Media & Culture
Using media to think deeply about complex issues
Tara McMullin and
Media & Culture
When everything is cheerfully “retro,” Fisher argued, we lose our grasp on history—and, without a sense of why the past happened the way it did, our anything-goes embrace of “happy hybridities” is an empty gesture. “What pop lacks now is the capacity for nihilation, for producing new potentials through the negation of what already exists,” he
... See moreMark Fisher’s “K-Punk” and the Futures That Have Never Arrived
Hua Hsu, December 11, 2018, New Yorker
Collin Brooke
Your Spotify Wrapped for 2024 is the weight of all these things, whether we want to deal with it or not. AI-powered podcasts are the result of expunging the lives of the real humans who built these ideas, replacing them with a facsimile of human connection. Your data feeds into Google, and it builds you the idea of a friend in return. Artists will... See more
Niko Stratis • Wrapped will never love you back
A decade ago, you paid for a smartphone to get 24/7 access to a world that, while demanding of your attention and full of advertising, was made up of a greater share of pleasurable, novel, or at least elective stuff: social media; entertainment; communication with friends; a bit of freedom from your desk at work, if you wanted it. (It provided... See more
John Herrman • Is Your Phone the Reason You Feel Broke?
Browsing the internet used to be a hobby of mine. Ever since my dad got us a modem when I was around ten, I spent hours at a time just looking at different websites. The internet felt like a limitless expanse of free expression. Now, despite how many more people use the internet, I usually end up at the same three or four websites, and I end up a... See more
Gita Jackson • For Love of God, Make Your Own Website - Aftermath
The aspect ratio of our lives has changed. By narrowing our field of view, cutting off our peripheral vision, the phone doesn’t just remove us from space and provoke a sense of claustrophobia. It isolates us.
Nicholas Carr • Out of the Landscape, into the Portrait
“Toward a phenomenology of the phone”
Status and Relatedness are stress/reward triggers and Attachment is a core human need. The exclusive "we" may reward Status for the ingroup members, but it threatens Status for the outgroup – especially those that want to belong. For outgroup members, the exclusive "we" meddles with the sense of Relatedness and creates insecure Attachment. Those... See more