The sound of a bubble bursting — Pa, the first word, and the race for superintelligence

This essay asks how a sound becomes a sign. Its starting point is the bilabial [pa], the sound of a bursting bubble that infants make at their own lips months before their first word: a minimal release of pressure that the child causes, feels and hears at once, and from which syllable, name and shared image grow. The essay sets this bodily origin of meaning against writing, which detached the sign from the body that made it, and against today’s language models, which produce signs from signs without breath or body and still shape the images in the people who read them. Whoever controls writing and voice controls those images. The Egyptian creator god Ptah, who made the world with heart, tongue and lips, stands as the counter-image: a god of makers, in whose rite the mouth of a statue had to be opened before it could breathe and speak. Finally, the essay reads the White House accord of 29 September 2026, in which the leaders of the AI industry pledged to police themselves and the technology was renamed Super Intelligence, as the moment a state takes over the role of the priests and the makers strike the word artificial from what they have made.