Latent Vector - Paperback

by David Habib (Author)

For over a century, the way we store information has shaped how we organize work. The filing cabinet created the modern corporation. Databases spawned a $5 trillion ecosystem of consultants and IT specialists. Now, AI systems that understand information without rigid categories threaten to collapse this entire structure.

In Latent Vector, David Habib traces the hidden history of organizational memory-from Mesopotamian clay tablets to ChatGPT-to reveal an uncomfortable truth: most corporate complexity exists not to create value, but to manage the artificial boundaries between incompatible information systems. When AI eliminates these boundaries, what happens to the millions of workers whose jobs exist to bridge them? What happens to companies built around departments that no longer need to exist?

Drawing on transaction cost economics and real-world corporate disasters, Habib shows why the convergence of all information into AI-readable formats isn't just another technology upgrade-it's an economic disruption that will reshape how humans coordinate work. He exposes the "Information-Commercial Complex" fighting to preserve profitable complexity, examines which organizations will survive the transition, and confronts the human cost of eliminating an entire class of information work.

Neither utopian nor dystopian, *Latent Vector* offers a clear-eyed analysis of a transformation already underway. The filing cabinet era is ending. What replaces it will be more intelligent and efficient-but whether it will be more humane depends on choices being made right now.