All That Is Solid Melts Into Information

This isn’t the same kind of attention we give to our Instagram and TikTok feeds. It is a ritualised form of intentional presence directed to a shared sense of meaning and history.

As a result, our digital commons has become commoditised and overrun by the cult of self. When we shout ‘listen!’ on social media, we are demanding that others ‘Listen to... See more

I think rituals are important, rituals that mark the passage of time. Well, it’s just time, I hear you say, just a man-made construct. Our lives run in tandem with a certain perception of time as backdrop — for most of us, that’s “clock time”. Even then, that has been quite forcefully upended by the proliferation of async communication channels of ... See more

Here is where culture enters the picture. I mean“culture” in its anthropological rather than artisticsense. What values and practices can hold people to-gether as the institutions in which they live fragment? My generation suffered from a want of imagination inanswering this question, in advancing the virtues ofsmall-scale community. Co

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As the realm of virtual information complexifies, it is increasingly difficult to collectively experience, let alone agree on concrete descriptions of events. The platforms we use to communicate often lack archival affordances, optimizing instead for the nonstop production of new content. So context collapses and signifiers empty their meaning. Whe... See more