Telos by Shrikant Kumar
Latest
  1. The Library in the Air
  2. A Factory for Other People’s Ideas
  3. The Blue Dot
  4. Paying a Stranger
  5. A Computer of One’s Own

Philosophy of technology, one product at a time

Every product is an argument.

Each tile is one product: why it came into existence, how it evolved, and the belief behind every decision that shaped it. Tiles keep growing as the products do.

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On a dark field, a grid of small rectangular tiles fills the left side, with a few slots shown only as dashed outlines where tiles are missing. Tiles from the right edge of the grid drift along thin violet curves that converge on a single point, where a row of larger tiles forms a queue; the first is amber with a play symbol and a part-filled progress bar beneath it, the next four are violet and fade in turn, and a dotted line runs on past the edge of the frame.
Updated 3 Nov 2026

1934 → 2026

Music and Video Streaming

The Library in the Air

When everything can be played and nothing is kept, what happens to what we value, what we remember and whom we pay?

59 min read Mind & Tools Ethics Information
A circular wafer on a dark field, notched at the bottom and divided into a grid of small square dies, each marked with a faint pattern of lines, squares or circles in violet, amber or pale cream, while dozens of thin curved lines run in from scattered points on the left and right edges and converge on the wafer’s rim.
Updated 24 Oct 2026

1958 → 2026

Chip Foundries

A Factory for Other People’s Ideas

56 min read Hardware History of Computing
A faint, slightly tilted street grid on a dark field crossed by three large thin circles, two violet and one amber, whose centres lie beyond the edges of the frame and which meet at a single glowing blue-white dot; a short amber route zigzags from the dot to a ringed destination, and a dotted trail of earlier positions fades behind it.
Updated 24 Oct 2026

1714 → 2026

GPS and Digital Maps

The Blue Dot

49 min read Mind & Tools Ethics
Scattered pale points on the left and right of a dark field, linked by dozens of thin amber curves that all pass through a single glowing switch at the centre, marked with two arrows pointing in opposite directions and ringed in violet.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

c. 3000 BCE → 2026

Digital Payments

Paying a Stranger

44 min read Communication Systems Design
Concentric dashed ellipses labelled kernel, drivers, services and programs surround a glowing core, with many small windows labelled with process numbers orbiting around it.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1956 → 2013

Operating Systems

A Computer of One’s Own

25 min read Systems Design History of Computing
A dark network of linked points on the left, the most linked of them glowing amber, with curved lines running to a stack of ten result bars on the right. The two top bars are violet and fed by small violet diamonds that stand apart from the network.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1876 → 2026

Web Search

The Auction Behind the Answer

63 min read Information The Web
A grid of app tiles enclosed by a violet wall in a dark field, with a single narrow amber gate on the left side through which dozens of thin amber paths converge from scattered points outside.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1912 → 2026

App Stores and Platforms

The Walled Garden

33 min read Interface Design Ethics
A small dashed square with a circular arrow at the centre of a dark field, surrounded by a widening elliptical spiral of small amber dots, one for each monthly payment, with brighter dots once a year forming a vertical line.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1960s → 2026

Subscription Software (SaaS)

Software You Never Own

47 min read Productivity Tools Systems Design
Irregular amber lines wander from scattered points on the left of a dark field and converge into a rigid violet grid of identical square cells on the right. A few small dashed amber circles float between them, belonging to neither.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1911 → 2025

Enterprise Software (ERP)

The Company Inside the Machine

33 min read Systems Design Data
Rows of small stall outlines receding into the dark, each showing a row of five dots, some lit amber like star ratings. In the front row, one stall is outlined in violet and glows, with all five dots lit.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

Antiquity → 2025

Online Marketplaces

The Bazaar Without Walls

38 min read The Web Ethics
A vertical column of content cards at the centre of a dark field, the top card glowing amber. Around it, faint violet ellipses sweep a cloud of hundreds of pale dots, and thin amber curves pull a few chosen dots into the column.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1992 → 2026

Recommendation Feeds

What You Might Also Like

38 min read Mind & Tools Information
A single amber line of commits runs across a dark field from left to right. Violet branches split off it, run alongside, sometimes merge back, and multiply towards the right until the field is crossed by many parallel lines.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1950s–1960s → 2025

Open Source Software

The Gift That Runs the World

36 min read Programming Open Standards
A dark grid of cells receding into the distance, with one amber cell at the centre glowing and thin violet lines of dependency running from it to dozens of other cells, which brighten as the change ripples outward.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1494 → 2023

Spreadsheets

The Machine for Asking What If

42 min read Productivity Tools Data
A row of glowing word tokens along the bottom of a dark field, joined by many thin violet and amber arcs of attention, converging on a single bright token at the right where the next word is being chosen.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1843 → 2026

Large Language Models

The Machine That Answers

61 min read Mind & Tools Epistemology
A series of nested rectangles, each a machine inside the one around it, growing brighter toward a small glowing innermost machine labelled with a question mark about its privilege; four smaller machines sit beside the outer layers.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1961 → 2025

Virtualization

Machines Inside Machines

32 min read Systems Design History of Computing
A lit manuscript page with rows of text bars, one word struck through in red and a replacement underlined in violet, a blinking amber cursor, a margin comment, and five earlier drafts fanned out in shadow behind it.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1874 → 2025

Word Processors

Ink That Never Dries

28 min read Writing Productivity Tools
Horizontal strata of code, from binary digits at the bottom through assembly, FORTRAN, C, Java and Rust to an English sentence at the top, with a glowing lambda at the centre.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1951 → 2025

Programming Languages

Every Programming Language Is a Theory of the Programmer

38 min read Programming History of Computing
A honeycomb of faint hexagonal cells covering the dark field, with concentric amber rings radiating from a glowing smartphone at the centre.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1946 → 2025

Mobile Phones

The Number That Became a Person

25 min read Hardware Interface Design
A pendulum hangs from the top centre, swinging between a server rack on the left and a browser window on the right, with faint earlier positions marked 1995, 2005, 2013 and 2021.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1993 → 2024

Web Frameworks

Where Should the Program Run?

25 min read Programming The Web
On the left, small record boxes tangled in curved pointer chains. In the centre, a clean lit table with a SQL query above it. On the right, a column of numbered log lines.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1890 → 2024

Databases

Who Has to Know Where the Data Lives?

46 min read Data History of Computing
Dozens of small message bubbles stream inward from every direction toward a single lit figure in the centre, marked with a notification badge reading 275. A line of telegraph dots and dashes crosses the left side.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1844 → 2025

Communication Tools

Who Pays for a Message?

27 min read Communication History of Computing
A chip die made of a twelve-by-twelve grid of cores glowing amber at the centre, with faint vacuum tubes on the left, rows of server racks on the right, and a violet curve that rises steeply and then flattens.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1936 → 2024

Compute

The Universal Machine and the End of the Free Lunch

23 min read Hardware Systems Design
A large golden @ sign glows at the centre of a dark field. Around it, dozens of small circles, each a separate mail server, are joined by thin lines, and tiny envelopes travel along the lines between them.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1965 → 2026

Email

An Address Anyone Can Write To

52 min read Communication Open Standards
On the left, a web of small circular profile icons is joined by thin golden lines like a network of friends. Curving threads pull out of the web toward a tall phone-shaped column on the right, filled with stacked content cards, from which a cloud of pink hearts rises.
Updated 22 Oct 2026

1997 → 2026

Social Media

Everyone You Know, and Everyone You Don’t

51 min read Communication Ethics
Numbered index cards scattered around a lamp-lit centre, joined by curved lines, with one larger glowing card in the middle.
Updated 19 Oct 2026

c. 370 BC → 2024

Note-Taking Apps

Notes That Talk Back: The Long Search for a Second Brain

29 min read Productivity Tools Mind & Tools

For people who decide

Beyond the products

The essays explain why things exist. These sections turn that history into judgement: the losers as well as the winners, the ideas behind the decisions, and places to practise deciding without hindsight.

  1. Read · 10 technologies Roads Not Taken The technologies that lost, explained in the same terms as the winners: why they made sense, why they lost, what survived.
  2. Read · 10 papers Founding Papers The short documents where modern computing was first argued, read closely and checked against what happened.
  3. Read · 17 memos Memos The letters and emails where real strategy decisions were argued, annotated with outcomes and lessons.
  4. Think · 41 ideas Ideas The concepts from philosophy, psychology and economics behind good and bad judgement, each with its strongest objection.
  5. Practise · 11 blind cases Decide Real decisions with the names hidden. Choose, state your confidence and write a pre-mortem before the reveal.
  6. Practise · 229 decisions Decision Atlas Every judged decision on the site, filterable by era, verdict and pattern, with process and outcome judged apart.
  7. Books · 16 paths Reading Paths Ordered routes through the library, each pursuing one question about judgement, strategy, systems or the self.

The method

Four questions Aristotle would ask of your phone

To know a thing, Aristotle said, you must know its four causes. Every tile returns to them, because together they explain not only how a product works but why it exists.

  1. I

    Material cause

    What is it made of?

    The chips, protocols, code and constraints of its time. What was technically possible decides what was even thinkable.

  2. II

    Formal cause

    What shape did it take?

    The interface, the metaphor, the defaults. Form is where a philosophy becomes visible and starts to teach habits.

  3. III

    Efficient cause

    Who, or what, brought it about?

    People, markets, accidents and rivals. The forces that pushed it into the world, and kept pushing it to change.

  4. IV

    Final cause

    What is it for?

    Its telos. The purpose it was built to serve, and the purpose it ended up serving, which is rarely the same.

Who is asking

I’m Shrikant Kumar, a technology enthusiast who is just trying to understand products a little better. Not to review them, but to ask why they are the way they are.

More about this project →

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