A Working Theory
On technological overhangs, the gap between the possible and the actual, and why I am mapping the large problems and occasionally building for the small ones.
3 min read
Two wards, two responses
In 1772, Joseph Priestley discovered nitrous oxide. By 1799, Humphry Davy had realised it destroyed physical pain. Yet for the next forty-five years, it was used primarily as a party trick for Victorian aristocrats. It wasn't until 1844 that a dentist finally used it for surgery.
For half a century, humanity had the ability to perform painless surgery—and chose to suffer because the knowledge hadn't been operationalised.
Contrast this with insulin. Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated it in Toronto in 1921; it was deployed in a clinic to save a dying boy by January 1922. Mass production began months later.
Same type of discovery. Radically different response time.
The difference wasn't technology
The difference was recognition, infrastructure, and the will to deploy.
This is technological overhang: the gap between what is technically possible and what we are actually doing with it.
We are living through the largest overhang in history. AI capabilities have advanced faster than our ability to restructure work, infrastructure, or society around them. Most organisations are treating these new tools like nitrous oxide at a party—generating fun images and chatbots—while the "surgery" remains unchanged.
What this site is for
My thesis is simple: we are surrounded by problems that are stuck not because they are technically hard, but because nobody is paying attention.
This site exists to find those problems and explore what the new leverage of AI might do about them.
The primary work is mapping—understanding why capable technology isn't being deployed, where the bottlenecks are, who's already working on it. I call these investigations Avenues. They're cartographic: the goal is to make a problem space legible, not to promise a solution.
Example: Desalination. We have efficient membranes and cheap solar power. Yet small-scale projects fail because of payment models and supply chains, not chemistry. I map these failure modes to find where a small lever might move a heavy object—where a better maintenance model or payment interface could mean clean water for a village that currently has none.
The secondary work—when opportunities emerge—is building something small. A tool that helps twenty people in a care home, or an interface that helps someone navigate bureaucracy. These are the "nobody can be bothered" problems: the technology is trivial, the need is real, but there's no prestige and no profit, so nobody does it. I haven't built any of these yet. But I intend to.
I might be wrong about which problems are tractable. But I'd rather be wrong while trying than right while watching.
The ward is filling up
Every year we delay using what we already know is a choice to accept unnecessary difficulty.
Every day with these capabilities sitting unused is another day of preventable struggle—whether that's a village without water or a family overwhelmed by paperwork.
I would rather be the 1922 doctors than the 1800s party guests.
Interested in exploring similar ideas? Get in touch.