Leaving Home to Save It
March 23, 2026
Of late, I have been intensely feeling the pull of home. This is perhaps a consequence of my Quixotic effort to develop serious regulations of Generative AI, seeding laws in state capitols around the country to impose liabilities upon Big Tech companies, and being constantly wired into drop-everything-right-now calls to respond to the latest developments on Capitol Hill. Can one sleep if Big Tech never sleeps, if the bodies are mounting up, if lives are being mercilessly ground down, does one have the luxury of stopping?
It sure doesn’t feel like it. And yet, the call of home penetrates deeply. For where else am I to retreat to if everywhere else is connected? There, I find a loving wife, a hot meal, a drink, a hug, four small children, ages 7, 5, 3 and three months. It’s not exactly a quiet house. It’s a messy house. But it makes a good kind of noise, and a good kind of mess, far better than the buzz that constantly washes over me—over us. Home offers (if I can risk a little heart-on-the-sleeve) the sound of love—and I can only ever really hear it if I disconnect from that other sound, which Paul Kingsnorth, if I understand him correctly, has called the Machine.
