Brian Thomas Clark

Another reason for all the division: the self itself is fragmented. As Yancey Strickler says, we are in the era of the post-individual. Strickler’s essay is deep and illuminating, but it is best summarized by a Sean Monahan quote he includes in the article: “Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality.... See more

If AI is able to suddenly pump slop into our environment it’s only because we already turned on the faucets ourselves. Just think about all the garbage content that people you actually know send you via text, or the DMs that feel like they’re from bots but are actually from real people driven by platform incentives (Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook,... See more

II. Process

I overheard something nice around the office a few months ago.

“ You don ’ t reach a moment of digital transformation . You just keep transforming.”

Speaks to a lot of the nature of work projects, strategy, possibly life too (it’s certainly true in therapy, minus the digital part). Essentially it’s a more clever-sounding way of saying... See more

But what we consume does, truly, matter. It’s essential to appeal to the people in our lives, and remind them of the importance of seeking out imaginative work that might stoke the fires of their own creativity.

Because we aren’t just talking about entertainment here, or distraction, or leisure. We’re talking about the narratives that comprise the... See more

Component-based design systems produce inherent efficiencies for designers and developers, and solve the challenges associated with duplication and inconsistency in applying themes -- while driving the development of better quality, reusable components. Clients gain the benefit of better brand management resulting from a simplified content editor... See more

There is apparently an epidemic of loneliness in the United States. Everyone from Kristen Radtke to Hillary Clinton has written about it. Explanations are far-ranging but mostly come down to the same things: our communities have splintered, work has consumed our lives, our social contract has broken down, the internet has destroyed our ability to... See more

Howard Blum, a former staff writer, is the first to declare the Voice “a precursor to the internet,” an idea that recurs, with diminishing shine, throughout the book’s five hundred and thirty pages. Notes of elegy sound throughout, laments for something too good to last, but also for a moment of honest and urgent revolt. When there seemed no such... See more

The ones and zeroes of the digital map tolerate no error or noise. It’s an auto-tuned reality where everything is on the note or it doesn’t exist. Never mind that James Brown reaching up to that note is where we find the soul of the music. In the world of digital figures, that expression of the human soul — that stuff between the official notes —... See more

We are adrift–a culture of consumers accustomed to buying objects and building collections as the sole means of documenting our cultures–deprived of the infrastructure to do so. But our individual inability to collect and store is one I’ll lament the least.

Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more