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Notes on Human Agency by David J Norris
For people trying to think clearly about what happens to human capability as the world around us changes.
Some changes arrive before we have good language for them.
Notes on Human Agency is where David J. Norris follows those shifts while they are still moving.
Short essays, reflections and poems on the forces shaping what people can notice, judge, care for and do.
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Three Questions the work brings
David’s professional life began in occupational therapy and neurological rehabilitation.
Seeing What Isn’t There Yet
What if the limit is not only what we see, but how we are looking?
On reflection, inversion and the possibilities we bring to what is in front of us.
5 Minutes: What Training Cannot Reach
When performance falters, more training is not always the answer.
A note on time, trust and the conditions that let capability become action.
What Vigilance Cannot Hold
What happens when AI asks us to monitor more precisely with attention that is already wearing thin?
A reflection on vigilance, cognitive load and the hidden cost of staying alert.
What the Mountain Was Asking
What changes when uncertainty is no longer treated as something to solve?
A response to Ross and Rachel Menzies’ Being, prompted by Neha Kale’s writing in The Guardian.
Not everything needs to become a paper.
Some ideas need room to remain unfinished.
Others are worth meeting before they harden into an argument.
Notes on Human Agency is where David works closer to the moment: observations from practice, shifts in work and technology, moments in care, fragments of thought and questions that are still becoming.
The point is not to add more commentary to the stream.
It is to notice what might otherwise disappear inside the speed of change.
Better questions before the answers harden.
