Brian Thomas Clark

The internet has fundamentally altered the conditions under which genuine self-expression can exist. The solution isn’t to perform authenticity harder, but to recognise and jealously guard the remaining places where real authenticity might still be possible: in unrecorded conversations, in private moments, in closed networks that haven’t yet been... See more

In his retrospective of 2023 for his company Acquia, a SaaS platform built on top of the open source (and browser-based) Drupal software, Buytaert noted both the dangers and opportunities for the web going forward. “On one side, the rise of AI in information gathering will decrease the need for traditional websites,” he wrote. “On the other side,... See more

Collecting is an exercise in creating a framework, the logic of what is in or out. But then there are decisions that seem associative or intuitive.

Not because AI is a threat - rather, it’s sort of the only moat left for content marketing careers. It’s largely because our audience believes the hype about AI that the bottom of the content marketing job market has fallen out, the illusion that productivity is more important than creativity, and the belief that emotional connections aren’t... See more

Your Website Is Your Brand’s Human Frontier

Now let’s swerve hard into the human side of things. Because for all the data-slinging and model-optimizing, there’s still one irreplaceable thing you can do that machines can’t: make people feel something.

Think about it. Students don’t enroll because an AI told them to. They enroll because something... See more

It’s not just movies and TV, of course — we’re all aghast at how much time we spend on devices, consuming content , whatever that means. Reading and watching and posting and shopping, always shopping for things and ideas and comfort and distraction. Surely this endless marketplace will turn up something that satisfies us at some point! I complained... See more

We have been an essentially colonial civilization since the first enclosed farm, since agriculture, really, but definitely since territorial wars, slavery, and resource extraction. It’s what we do - not just with imperial armies, but with basic capitalism. This is our average. Our normal. A digital media environment with algorithms and AIs... See more

There is a link between music streaming platforms and social content, yes, but it goes in the opposite direction. A big artist releases an album on Spotify, Spotify puts it in playlists, and that artist grows on Instagram and TikTok. It’s almost never the other way around. And this is actually true for almost every form of digital media right now.... See more