The internet was supposed to be better than this.
I know, because I was there. I've been building on the web since the 90's - before javascript, before social media, before any of it. I watched the early, wide, weird internet get swallowed by platforms designed to extract our attention and sell it.
I watched the best engineers of my generation disappear into Facebook and Google and build elegant, terrible machines that addicted us and turned our time - our literal lives - into an extra zero in a billionaire's bank account.
And then, four years ago, AI happened - and we were back at the start again. You could do anything, teach computers to do things that used to be impossible. Since then, I've built cutting-edge AI reasoning systems for high-stakes decisions, creating agents and processes that augmented human intelligence, instead of replacing it.
But as I worked, I've watched the same cycle start to repeat - cynical, money-at-all-costs companies are scooping up talent, trying to build a better, more addictive terrible machine. Even more cynical companies are straight-out trying to replace people with LLMs. Emails from assholes I'd never met were piling up in my inbox, and I knew I needed to do something more radical than building some smart things for reasonably good people. I needed to put this tech into the hands of the rest of us - and the best of us.
So I quit. And now, instead of building tools for them, I build tools for us.
I'm Steven. And I'm essentially a handful of programmers, artists, scientists, and one very overwhelmed poet all stuffed into a trenchcoat.
Part of me has been writing code for 30 years, building frameworks, tools, and open source libraries for startups, big companies, academia, and NGOs. Part of me writes words that help people handle their brains - a book about depression that's saved lives, and letters and blog posts that have been read by millions, in every country on earth. Part of me does science, publishing and contributing to papers in several domains. Part of me takes photos and makes videos. Part of me writes poetry. Part of me learns languages, slow-traveling the globe more than a decade straight. And part of me sits around trying to figure out how to manage all these different directions, and what they all have in common.
And what we've landed on - what everyone in the trenchcoat agrees on - is this:
I build things that help people, and I empower people who are helping people.
Things that actually help us. Get us off our devices and un-addicted. Help us figure out what we care about, get unstuck, get more purpose in our lives and less bullshit. Help us navigate our imperfect brains, and all the neurodivergence and mental health challenges and beauty that's part of being human.
What's that mean in practice? Well, for this phase in my life, two things - tools for human beings, and consulting for folks who are doing good.
Fairly-priced, no-subscription, no-bullshit tools that help you see what you couldn't see before - and then do something about it.
Non-profits, social enterprises, mission-driven teams — I help organizations that are making things better understand and leverage the latest tech, so that their computers work for them and not the other way around.
I've spent the last four years building AI at the highest levels — reasoning systems, decision-making tools, things that genuinely augment human intelligence instead of replacing it with slop. I know what this technology can do, and I know what it can't. If you're trying to help people and you think AI might be part of how, let's talk.
I make things. Rather a lot of things. You might like some of them.
If you'd like, you can sign up to get an email when I put out a new project. No spam, no automated email sequences, no bullshit. Just a normal, actual email from me when I release something new.
No spam. No automated emails. No sharing your information with anyone.
Oh - and before you get the wrong idea, I don't have any magic - a whole lot of the things I make fail. I keep a whole list of them.