Brian Thomas Clark

I get the impulse to recover a more democratic online world compared to the top-down dictates of Silicon Valley. But in seeking a more humane tech future, nostalgia is more hindrance than help; the alternatives will need to be legible to new generations weaned on social-media feeds.

The ingredients of ‘good’ curation

I think great curation comes down to five key elements that span the processes of searching, selection and contextualizing:

1. Preservation: Caring for, reviving or resurfacing things that might otherwise be lost or forgotten in archives or streams.


2. Connection: Inspiring moments of surprise –, “I didn’t think of

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Online discourse has debased and trivialized the concept of obsession.

People love to post about how they’re “obsessed” with a pair of jeans, or with Flossie the world’s oldest cat (respect), or with something else they will forget exists within minutes of posting about it. They love to pretend they “can’t stop thinking about” Bolivian neo-Andean... 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.

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

The human cost of technical debt in higher education is substantial. Developer burnout is a significant problem across the industry, with many institutions losing talented staff due to the constant stress of maintaining aging infrastructure.

The stress reduction alone was worth the migration effort for UCLA. Their team now spends time on innovation... See more

Boredom is when you do the things that make you feel like you have life under control. Not being bored is why you always feel busy, why you keep “not having time” to take a package to the post office or work on your novel. You do have time—you just spend it on your phone. By refusing to ever let your brain rest, you are choosing to watch other... See more

A decade ago, you paid for a smartphone to get 24/7 access to a world that, while demanding of your attention and full of advertising, was made up of a greater share of pleasurable, novel, or at least elective stuff: social media; entertainment; communication with friends; a bit of freedom from your desk at work, if you wanted it. (It provided... See more