digital life

We are adrift–a culture of consumers accustomed to buying objects and building collections as the sole means of documenting our cultures–deprived of the infrastructure to do so. But our individual inability to collect and store is one I’ll lament the least.

Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more

So which direction are we moving in? Down the same old path – where identity is just content, content is monetised, and monetisation demands a steady drip of oversharing and low-key emotional collapse? Or could we actually start to build new ways of being online? Ones that prioritise people as people, and not just scrolling spectacle?

Until then,... See more

the decline of third places means there are fewer places to just hang out and bump into each other. Other economic and social factors have surely contributed to this change, but I suspect that it’s largely due to the new third place—the one in the palm of our hands. We hang out online, which means we don’t hang out at all.

If AI is able to suddenly pump slop into our environment it’s only because we already turned on the faucets ourselves. Just think about all the garbage content that people you actually know send you via text, or the DMs that feel like they’re from bots but are actually from real people driven by platform incentives (Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook,... See more

Keepsakes—like luxury watches or rare books—are already finding their place in the second-hand market, attracting collectors and enthusiasts of contemporary relics. In the future, digital keepsakes could also acquire invaluable worth. Imagine, for example, a Friend pendant worn by a major celebrity or a groundbreaking scientist. This small object,... See more

But that eternal present is a lie, an illusion, a fabrication of the digital interfaces. And this not only destroys our sense of the past but also undermines our ability to think about the future.

In an environment without past or future, all we have is stasis.

So it’s no coincidence that culture has stagnated in this eternal digital now . The same... See more

During the Romantic era, keepsakes were albums of fine engravings, often given as gifts, that sealed an emotion or celebrated a special occasion. This word, which combines to keep (to keep, preserve) and sake (a mark of friendship or consideration), takes on a particular resonance in our digital culture. At its core, it holds tensions related to... See more

The result is what Moskowitz describes as a “mirror maze”. We enter social media hoping to express ourselves but instead see endless refractions – ourselves as we want to be seen, as others might perceive us, as the algorithm is training us to become.

All of this has consequences for how we think and feel. Our sense of self begins to dissolve under... See more

It’s not that anyone is forcing us to humiliate ourselves; it’s that we’ve come to equate being known with being exposed.