less 'books' · more research 'artefacts' for the next step

Learningby writing

Security. Compute. Agency. Europe. Four sketches that began as separate questions and turned out to be one argument: what happens when institutions, machines and markets start moving faster than the people expected to trust them?

Editorial collage of four books by Slava Solodkiy.
shelf 2026human-authored / AI-assisted

Not a bibliography, a sequence.

: four papers, why each exists, how the arguments connect, and where to read, buy, listen or inspect the evidence.

Ready, Actually book cover with a cybernetic porcupine.
01 / defencetech / civic readiness

Ready,
Actually

A Civilian’s Field Guide to Britain’s New Security Age

A public-source field guide for the security age that already arrived through ordinary systems: energy, payments, cyber hygiene, logistics, information and social trust. The useful civilian is not a miniature soldier. The useful society is hard to frighten, divide or switch off.

Civic resilienceDefenceTechPublic sourcePorcupine principle
“Be the porcupine, not the lion.”
Identifiers, editions and companion material

Identifiers

eBook ISBN 9798235150874
Kindle ASIN B0H4NY4TRR
Paperback ISBN 9798181099647
Hardcover ISBN 9798181251779
DOI 10.6084/m9.figshare.32618256

Read / inspect

Distributed through Draft2Digital and Amazon in eBook, paperback and hardcover formats.

The NVIDIA Innovator's Dilemma book mock-up.
02 / AI / compute empire

The NVIDIA
Innovator’s
Dilemma

AI Factories, the Compute Empire, and the Disruption from Below

A Christensen-style stress test for the most successful infrastructure company of the AI era. NVIDIA may be vulnerable not despite its excellence, but because every incentive rewards the margins, customers and architecture that made it excellent.

AI factoriesCUDADePINBrownfield energyDisruption theory
“The dilemma does not forgive flinching.”
Identifiers, editions and companion material

Identifiers

eBook ISBN 9798235142671
Kindle ASIN B0GZ42SBNY
Paperback ISBN 9798195009434
Hardcover not yet published
DOI 10.6084/m9.figshare.32133316

Read / watch / listen

114 pages. Paperback and eBook editions, with a public thesis site and presentation deck.

Futuroshock book cover in acid red, magenta and electric blue.
03 / AI / human agency

Futuroshock

When Reality Gets Outsourced — AI Euphoria, AI Nausea, and the Fight to Remain the Author of Your Own Life

A sequel in spirit to Toffler for an age when change no longer merely arrives too quickly. It predicts, filters and writes back. The central political and personal problem of AI is not intelligence. It is authorship.

Agency shockAI nauseaAuthorshipSynthetic realityFive clocks
“The future does not arrive anymore. It autocompletes.”
Identifiers, editions and companion material

Identifiers

Kindle ASIN B0H5L8D6XN
Paperback ISBN 9798181990333
Hardcover ISBN 9798182013727
eBook ISBN not yet issued
DOI 10.6084/m9.figshare.32688468

Read / inspect

Kindle, paperback and hardcover editions, plus a concept atlas, source library and public deck.

Europe's First Trillion-Dollar Startup book mock-up.
04 / Digital Identity / European ambition / AI

Europe’s First
Trillion-Dollar
Startup?

Revolut, not?

A disciplined provocation about what Europe has already built — and what it might still misunderstand.

A book that treats Revolut less as a challenger bank and more as trust infrastructure in formation: identity, rails, risk, AI and money movement. The question is not only whether Europe can produce a trillion-dollar company. It is whether that company can remain thrilling enough to rearrange an industry.

FintechTrust OSEuropeRevolutDevil’s advocate
“It became a noun. It still talks like a verb.”
Identifiers, editions and companion material

Identifiers

eBook ISBN 9798235275867
Kindle ASIN B0H6K7FR4K
Paperback ISBN 9798184250588
Hardcover ISBN 9798184250809
DOI 10.6084/m9.figshare.32782464

Read / watch / listen

Distributed in eBook, paperback and hardcover formats. The project also has a public book site, speculative twin, playlist, podcast and slide deck.

Read them as a circuit.

There is no required order, but there is a hidden one. Each book hands the same problem to a different actor.

01>

What can a citizen do?

Ready, Actually starts with readiness below the level of grand strategy.

Open readiness →
02>

Who owns the machine?

The NVIDIA Innovator’s Dilemma follows power into chips, energy and orchestration.

Open compute →
03>

Who authors the human?

Futuroshock brings the infrastructure problem back inside the self.

Open agency →
04

What can Europe become?

Europe’s First Trillion-Dollar Startup? asks whether institutional scale can still carry imagination.

Open Europe →

Written with machines. Owned by a human.

These books were developed in active dialogue with AI systems: as research assistants, adversarial editors, structural mirrors, design tools and occasionally very confident sources of nonsense.

AI-assisted does not mean responsibility-assisted. The author chooses the thesis, verifies the factual floor, decides what survives, signs the work and remains accountable for every published claim.

The companion sites are part of the books rather than marketing wrappers: they expose source libraries, caveats, argument maps, updates, alternative readings and the material that did not fit cleanly between two covers.

F

Fact

Identifiers, editions, sources and live links should be checkable.

I

Inference

Interpretation must remain visibly separate from reported fact.

?

Provocation

Speculation earns its place by revealing constraints, not by impersonating certainty.

H

Human responsibility

The final editorial decision cannot be delegated to autocomplete.

Four papers are not the whole archive.

Older research reports, working papers, academic profiles and professional history remain on the academic CV.