Yet, the hidden machinations behind everyone’s favorite social media and search platforms are engineered to exploit our primal instincts for validation, status, and mimetic desires (adopting or pursuing preferences and aspirations based on the influence of others rather than our intrinsic motivations), morphing into a manipulative force that feeds... See more

We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use.

Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.

Ritual technology operates on... See more

Innovating within an existing platform is always a challenge, because as media theorist Marshall McLuhan argued decades ago, ‘the medium is the message’. TikTok and Twitter/X have short-form content built into the design of the platform, which prevents depth. As I explore in The Bigger Picture, this also leads to what philosopher C. Thi Nguyen... See more