R Raian Pollock a reading room · agency, attention, making

№ 00 · A provenance map, kept in public

What's been on my mind

A living map of books, studies, documentaries, practices, and original ideas that shaped how I think about cognition, education, technology, risk, and agency.

Influence is not endorsement. Some entries are things I agree with, some are unresolved, and some are here because they sharpened the question.

N E S W
Study Drug harm, self and others

A policy lens that separated private risk from social externalities.

Practice Meditation as attention training

Less mystical as a claim, more concrete as a way of observing thought.

Original idea Vibe hardware and material commons

What happens when software taste starts to shape the physical world?

№ 02 · Selected work

Public-facing fragments

The old homepage exposed a private directory. This version keeps the public surface curated while moving sensitive pages into the vault.

W-01 · Product thesis Learning systems that return agency Tools should make learners feel more capable, not just more measured. Public essay coming soon
W-02 · Signal work Dashboards for institutional stress Interfaces for noticing weak signals before they become obvious narratives. Selected excerpts coming soon
W-03 · Speculative systems AI, taste, and physical abundance A line of thought about what happens when generation moves from pixels into matter. Drafts stay private for now

№ 03 · Editorial note

Not a bookshelf. A provenance map.

The gallery should earn its place by showing intellectual movement: what changed my view, what gave language to something vague, what I disagree with but still find generative, and what I am reading because the question will not leave me alone.

Backfill stronger sources
Add links, notes, and short citations for entries that should become durable references.
Separate influence from endorsement
Each public entry should make its stance clear: agree, skeptical, unresolved, or useful but incomplete.
Promote the best original ideas
Only move personal drafts into the gallery when they still feel sharp after time has passed.