This week’s Temporal Zone Transmission begins on a quiet Suffolk lane, reading a curious news story.
Thousands of authors are publishing empty books in protest at AI training models.
The fear is simple: machines are stealing human creativity.
But the deeper story is older than AI.
Piracy was the norm in publishing long before modern copyright laws appeared. When Byron’s poems were released by John Murray in London, rival publishers simply reprinted them. No permission. No licensing.
The internet only accelerated what history already showed: information escapes containment.
In this transmission I explore how markets, technology and culture shift faster than institutions can adapt — and why the future rarely waits for permission.
Guardian article that sparked the reflection:
