Can You Imagine? A Library of Possibilities for Reimagining the Web

I don’t have to care about algorithms if I have people who care about me. And I get people to care about me by first demonstrating that I care about them. Some people I’ve talked with over the years have said that this seems like “too much effort,” but I counter with “it’s effort that actually pays off over time, contrasted with minimal effort th... See more

A digital garden is a framework for speculation around how online space can be designed from the imagination of gardens. Here, the values of gardens, pluralism, interdependence, sustainability, adaptation, and discovery are centered in the design process of technosocial spaces.

Making a living from your work comes so much later in the process of being an artist. The first layer of needs for an artist is to have something that naturally comes out of you. Second is having subject matters that inspires you. Third is having the willingness to keep doing it and to get better at it. Fourth is maybe that you have enough positive... See more

My wife is a painter, and I’ve been paying a lot of attention to her journey these past few years, because she has never put her work online. She might never, because, to put it online is to ask people to have a reaction. To put it online is to say there’s an opinion beyond her own that matters. To her, that’d be a real sacrifice to do that. Becaus... See more

A skeptical New York Times review of the World’s Fair television demonstration wrote that “[t]he problem with television is that people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn’t time for it.” It was soon proven incorrect – though there were only a few hundred television sets in use in the United States by 19

... See more

The invention of paper in China around 105 AD made writing significantly easier and more accessible. Faster and cheaper to produce than papyrus and parchment – one Bible required the skins of 300 sheep to produce – it contributed to the spread of literacy to the masses.

Like Borges’s library, we are tasked with sifting through the internet’s “divine disorder” to find what is worthy of our attention. The question, now, is how to sculpt a better Library of Babel – a better information infrastructure – that lends itself to the advancement of knowledge and wisdom conducive to human flourishing.

When you become who your audience expects at the expense of who you are, the affection you receive is not intended for you but for the character you're playing.

Offline we exist by default; online we have to post our way into selfhood.

“Sort by recency” is the Internet’s default setting. We’re stuck in an endless cycle of ephemeral content consumption. On the Internet, even though we’re just a click away from the greatest authors of all time, from Plato to Tolstoy, we default to novelty instead of timelessness.