Media & Culture

The stasis debate is actually just about two specific topics: (1) whether 21st century culture offers the feeling of artistic progress, where new styles/practices devalue previous ones, thereby creating clear chapters in the historical timeline, and (2) whether there are new techniques in symbolic activity that expand how we perceive the world and... See more

The slots that books that connected with readers once occupied are now increasingly occupied by the equivalent of the botshit that fills the first eight screens of your Google search results: book-shaped objects that have gamed their way to the top of the list.

But here's the thing: being able to say, "wherever you get your podcasts" is a radical statement . Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that's supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that's not owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have... See more

I think the defining economic reality of the modern platform media world is that all the platforms realized that an infinite supply of teenage creators are cheaper to deal with than media companies or groups of media individuals or powerful creators. And I’m curious for your read on the number of YouTubers that you see retiring or taking a step... See more

we define moral-emotion expression in social-media text as representational expressions of affect that reliably signal, either to others or to the self, that something is relevant to the interests or good of society, as defined by the conceptual knowledge of the expresser.

In any case, it’s enough to make anyone feel crazy. Over the last decade we’ve watched — and while I’m talking about the tech industry, I think we can all say it’s been everywhere else too — the things we love get distanced from us so that somebody else can get unbelievably rich, the things we used to do easily made more difficult, confusing and/or... See more