What You Missed (2025) & What's Next (2026)

What I published in 2025, my upcoming book, McLuhan deep-dive, John Vervaeke conversations, and joining the Next Crusade of Beauty.

What a time to be alive.

I’m reviewing and reflecting on what I’ve published this year on Bionic Writer.

The schedule was inconsistent but I managed to get a few things out. Most importantly, I finally finished my Human Being in the Age of AI essay series. These are being collected, edited, and turned into a book (out in 2026).

If you’ve enjoyed anything I’ve written, I have a small favor to ask you—and my ask is simple:

For most of the past couple of years, I had Likes and such turned off. Which means that the essays that got a lot of views (over 3k unique views) or a few (~500 unique views) all have zero Likes (except the last couple of essays).

A lot of people have emailed me back and said they loved such-and-such an essay, so I know that at least some of you “liked” a few of my posts. The past couple of posts had Likes enabled and got some love (thank you!)

If you have a minute, and if there’s an essay you like, would you be willing to give it a Like?

It would mean the world to me and I would greatly appreciate it!

No obligation or expectation on my end, of course. Only do it if you want to.

With all that said, here’s a review:

The Revenge of Beauty

This became a focal point and main view through which I’m grappling with the AI we have already, what’s coming, and what that means for us. It was initially a rough fever-dream of a vision in 2023 that I refined into an updated version in 2024.

But, I’m sharing this in this 2025 review because it’s foundational to my views and thinking, and everything else I’ve published in 2025 have their origin in this:

If you only read one other essay of mine, this should be it.

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Series: Human Being in the Age of AI

After 6 years of thinking about these themes, and spending about 2 years writing about it, I finished the series of 7 essays.

This will become a book in 2026 (currently in editing) and can be read in any order:

As mentioned, this will become a book in 2026 (final title to be determind).

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Series: Thinking with LLMs

A trilogy on using AI as a cognitive partner rather than a replacement for thought.

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Video Series: AI and the Big Questions

Video essays tackling the deepest questions about AI and humanity. I had fun recording these and experimenting with video as a format.

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What’s Coming in 2026

The central question stays the same: How do we think better with AI rather than outsourcing thought to it? Everything I’m writing in 2026 approaches this from different angles.

With Andrew McLuhan on AI and Media

I’ll be working closely with Andrew McLuhan (grandson of Marshall McLuhan) to probe what AI means through the lens of Marshall’s ideas. We’ll explore what “the medium is the message” looks like when the medium can generate its own messages, how AI extends (and amputates) human faculties, and what media ecology becomes when the environment itself is intelligent. Expect essays, dialogues, and collaborative thinking on AI as the ultimate McLuhan test case.

Thinking with LLMs, Continued

The trilogy on cognitive partnership was just the beginning. In 2026 I’ll go deeper into the practice of regenerative dialogue with specific techniques, workflows, and mental models for using AI as a sparring partner rather than a secretary (all drawn from real-world, first-hand experience in how I work every day). Expect pieces on metacognitive training, building “cognitive gyms” with Claude Projects, and the phenomenology of human-AI collaboration. The goal is making the abstract concrete, turning philosophy into practice.

Embodied Cognition and AI

Thinking isn’t just mental. It’s embodied—sensing, feeling, breathing, moving. Your nervous system is doing cognition long before your prefrontal cortex gets involved. The body knows things the mind hasn’t caught up to yet. In 2026 I’ll explore what this means for working with AI systems, agents, and LLMs. How do we stay embodied when the interface is a chat window? How can AI help us tune into somatic signals rather than override them? What would it look like to design AI interactions that enhance felt sense rather than flatten it? This is the territory where cognitive science meets phenomenology meets practice.

Writing: Fiction and Poetry

I’m continuing my focus on craft. On the fiction side, I’ve been working with the Story Grid methodology and writing scenes and short stories, exploring how its frameworks for genre, scene construction, and narrative arc can be used alongside AI without collapsing into slop. On the poetry side, I’m going deep on sonnets with the constraint as liberation, and the discipline as discovery. Writing is thinking made visible, and form is how we learn to feel the shape of thought. AI can be a collaborator here too, but only if we know what we’re doing first.

The Revenge of Beauty Meets the Meaning Crisis

The Revenge of Beauty thesis goes deeper in 2026 through engagement with John Vervaeke’s work on relevance realization, participatory knowing, and the meaning crisis. If beauty is an objective force that reattaches us to reality, Vervaeke’s cognitive science helps explain how—through attention that doesn’t just filter information but constitutes what kind of thing comes into being for us. Essays will explore the convergence of metaxological philosophy (William Desmond’s “porosity” and “agapeic mindfulness”) with Vervaeke’s 4P3R framework, asking what happens when attention, beauty, and reality converge.

Beauty Through History, Metaphysics, and the Humanities

The Revenge of Beauty is about recovering something we lost long before screens. In 2026 I’ll trace beauty’s exile and return through history (how did we get here?), metaphysics (what is beauty, ontologically?), art (what does beauty demand of makers?), philosophy (who saw this coming, and who missed it?), and the broader humanities. These essays will approach familiar themes from new angles, building the philosophical architecture beneath the central thesis.

This will be polemical. I see it as a Crusade and a Jeremiad. Opinions will be strong, likely offensive, and meant to wake up the sleepers.

The Red Thread

Every thread in 2026 serves the same end: understanding and strengthening human cognition and imagination, in all their facets, in the age of AI. McLuhan shows how the medium reshapes the mind. Vervaeke shows how attention constitutes reality. The humanities show what’s worth thinking about. And the practical work on LLMs shows how to actually do it day by day, conversation by conversation. Different lenses, same question: What does it mean to think well when machines can think too? And how can you make use of it to strengthen your humanity instead of becoming a victim like the majority of LLM users are and will become?

We’re facing a total onslaught where most people will end up mentally impaired by AI. I don’t want that for you. I want something better.

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Upcoming (Paid) Exclusive Access?

I’m also considering turning on a paid option, with exclusive access to either Q&A and discussions, unique workshops on deepening our humanity, and other ideas I have percolating.

If there was a paid option, what would be most helpful and valuable to you? Reply and let me know if you have wishes. Anything is possible.

Talk again soon,
Samuel Woods
The Bionic Writer