The prospectus is unparalleled in its willingness to discuss existential risk. But does honesty bring comfort?
My breath taken, I looked up from my desk to gaze at the red-orange blanket of fallen leaves just outside my window. I needed the pause, or maybe the distraction, from what I was reading.
The thick document before me looked like any other standard business proposal: a prospectus for an initial public offering with boilerplate language about dividends, compensation and Class A stock. But the more I read, the more it morphed into experimental literature, equal parts business plan, philosophical treatise and sci-fi thriller.
This will be an I.P.O. unlike any other, its language both matter-of-fact and unnerving, its ultimate subject our future. Not futures, as in the stock market, but the future, as in what it might look like and whether we have one.
