Will 2026 be one of those grand historical years that change the world — like 1917, 1789 or 1968? Not according to Keith Teare, publisher of That Was The Week newsletter and co-host of our weekly tech roundup. For Keith, the best historical analogy is 1905, the year of the first abortive Russian revolution. The year that didn’t change the world.

Keith’s latest tech newsletter asks “What Time Is It?” His answer is that we have “multiple clocks” — micro and macro, short, medium, and long term to make sense of our current AI moment. This week, for example, OpenAI and Anthropic both shipped work-focused products, and most of the world hasn’t noticed. Thus his allusion to 1905. We are on the brink of massive change. But nothing is going to change. Not quite yet. Until everything does.

Five Takeaways

• It's 1905 in the AI Economy. A failed revolution: radical change that's real but not yet visible. OpenAI and Anthropic both shipped work products this week — and most of the world shrugged.

• The Socialist Temptation of Slippery Sam. The WSJ calls Altman's 5% offer socialism. Keith — who hated the word even as a communist — says it's capitalism's end game: a sovereign wealth fund holding equity in companies everybody wants to fund.

• The Multiple Clocks. Micro and macro, short to long term: deployment friction at the bottom, Narayanan's “normal technology” at the top. Electricity was normal too — it still changed everything, just slowly.

• Abundance and Its Discontents. Yglesias wants radical land use reform. Keith says the Elizabeth Line multiplied London's land fifty-fold and offers Andrew a house on it; Andrew notes prices haven't fallen.

• Two Americas — and the Small Stuff. Krastev: exceptionalism is gone, MAGA is defensive. Smith: no trains, but AI upends the world. Keith's rejoinder: go back in history, no one had time for small things.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Read That Was The Week: thatwastheweek.com

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: 2026 as 1917, 1789, 1848, 1968 — or 1905?
00:01:43 What happened in 1905
00:03:02 Radical change that isn't visible yet
00:03:52 The socialist temptation of Sam Altman
00:04:48 Socialism, Americanized: the capitalist state
00:06:41 Sovereign wealth funds and capitalism's end game
00:08:43 The opposite of British Leyland
00:09:15 The AI economy's multiple clocks
00:11:14 Apple sues OpenAI
00:11:31 Work adapts: humans driving AI
00:12:18 The civilization clock: Narayanan's “normal technology”
00:13:33 The Brown professor and the take-home test
00:14:49 Optimism becomes grounded
00:15:29 Everyone's turned against Anthropic: the price problem
00:16:28 Yglesias: save capitalism with land use reform
00:18:35 The Elizabeth Line and the meaning of London
00:21:50 Keith offers Andrew a home on the Elizabeth Line
00:22:10 Noah Smith, Ivan Krastev, and America's lost faith
00:24:47 Two Americas: no trains, but the AI industry
00:26:31 Mehran Gul and the new geography of innovation
00:28:35 American Dynamism and the math problem
00:29:50 John Battelle: have we lost the plot?
00:30:58 Bogost, the small stuff, and the interview of the week
00:33:26 Creeping abundance: no one had time for small things
00:34:48 Eventbrite: real life made more valuable
00:36:11 Post of the week: remembering David Potter
00:37:02 A sad note from Cape Town, and goodbye