digital media ecology

As I used to observe with some frequency, the arc of digital culture bends toward exhaustion.

What I mean by this is simple: when we think of the way our days are structured, the kinds of activities most readily on offer, the mode of relating to the world we are encouraged to adopt, etc.—in each case we are more likely to find ourselves spent... See more

“To say that any technology or extension of man creates a new environment is a much better way of saying the medium is the message. Moreover this environment is always invisible and its content is always the old technology.”

The Database dramatically expands access to information, challenging the authority of even the most venerable professional weavers of Narrative. Official narratives are just one more datapoint, one more entry in the Database, one way among many of generating a path through the entries.

In its place, the real conversations and connections migrated to an archipelago of WhatsApp groups, Slacks, Discord servers and Signal chats. This is the Archipelago of Trust: self-selecting focused communities loosely bridged by mutual members and bounded by common norms.

The timeline is no longer a source of information or social presence, but more of a mood-regulation device, endlessly replenishing itself with just enough novelty to suppress the anxiety of stopping. Scrolling has become a form of ambient dissociation, half-conscious, half-compulsive, closer to scratching an itch than seeking anything in... See more

When looking at the Mirror World, it can seem obvious that millions of people have given themselves over to fantasy, to make-believe, to playacting. The trickier thing, the uncanny thing, really, is that’s what they see when they look at us. They say we live in a “clown world,” are stuck in “the matrix” of “groupthink,” are suffering from a form of

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The antidote to this compulsive, numbing overload will be found in deliberative friction, design patterns that introduce pause and reflection into digital interaction, or platforms and algorithms that create space for intention.

That is what fandom is: a biological override—a social-binding and identity-affirming relationship strong enough to justify effort in a world increasingly designed to eliminate effort. It’s another reason for the statement I made at the very beginning: the history of media is about selling to more, the future is about selling more to fewer.

Art plays a unique and crucial role in working out “what ... we might want when we’re not under surveillance.” While we can never be entirely free of surveillance of some kind or another (and not always from the usual suspects), that doesn’t mean we don’t have a real need to create spaces or forms wherein we can temporarily suspend its grip, and... See more