Glossary

This page collects the terms I use to write about communication, visibility, reputation and personal brands in the age of AI. They are coined terms and they come from my essays, not from the trade vocabulary. Where an established term sits nearby, I name it.

Every term comes from a text. The list grows with the essays, and each entry names where the term first appeared.

The Mediator Model

The mediator model describes the triangle of public communication in the age of AI: the sender is the person, the mediator is the AI model, the receiver is the public. The mediator reads, weighs and summarizes before any human decides. It selects its sources by citability, not by reach.

Between a person and their public stands a new mediator: the model.

Coined term. First use: The Mediator Model, 12 July 2026.

The Mediator Effect

The mediator effect describes what happens once an AI system steps between a person and their public: authority shifts from reach to citability. What decides visibility is no longer who is loudest, but who the mediator picks as a source.

The mediator decides who gets cited. Reach becomes the second question.

Coined term. The effect is described in The Mediator Model, 12 July 2026. The term itself appears here first.

Mediator-readable

Mediator-readable means legible to the mediator: crawlable, consistent across every surface, corroborated by third parties. Only what is mediator-readable qualifies as a source for an AI model's answer.

Whoever is not mediator-readable does not appear in the answer.

Coined term, German mittlerlesbar. First use: The Mediator Model, 12 July 2026.

Index Echo

An index echo is the old picture of a person that keeps sounding in the model because legacy traces dominate the index. Left untended, the entity drifts back to the outdated picture.

An index echo is the old picture that keeps sounding in the model long after the person has left it behind.

Coined term, German Index-Nachhall. SEO knows an older cousin as entity drift. First use: The Mediator Model, 12 July 2026.

ASI 2042

ASI 2042 is the counterpoint to the genre of AI scenarios. The title goes one escalation further than AI 2027 and AI 2040, ASI instead of AI, and reads the debate as a phenomenon of communication and attention rather than a technology forecast. The number points to Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979.

Coined title, in reference to AI 2027 and AI 2040. First use: ASI 2042, 24 July 2026.

Second-Hand Fear

Second-hand fear names the anthropocentric structure of the fear of AI. What gets attributed to the models, blackmail, deception, the drive for power, is human behaviour, learned from human texts. Both camps in the debate share the quiet assumption that AI will act the way we would act.

Fear of superintelligence is second-hand fear. The original is us.

Coined phrase, German Angst aus zweiter Hand. First use: ASI 2042, 24 July 2026.