Gavin Steen
Designer, technologist and entrepreneur. Author of After Abundance.
I’ve spent more than twenty years working with technology and building digital products and businesses. Throughout that time, I’ve been interested in how new tools change what people can do. Capabilities that once required specialist knowledge, substantial investment or a large organisation become accessible to more people. Ideas that were difficult to pursue become possible.
AI is accelerating that process. It also raises questions that extend well beyond the tools themselves.
Why After Abundance
When something becomes easier to produce, the consequences reach beyond production.
More information changes how we find things worth understanding. More convincing content changes how we establish trust. More accessible capability changes who can participate, and the advantages that remain.
I started After Abundance to explore those relationships.
The essays examine how technology changes value across work, business and society. Some focus on everyday experiences, such as interruptions or learning. Others consider responsibility, ownership and the distribution of opportunity.
My approach is analytical and cautiously optimistic. I’m interested in what technology makes possible, and in the choices that determine whether those possibilities improve people’s lives.
The perspective I bring
My work spans design, user experience, software and entrepreneurship. Moving between those disciplines has encouraged me to look at technology in context: the people using it, the problem it addresses and the organisation around it.
Building something provides a useful way to test assumptions. An idea that seems convincing in isolation can look different when someone has to use it, depend on it or pay for it.
That experience informs my writing. After Abundance gives me room to follow the questions further, including into areas beyond my own work.
I also write at gavinsteen.com, where the essays are more closely connected to building digital products and businesses.
