Welcome to @atacostsubstack A writer’s notes on what every gain quietly takes from us. Progress always has a second dial. New essays twice a month. All free to read.

I don’t think food will be around fifteen years from now. At least in the way we know it. And I also know how this sounds. I see it on people’s faces when I bring it up at dinner. But hear me out.... atacost.substack.com/p/shoul…

Have an article coming out tomorrow, speculating on something that is a part of ALL of our every day lives currently, being removed completely inside of a generation. What is your best guess as to what that thing might be?

"I do not need the GPS to the airport. The route is in my head. Yet it’s always on. The phone has the road now. The man at the next pump is just a man at the next pump." Full piece (free): atacost.substack.com/p/we-wi… What convenience quietly removed a small joy for you?

The phone has the road now. The phone knows the way. The man at the next pump is just a man at the next pump. On GPS, and what it quietly removed. open.substack.com/pub/atacos…

History tells us, over and over, that we are terrible at projecting the real cost of any change, any technology. And yet we are so sure what the cost of the next thing will be. Humans evolve. Humility doesn't.

Henry Ford carried a watch with two dials. One showed the time in Detroit. The other showed the time everyone else had agreed on. He carried it because, in 1900, those were not the same. open.substack.com/pub/atacos…

Every gain has a cost. We just usually don't count it. Tomorrow I'm launching At a Cost — a Substack about what progress quietly takes from us. Technology, ritual, the small things that go missing while we're looking somewhere else. atacost.substack.com