Maxwell

ESC

MAR 04, 2026

https://escapekey.substack.com/p/maxwell

"The line runs directly from Maxwell’s publishing catalogue, through Beer’s prototype in Chile, to the researchers Epstein was funding decades later. They all belonged to the same tradition. And that tradition leads somewhere specific.

"General systems theory, input-output analysis, and cybernetics are the intellectual ancestors of artificial intelligence.

"A system that watches what people and institutions are doing, compares it against a target, and automatically adjusts the flow of money and resources to close the gap — that is cybernetic adaptive management45. When you run it using AI to do the watching and programmable digital currency to do the enforcing, it can operate across an entire planet — ‘Spaceship Earth’, if you prefer46 — automatically, without anyone voting on it."