Introducing Soft Power

Evolving the Luftmensch

A Mountainous Landscape with a Waterfall, Kerstiaen de Keuninck c. 1600

When I started this blog a few years ago, I was interested in the broad questions of human flourishing for a practical, personal reason: to figure out how I wished to live. At the time, I was a lost college student, fumbling for purpose and direction, both literally and figuratively wandering in the wilderness. Much of what I questioned were the default narratives and dominant coercions, all of which seemed to be shuttling me toward ends that were not my own. I mused about this in a dreamy, rudderless manner — hence, the adoption of the Luftmensch.

Today, I’m still thinking of those questions, but with greater direction and determination — to figure out how we, as humans, can live fully and freely in an age of intelligent machines. The age-old questions of human flourishing have taken on a renewed urgency — not only in the realm of AI, where I work, but in politics, education, science, and more. To build a future worth inhabiting, we must examine what it means to live well, and think critically about what we ought to aspire toward. Otherwise, we merely become instruments of others’ invisible whims.

Thus, this rebrand.

Soft Power is an examination of the invisible architectures of influence that shape humans and societies, and an inquiry into how we might choose to engage with them. To wield soft power is to affect others through attraction rather than coercion; it is subtle and often alluring, which makes it harder to recognize and resist.

Technologies exercise soft power by shaping the world through surveillance, mediation, and nudging. We experience this through algorithms that curate our desires and direct our attention, and through digital systems that shape social norms and transform the physical world. Think of the falling literacy rates among college-educated Americans, exacerbated by AI tools that help students cheat themselves out of learning; the rise of “Instagram face,” where women chisel and plump their faces for a selfie-optimized look; the loss of walkable communities and the fragmentation of communities as cities were planned around cars; the normalization of anonymous callousness and the erosion of deep, meaningful, in-person friendships through dating apps and social media; even how tomatoes were bred to be hardier — and thus less juicy, flavorful, and ripe — to withstand the mechanical tomato harvester (tomato haters — a real tomato has never been tried!).

Our technologies have always molded our environments and behaviors, often in ways that are difficult to anticipate. That makes it all the more essential to interrogate these technologies as they’re being built and adopted — to recognize soft power as it’s being exercised.

But power itself is neither good nor evil. The real consideration is: how is it exercised, and in service to what?

I am just as interested in how soft power can be wielded for good — how we might design better narratives, cultivate richer aspirations, and build better tools, institutions, and systems that help us orient toward our highest human values and the long-term, collective good.

I’ll end with a promise. Every week, I’ll share some readings and my soft takes. And I’ll continue to muse about technology and humanity — what it means to live a rich human life in this age. I have some other projects brewing on this, too. I can’t wait to share them with you.