anna-sofia
@annasofialesiv
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author of foundations & frontiers @contrary
Los Angeles, CA
Joined September 2013
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Napoleon had the exact same mathematics education as Fourier — they were contemporaries.
His final exams were graded by Laplace, who concluded Napoleon had "a thorough knowledge of mathematics."
Hard to imagine statesmen with such rich backgrounds in science and math today.
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Most don't realize that the Netherlands is the second largest agricultural exporter in the world after the US. These are Dutch greenhouses by day, and by night.
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desalination is already supplying nearly all the drinking water in places like israel and saudi arabia — and yet it is still massively under-discussed and misunderstood
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Yesterday's tariff announcement really emphasized how unfair it is that China's goods are so cheap.
'Unfair' came up 17 times.
The reality is China isn't doing anything unfair, they've just spent decades building manufacturing capacity and the US hasn't.
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if you want to understand material science, you should read this book
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atomic gardening is the most batshit thing I've ever heard of — yes, it's exactly what it sounds and looks like
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I watched gattaca for the first time yesterday, and for them it was sci-fi to live in a world where you can just go outside and watch space launches every week
if you live near los angeles, that's just reality now — pretty amazing
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do appearances matter more in a world where intelligence is cheap?
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For the past six months at Contrary, I’ve published essays on everything from microchips to metallurgy, artificial intelligence, carbon removal, cell therapies, and much much more.
Today, that essay series is breaking out into its own publication called Foundations & Frontiers!
Today, we're excited to officially launch Foundations & Frontiers, an essay series by Contrary.
Due to the tremendous reader response to the early entries in the series, we're breaking it out into its own media publication.
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Anyone want to join a group chat to discuss new scientific research papers? Feel free to DM me if so!
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my essay on the fundamentals of internet infrastructure is now on every!
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Settling Mars will involve compressing all our technical and industrial capabilities into their most compact forms — a life starter pack for a planet millions of miles away.
For 2024’s first piece, I wrote an overview of what it would take to do that.
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defense tech management and the inner workings of a cell are both irreducibly complex systems
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Dear friends! I shall be spending the summer in NYC. If you’re a New Yorker, please hang out with me and teach me your ways!
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Today, I’m launching a written series called Foundations & Frontiers at
@contrarycapital
!
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Foundations & Frontiers.
A written series by
@annasofialesiv
that explains how the technologies that govern our world were built, and what solutions startups are working on now to address the challenges of the future!
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I’ve just returned from a holiday in Emilia–Romagna, a region known for its parmigiano, balsamic vinegar and high performance combustion engines.
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von Neumann was writing about global warming in 1955 — way before the rest of the world even knew it was a thing.
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remember when the government forced oil refiners to blend gasoline with ethanol to "decrease emissions" resulting in 40% of american corn production going toward ethanol which actually only increased emissions overall
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number of US households with over $1M networth has nearly doubled since 2008
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Old research papers are a treasure trove. Technology has advanced since, and many things that were not possible then are possible now.
You just need to excavate the right ideas.
Deep tech founders building out sci Fi tech ideas developed by the DoE and DoD in the 1970s that died via budget cuts
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One of the first ever robots — Vaucanson’s Duck, built in 1738, could quack, flap its wings, paddle, drink water and “digest” grain
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wrote about desalination this week on foundations & frontiers! 🏝️
Although about 71% of the Earth is covered in water, only a small portion of it is freshwater which we can use to drink and irrigate crops.
In the upcoming decades, population growth and the increased frequency of droughts could put pressure on that limited supply.
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What happens to progress in the world of bits when Moore’s Law ends? I wrote about the future of chip design in this week’s Foundations & Frontiers essay.
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I often think about how we only figured out how Roman concrete works ... nine months ago
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as critical minerals become the most important commodities in the world, I wrote about the coming era of mining this week on f&f ⛏️
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EV factories don't need conveyor belts — the cars can now drive themselves through the assembly lines
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If you haven't had a chance to read my overview of microchip history, you can now read it — or have it read to you — on
@every
!
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Using only a restaurant, tell us where you went to college
Using only a restaurant, tell us where you went to college
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I wrote about brain-computer interfaces this week on F&F! 🧠
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@SjwPeaceful
that's just called industrial policy and every nation from south korea to america has / is doing this to varying degrees
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so much technical knowledge was lost in the US as industries were outsourced, training programs shuttered, seasoned pros aged out
it means we will need to work even harder to transfer skills onto future generations
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It’s long been a dream of mine to write about technology. At Contrary, I’ll be writing profiles about the technologies that underpin our modern world.
I’ve admired Contrary's unique vision ever since I started in venture — I couldn’t be prouder to now be working alongside them!
We’re excited to share that
@annasofialesiv
has joined Contrary as a Writer!
Anna’s talent lies in her diversity of interests. Growing up, she wanted to be a journalist. But her adventure into startups took her all over: Bridgewater, Founders Fund, 8VC.
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wrote about the future of aviation for Foundations & Frontiers, and what it’ll take to get us back to supersonic travel ✈️
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I always thought this white building was just some Malibu giga mansion, TIL it's the Hughes Research Laboratory! Where Theodore Maiman invented the laser!
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every two weeks, I profile one technology critical to the modern world 🌎⚙️🧬
you can sign up to receive these essays in your inbox!
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Happiness is continuing to desire what you already have.
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Mature nanotechnology would radically expand the limits of the possible in our world.
This week, I wrote about what exactly it would take to get to mature nanotechnology and why the molecular technologies we have now already unlock immense capabilities in industry.
In 1959, Richard Feynman speculated that, in theory, we might one day be able to manufacture devices atom by atom.
Although that's still far off, it's now become feasible to perform sophisticated industrial processes on the scale of larger molecules.
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It’s been a whole year of Foundations & Frontiers! I wanted to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart who read or shared F&F essays in 2023 — writing this series has been a dream come true ✨
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when I grow up I want to be an attorney, investment banker, philanthropist, scientist, physicist, inventor
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I wrote about CRISPR & the dawn of engineered biology this week on foundations & frontiers 🧬
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Tesla is a near-fully verticalized electrification company — why would anyone bet against this
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America’s most exciting chapter is only now being written. 🇺🇸
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Moon bases, space stations, and manned interplanetary missions — they’re all in sight thanks to the insane innovations in rocketry already achieved this century.
I wrote about all that and more in this week’s Foundations & Frontiers essay🚀🪐
It's been over fifty years since humanity built its most powerful rocket to date, the Saturn V, which was used in the Apollo missions.
However, with SpaceX's Raptor engines, all that is about to change. We are finally entering a new era of rocketry.
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AI is revolutionizing the way we study life. I wrote about protein folding, genome generation and more for this week's F&F piece.
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I wrote about the heat beneath our feet & the promise of geothermal this week on F&F 🌋
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i wrote a new post summarizing the best critiques of modern computing
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Drinking from the cup of science will make you an atheist, but God is waiting for you at the bottom — Werner Heisenberg
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today,
@elonmusk
said we need a new philosophy of the future.
i agree — but to achieve one, we need a better philosophy of technology.
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and there's already enough lithium in the US to put every American into an electric vehicle
MASSIVE LITHIUM FIND IN PENNSYLVANIA COULD MEET 40% OF U.S. DEMAND
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the dawn of spatial computing is now on
@every
!
this essay goes into all the technical achievements that make up the vision pro and speculates on what future powers we might get from mixed reality tech 🥽
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On June 26th, F&F is launching a new zine!
Come celebrate with us & listen to lightning talks by
@JCBtaiche10
@k2pilot
and
@SynBioMars
on the future of fusion, aerospace and molecular manufacturing!
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oh we’ve been doing this
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Another terrific factory tour dinner! Foundations & Frontiers is doing these every quarter ☄️
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Many don't know that we can now cure leukemia in under a month.
It's only a matter of time before cell therapies help us battle any cancer or auto-immune disease too.
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Just been sitting here imagining how the world would be different if we had fusion.
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I'm launching a shorter issue-based series at Foundations & Frontiers called Insights!
The first installment goes into some napkin math on the energy costs of artificial intelligence.
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We can already make fertilizer out of thin air. Soon, we might be able to make any fuel, alcohol or plastic we set our mind to.
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We had a history teacher in 9th grade who would assign us 60 pages of reading per day, and it was a scandal.
Whenever students claimed they couldn't possibly read that much, she looked at them and simply said "force yourself." That voice echoes in me to this day.
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Training isn't even the biggest draw of energy, it's a one-time, up-front cost. Inference is massively, massively larger.
If we want the future of artificial intelligence to be built in the United States, then we're gonna need to produce a lot more electricity...
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so many broken links from websites over 10 years old, sad that much of internet lore has been wiped away
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My dream is that one day, entering the Internet will feel like entering a library, where knowledge is categorized, you can explore different sections and stumble upon topics you'd never encountered.
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This was such a fantastic evening at
@genfabco
!
Foundations & Frontiers will be hosting many more factory floor dinners in the coming months! ⚙️🇺🇸
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My most recent piece is on robots! Why they're so hard to get right, and how advances in LLMs could open new paths to teaching them to think!
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@Andercot
and yet after her 16 years in office, germany is still shutting down all its nuclear plants
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Fusion could be the most consequential technology ever produced by humanity. I wrote about the history of its discovery, and the challenges still ahead in one of my favorite Foundations & Frontiers essays yet.
After years of being called the “Never Ignition Facility,” on December 5th, the National Ignition Facility finally achieved fusion ignition. The gravity of this achievement and the remaining obstacles to fusion commercialization are the subject of this week's F&F essay.
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There will soon be more concrete on Earth than biomass.
I wrote a history of this material, how it's shaped our built environment, and why our concrete is still worse than that of the Romans. 🏗️
From ancient stones to the wonders of modern concrete — this week on Foundations & Frontiers, we’re covering the frontiers of construction materials.
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This week, Foundations & Frontiers is tackling the electric grid. Often referred to as the world’s largest machine, America’s power grid is a technological marvel.
However, increasingly, it is also America’s biggest bottleneck.
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Zelensky is using social media in a genius way. Boosting morale every few hours. Accessible to everyone in the world and every soldier in the battlefield.
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@EricWollberg
Don't sleep on the Dutch! They're also the home of ASML, which makes the most advanced photolithography tech in the world.
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ZINE VOLUME TWO IS COMING & YOU'RE INVITED
We're thrilled to announce the launch of the Foundations & Frontiers Vol. 2 Zine!
Join us in SF on June 26 as we bring together the sharpest minds working across science, tech and business to celebrate over 2 years of Foundations & Frontiers sparking discussions on the history
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A conversation about technological literacy, agency, and our future relationship with our tools with
@nayafia
and
@dannycrichton
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this is an incredible company — if they succeed, nobel prizes await them
Helion Energy raised $2.2 billion last year from Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz, and Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital, among others
That's almost more money than any renewable energy company in history.
So why are Sam Altman and others so bullish on Helion? Let's dig in...
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my piece on the electrical grid is now on every! 🔌🔋💡
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uranium doesn't want to exist, and eventually, all the atoms in the universe will turn into iron atoms
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a life oriented toward leisure is a life oriented toward death — the greatest leisure of all.
an under-discussed point and an important read by
@KTmBoyle
We have long been fully invested in eradicating the suffering we deem unconscionable, but more important are the simple questions that define a serious life:
For whom will you sacrifice?
What will you defend?
For what will you choose to suffer?
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I'm in my polymer era! — I wrote about plastics and the future of synthetic polymers this week on Foundations & Frontiers 🥽🧬
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how come quantum physics didn't alter our perception of reality as much as heliocentrism or evolution did?
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