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

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#Epistemology

How tools change what we can know, and how we come to trust what we know.

8 products · latest update first

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 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 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
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
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
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

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