John Lee

Updated February 2026 · Los Angeles

The Principle

"Go where the puck is going." — Wayne Gretzky

To go where the puck is going, you have to know what the landscape looks like when it gets there. Right now the landscape is shifting under everyone's feet and most people are pattern-matching to the past.

Lenses

How I'm seeing the world right now:

AI is a phase transition, not a disruption.
Previous tech automated narrow channels. AI automates general thinking — the thing humans used to climb the "value" ladder. This isn't another computer or internet moment.
Money was civilization's recursive self-improvement algorithm.
The game was: coordinate human effort toward improvement by rewarding it with money. If AI does the improvement without humans, the loop doesn't need us.
Scarcity moves, it doesn't disappear.
Trust, taste, presence, judgment, relationships — these are the new scarce things. Build there.
Apple, not Dell.
Design the experience. Don't let the user configure their way to mediocrity.
The algorithm is iterative, never "done."
Observe → model → test predictions → refine → compound. Hold conclusions loosely.
Being early looks crazy until it doesn't.
The curse and the gift. The question isn't "am I right?" It's "given I might be right, what do I build?"

Building Now

WithOS
An AI life partner calibrated to your specific psychology. Not what the AI knows, but how it talks to you. The product is the communication protocol.

The John Museum
A complete digital archive of my life — every document, email, recording, notebook. AI as the lens to find the through-line I couldn't see from inside my own life.

Writing
Essays on what happens when AI breaks the economic game we built. The deflationary paradox. The pivot paradox. Where the puck is going.

→ Future Nows — what's in the queue