Alex Wittenberg

Just as the rise of influencers and fall of corporate legitimacy left individuals to become the primary distribution for brands and eventually to form their own (Tyler, Rihanna, even George Clooney), a few individual devs can take the place of entire corporations in building decentralized financial rails. 

Admittedly, it’s not entirely our own fault that we approach our finite time in such a perversely instrumental and future-focused way. Powerful external pressures push us in this direction, too, because we exist inside an economic system that is instrumentalist to its core. One way of understanding capitalism, in fact, is as a giant machine for... See more

A huge production incident happened?How was this possible in the first place?Where was the focus of the engineering team?Was there a process in place to avoid it?Should there be one?The person breaking production isn't at fault here. 

Get yourself thusly oriented, jump in, and enjoy. The future is going to be crazier than you can imagine. 

As a brand grows, it becomes more than a set of first impressions and associations. Its reputation precedes it. As impressions are shared across users and consumers, they often develop similar sentiments. In this way, a brand operates as a consensus system, facilitating a consistent set of beliefs across people. 

These technological advances come at a time when the need for mental health care is particularly acute: According to a report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five adults in the United States experienced mental illness in 2020. And the numbers continue to climb.

By portraying our opponents as beyond persuasion, social media sorts us into ever more hostile tribes, then rewards us, with likes and shares, for the most hyperbolic denunciations of the other side, fuelling a vicious cycle that makes sane debate impossible. We mustn’t let Silicon Valley off the hook, but we should be honest: much of the time, we... See more