Carmen Maria

Instead of fighting for grand alternatives like the free and open internet for everyone, the post-naive generation builds digital infrastructure primarily for their communities and their needs.

Building the culture we want requires a radical change in mindset, and action. The dream of a free and open Internet isn't dead—but in 2025, it's definitely more complicated.

I want to understand how researchers and designers describe the changing human experience in a world shaped by AI, especially through small, intentional, or “cozy” digital spaces.

DePIN uses cryptocurrency rewards to incentivize participation in physical infrastructure networks, enabling them to be built from the “ground up” rather than the top down

“We are in uncharted territory” when it comes to Tinder et al., says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. “There have been two major transitions” in heterosexual mating “in the last four million years,” he says. “The first was around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago,... See more

Hookup culture, which has been percolating for about a hundred years, has collided with dating apps, which have acted like a wayward meteor on the now dinosaur-like rituals of courtship.

Even our bodies get into the act in cyberspace. Much as we might dearly love to sometimes, we can’t leave ourselves behind when we get online. Even when someone is just playing around or in disguise, something true is revealed, it is never completely invented. [...] What is it about cyberspace? It conceals what gets in the way of revealing. No... See more