> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.projectmiddleground.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Reversing the River: Chicago's Next Divine Intervention - URL: https://www.projectmiddleground.com/articles/reversing-the-river-chicagos-next-divine-intervention/ - Published: 2026-10-28T01:37:54.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-28T01:37:54.000Z - Author: Brad Spirrison ### *Quantum Politics, Dot-Comedy and the Rest of Us* In quantum mechanics, a particle can occupy multiple possible states simultaneously. In Illinois politics, that's called the 2026 election cycle. Governor J.B. Pritzker is running for reelection in 2026 while contemplating 2028\. Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias has his name on this November's ballot and his sights set on City Hall in February 2027\. Brandon Johnson would like to keep the mayor's office, while Susana Mendoza, Matthew Brewer, Joe Holberg and enough other candidates to fill a good-sized wedding table have different ideas. Rahm Emanuel, veteran of practically every political office except president, may have plans for 2028. Barack Obama is back reminding people how to campaign. Everybody's in two places, and at least two election cycles, at once. Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to figure out who will pay the electric bill for artificial intelligence. ### **Sears Is Dead** Around the turn of the millennium, Chicago technology entrepreneur Andrew “Flip” Filipowski made a memorable declaration: “Sears is dead.” Flip knew something about building companies. His Platinum Technology sold for roughly $3.5 billion in 1999\. The middleware millionaire subsequently assembled Divine interVentures, a spectacularly ambitious attempt to make Chicago a center of the emerging Internet economy. Divine became one of the city's great dot-comedies. Billions in ambition, hundreds of millions in losses, and eventually bankruptcy. The irony? Filipowski was right about Sears' vulnerability. But predicting the death of yesterday's business model isn't the same as successfully inventing tomorrow's. Sears itself had once been an astonishing technological innovation. A Chicago company that connected millions of customers with products, prices, financing, distribution and an unprecedented sense of commercial possibility. The catalog was a search engine. The railroad was the network. The postal service handled fulfillment. And the customers paid. Chicago didn't merely make things. **Chicago made markets.** ### **The Internet Flows West** On August 9, 1995, Netscape went public and Jerry Garcia died. One of those dates changed the Internet. The other changed the soundtrack. Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen developed Mosaic at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications before heading to Silicon Valley. Illinois helped invent the commercial Internet. California captured much of the commercial value. The Internet's great promise was that everybody could publish, participate, sell and connect. Its commercial reality became considerably more complicated. A handful of platforms organized the distribution of information, advertising, political messages and increasingly our understanding of one another. Politicians learned to communicate through algorithms. Journalists learned to chase them. Consumers became products delivered to advertisers. Neil Postman, my graduate-school teacher at NYU, would have had a field day. Not because technology is inherently evil. Because every technology comes with a philosophy about how human beings should organize their lives. And the commercial Internet's philosophy increasingly became: Let the machines decide what matters. ### **Dial-Up to Star Trek** This week, Anthropic filed its S-1, offering a glimpse into a technology economy aspiring to valuations once reserved for science fiction. Artificial intelligence is extraordinary. It's also, in historical perspective, somewhere around dial-up. Quantum computing may be even earlier. Between them, they're generating immense financial speculation, institutional anxiety and physical infrastructure demands. Data centers need electricity. Communities want jobs and affordable power. Investors want returns. Universities want research partnerships. Politicians want ribbon cuttings. Everybody has a legitimate interest. Nobody has the complete answer. And that's where Chicago's next opportunity begins. ### **The Other River** In 1900, Chicago reversed the flow of its river. Engineering solved an enormous public-health problem, although our neighbors downstream understandably had their grievances. Perhaps it's time to reverse another river. Instead of letting Internet platforms mediate every relationship among citizens, businesses, journalists and elected officials, let's bring people back together. In person. Independently. With evidence, economic incentives and actual responsibilities. Not another gala where Chicago's powerful congratulate one another for supporting Chicago's powerful. Something closer to a civic marketplace. Researchers supply evidence. Journalists ask uncomfortable questions. Entrepreneurs explain commercial realities. Public officials answer to the people they serve. Consumers, patients, workers and neighbors get to challenge everybody. Then we identify what can actually be built. Through Grown In and Project Middle Ground, we've been experimenting with this approach, including a deliberately irreverent Festivus framework for airing grievances. Not merely to complain. To transform disagreement into useful intelligence, accountable action and, ideally, sustainable commercial relationships. ### **The Soap People Understood** Chicago helped create another extraordinary media business. Soap operas. Consumer-products companies financed stories because stories attracted audiences, audiences bought products, and everybody understood the economic arrangement. It wasn't perfect journalism. It wasn't journalism at all. But it demonstrated that human attention, entertainment, trust and commerce could support one another. Independent journalism now needs its own new commercial architecture. Philanthropy can support experimentation. Universities can contribute research. Businesses can finance independent civic infrastructure without purchasing editorial conclusions. And people should be willing to pay for something genuinely useful. A better understanding of their communities. Access to consequential conversations. Reliable information about decisions affecting their lives. Not another algorithmic outrage subscription. ### **Riverboat Bobby** The late Jerry Garcia helped build another kind of marketplace. The Grateful Dead invited participation, experimentation, taping, trading and community long before the Internet made such things fashionable. Bob Weir kept that improvisational enterprise moving across generations. Call him Riverboat Bobby for the purposes of our Chicago experiment. He understood that a good performance doesn't emerge from everybody playing the same notes. It emerges from accomplished people listening, taking chances and allowing something unexpected to happen. That's a useful model for a city approaching two consequential political years. J.B., Alexi, Brandon, Rahm, Barack and the rest of Chicago's ambitious civic cast don't have to agree about everything. They do have to answer a fundamental question. **What are we building for the rest of us?** Quantum? Applied AI? Medical research? Education? Independent journalism? Affordable energy? Why not organize the people, capital, evidence and institutions capable of making those markets work? The Bears, of course, remain in their own quantum condition. Simultaneously in Chicago, Arlington Heights and Indiana—at least until somebody measures the stadium deal. Maybe that's another case study. For now, the Chicago River keeps flowing in the direction our predecessors engineered. The Internet flows wherever its owners find the greatest returns. But the next economy is still ours to shape. Let's reverse the current. Think locally. Act globally. Play kindly, with aplomb. **This is Chicago. We make markets.** And this time, let's make them work for the rest of us.