Writer at Silicon Canals

Mal James

Writer

Mal James is a writer at Silicon Canals covering psychology, productivity, and the patterns that determine whether ambitious work compounds or burns out. His coverage draws from a teaching background, broad reading across behavioural science and business, and a working interest in what separates short-term effort from durable performance. He writes primarily for the Mind pillar with cross-coverage on the people inside the technology economy.

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Technology

Four US tech giants spent roughly $410 billion on capital expenditure last year, much of it tied to AI, and are steering toward roughly $725 billion in 2026

The four tech giants betting their futures on AI are doubling down: nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars in infrastructure spending by 2026, but the payoff remains stubbornly unclear.

Jul 28, 2026

Curiosities

For most of history the world’s largest economy was not in Europe or America but in the East: China still accounted for roughly a third of global output as late as 1820, until the Industrial Revolution let Western nations pull decisively ahead over the following century

The West's economic dominance is surprisingly recent—a mere century of advantage after millennia of Eastern superiority.

Jul 28, 2026

Technology

Many people assume those who build powerful AI must grasp how it thinks, but in an important sense they cannot: even a model’s own creators often cannot fully explain why it gave one answer rather than another

The architects of AI's most powerful systems face a humbling limitation: they cannot fully explain their own creations' reasoning, even when they understand every line of code.

Jul 22, 2026

Mind

Psychology suggests memory is not a recording but a story we rebuild each time: in one experiment, a quarter of people came to ‘remember’ being lost in a mall as a child — an event that never happened

Picture a memory you are sure of.

Jul 16, 2026

Mind

In 2023, two researchers whose earlier work had reached opposite conclusions about money and happiness — Daniel Kahneman, who had said well-being plateaued around $75,000, and Matthew Killingsworth, who had said it kept rising — carried out an “adversarial collaboration” and reconciled their findings in PNAS: for most people happiness does keep rising with income beyond $100,000, while an unhappy minority plateaus

For a few years I carried a tidy little fact around.

Jul 15, 2026

Mind

Thought of the day by Stoic philosopher Epictetus: “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants”

I have moved between Ireland and Southeast Asia year after year for a while now, and one thing has crept up on me quietly.

Jul 14, 2026

Mind

Thought of the day by Stoic philosopher Epictetus: “It is not what happens to you, but how you react to it, that matters”

The numbers do not care how hard you work.

Jul 13, 2026

Mind

Thought of the day, from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” — his warning, drawn from two years beside a pond and published in 1854, against a life lived half-asleep

Years ago in Dublin, I was working in finance and I did the thing you are not supposed to do at your desk.

Jul 10, 2026

Mind

Thought of the day by Stoic philosopher Seneca: “The wise man is self-sufficient. Nevertheless, he desires friends, neighbours, and associates, no matter how much he is sufficient unto himself.”

When I first arrived in Vietnamm more than a decade ago, my calendar filled up fast.

Jul 8, 2026

Mind

Psychologist Carl Rogers suggested the good life is not a state you arrive at but a direction you keep choosing, not a fixed self to defend, but a process of becoming, whether you cling to who you have been or keep opening to who you are becoming

I have caught myself, more than once, defending a version of me that had already moved on.

Jul 4, 2026

Mind

Thought of the day by Helen Mirren: “You die young or you get old. There’s nothing in between.”

For most of human history, the average person did not live to see their thirty-fifth birthday.

Jul 4, 2026

Mind

5 digital minimalism hacks that have made me calmer and less stressed

I did not get calmer by reading grand books about attention or by taking a week-long digital detox in the woods.

Jul 4, 2026