CONCEPT
Flight to the Woods
Segal's term for the exit without alternative exercised by senior technology practitioners in 2025–2026 — the voluntary disconnection Castells's framework identifies as the losing strategy in a network society.
Flight to the woods names the specific form of exit that senior technology practitioners began exercising in 2025 and 2026 — departing not for higher positions elsewhere but for lower cost of living, simpler lives, and distance from the transformation they could not navigate. Segal documents the pattern in You On AI: senior engineers who have realized 'it's over' and moved to 'the woods' out of the perception that their livelihood would soon be gone. In Castells's framework, this is voluntary disconnection — the most dangerous response to network transformation, because the network continues to evolve in the disconnected person's absence, making reentry progressively more difficult. The motivation may be locally rational (the tool obsoletes the skill, the skill was the livelihood, therefore exit), but the consequence is structural: the network she has left will be unrecognizable by the time she considers returning.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The pattern has precedents. Every major technological transition produces a