My writing

Our need for agency is poorly understood. My writing seeks to address this. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, I draw on philosophy, psychology, law and policy to explain why agency over our thoughts, feelings and actions is critical to the health and wellbeing of humans and wider society. I explore why engineering human behaviour has become a societal norm and the consequences for our agency. Below are some of my essays. New thinking is published on my blog The Human Agency on Substack.

Drill sergeants and cheerleaders

The habit industry says the way to change is to stop thinking and surrender to the grind. Five failed experiments, a Super Bowl-winning coach and a 2,650-mile trail suggest the opposite: we last at the things we've made our own. Read this essay.

The case for trusting yourself

A smart water bottle, a smart watch and a childhood drive across London. When we rely on devices to tell us when we're thirsty, tired or done, we stop listening to ourselves, and there is wisdom in our wiring worth trusting. Read this essay.

What is human agency and do you have it?

Agency has become a buzzword and it's a tricky thing to pin down. A plain definition, a toddlers' picture book that turns out to be its greatest manifesto, and a way to tell whether your own sense of it is strong. Read this essay.

The Attachment Economy is eroding human agency

The greatest risk from AI isn't that machines will decide for us. It's that we stop wanting to decide for ourselves. How the tech sector moved from capturing our attention to cultivating our attachment, and what that does to our capacity to choose. Read this essay.

The Human Agency Glossary

A cheat sheet for talking about a problem most of us feel but few of us can name. The words for what is happening to our agency, what is causing it, and what might restore it, some established, some I coined because the right term didn't exist. Read this essay.