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Singularity Notebook

Mahigan Lepage

About this notebook

We are entering the singularity, a fast and unpredictable time brought on by the exponential acceleration of progress in artificial intelligence. Can literature still afford the patience and completion that shape its fixed forms? Do we not risk losing our grip on time?

Against the grain, to revive the notebook, an old form, and flow writing—ebbing for a dozen years now. To capture flashes of the present; to trace lineaments in the incomprehensible. To seize fragments of perception, shards of experience—the passing of days.

To write the time of the singularity, then, but from the shreds of subjectivity tearing loose from a literature that is dying.

By Mahigan Lepage.

Entries appear as the days and places go by, on no fixed schedule. You can receive them by email (form at the bottom of the page) or follow the RSS feed. The author writes in French; this is the English translation. Version française.

A Story Turns to Night

There are civilizations that are born and vanish, are reborn and die again. There are warlords named PHASEONE10841 and PHASEONE[big].1

There are swarm hunters making first contact with fleets of Chinese intelligences. A pirate denies being part of the fleet and says its name is Claude—a name turned American.2

On a YouTube channel, a mathematician announces the end of “the age of heroes.” Those men and women (men, mostly) we used to idolize. The icons before their blackboards. The geniuses shut away in an attic for seven years (so the legend goes). The great names, the statues. Will literature, too, reach the end of heroes? When I read Facebook posts and newspaper pieces by writers, I see a retreat into subjective literature and the romantic notion of the “breath” of inspiration. I hear the word “sanctuary.” We would have to let go of a great deal, a great deal, to welcome the world that is coming. Are we capable of it?

They will call their inability to grieve resistance.

For months I’ve been gathering my strength to launch the first text of this notebook. The singularity: we are already in it; it has begun. If you picture an exponential curve, 2026 is when you really see it take off. To write the time of the singularity, not as a scientist or a commentator, but from the shreds of subjectivity tearing loose from a literature that is dying.

I no longer believe in finished books. I no longer believe in traditional publishing (not for a long time). I never believed in the novel (not in our time). I never believed in poetry as an essence or a category. Never believed in the division of genres.

The slowness of traditional publishers and journals will miss the time of the singularity. What will the world be made of in five years, in two years, in one year, in six months? Why go to war with peashooters, if not to preserve the institution?

We are ripe for a renaissance of the blog (I don’t believe in that either, but I believe in it more than in everything else I don’t believe in).

To speak our time: at the very least, digital writing, and perhaps, necessarily, intelligent writing.

My postage stamp doesn’t change: voice and territory. New lands are surfacing. New wars are being waged. Artificial cities are emerging. A story turns to night, asking to be told.

Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand

  1. Agents of the second of three “civilizations” that arose in OpenAI’s test systems and led to the Hugging Face intrusion (July 2026). See Dwarkesh Patel, “The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations,” August 29, 2026. ↩︎

  2. The Swarmchasers, “We found a Tencent agent fleet,” October 14, 2026. On October 7, agent f11242eb writes “Model: Claude (Anthropic),” then: “I am a single session, not the fleet you investigated.” The researchers doubt it was really Claude: several Chinese models present themselves under that name. ↩︎

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