes itself in a vocabulary of missing: the alignment problem in artificial intelligence, burnout at work, grief and anxiety about the climate. The fields differ, and the diagnosis is the same. Each correction is sincere and intelligent, and each lands a little beside the mark: efficiency raises consumption, and presence needs an app. When doing more no longer helps, the vocabulary turns into a cry: this cannot be fixed from where we stand. The chapter does not answer the cry. It asks whether the missing is an accident or the shape of a plot.

Chapter text in preparation.

Figure 1. The correction that misses
Figure 1. A target, a series of corrections, each landing a little beside the mark, and the drift they make together. Planned
Notes
  1. Jevons, The Coal Question (1865): efficiency and rising consumption. — to verify
  2. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (2009). — to verify
  3. Christian, The Alignment Problem (2020). — to verify
  4. Survey of 10,000 young people on climate anxiety (2021). — source to verify

Prompts for this chapter →

Working material: Out of Alignment