About Venkatesh Rao
This is Contraptions, a weekly newsletter by me, Venkatesh Rao. Themes explored include Contraption Theory, The Societal Machine, Cozytech, Fear of Oozification, and A Camera, not an Engine. There is an opt-in section called Sloptraptions that features my AI-assisted essays. At present the content is roughly 50-50 handwritten and AI-assisted writing.
As the name of the newsletter and the themes suggest, the general idea is to explore our world as a contraption-of-contraptions, with contraptioney mental models, and a contraptioneer sensibility. The sensibility is that of half-assed engineering, but the scope is universal.