EPISODE · May 13, 2026 · 20 MIN
Chapter 5 - Peak Squash, Peak Optimism
from The Convergence · host Robert Eberhard
The Kodak story is the frame for this chapter: Steven Sasson invented digital photography inside Kodak in 1975 and watched his invention shelved while Kodak optimized for film, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2012. Both squash and AI in the 1980s were Kodak — well-managed, optimized for what they had built, carrying the particular blindness that comes from genuine success. Squash's courts were full, its professional tour was gaining visibility through glass-backed courts, and Jansher Khan was demonstrating tactical intelligence that matched Jahangir's physical dominance. Then Jonathan Power became the first North American world number one in 1999, arriving from outside the institutional pipelines and revealing, through the sport's inability to process or capitalize on his cultural distinctiveness, that squash's institutions were optimized for the players they had always produced and had no mechanism for converting their most interesting moment into new participants. AI's second winter collapsed the expert systems boom for the same structural reason — the technology worked within its domain and failed to close the last mile outside it.
What this episode covers
The Kodak story is the frame for this chapter: Steven Sasson invented digital photography inside Kodak in 1975 and watched his invention shelved while Kodak optimized for film, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2012. Both squash and AI in the 1980s were Kodak — well-managed, optimized for what they had built, carrying the particular blindness that comes from genuine success. Squash's courts were full, its professional tour was gaining visibility through glass-backed courts, and Jansher Khan was demonstrating tactical intelligence that matched Jahangir's physical dominance. Then Jonathan Power became the first North American world number one in 1999, arriving from outside the institutional pipelines and revealing, through the sport's inability to process or capitalize on his cultural distinctiveness, that squash's institutions were optimized for the players they had always produced and had no mechanism for converting their most interesting moment into new participants. AI's second winter collapsed the expert systems boom for the same structural reason — the technology worked within its domain and failed to close the last mile outside it.
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Chapter 5 - Peak Squash, Peak Optimism
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