Foom update

Abstract

To extend our reach, we humans have built tools, machines, firms, and nations. And as these are powerful, we try to maintain control of them. But as efforts to control them usually depend on their details, we have usually waited to think about how to control them until we had concrete examples in front of us. In the year 1000, for example, there wasn’t much we could do to usefully think about how to control most things that have only appeared in the last two centuries, such as cars or international courts.