networked worlds

This has turned communicators of all kinds – from fashion influencers to public health specialists – into Kremlinologists who obsessively analyze the behavior of social media algorithms in the hopes of learning how to please them and (more importantly) how to avoid their punishments.

Hence algospeak. Social media users have learned the hard way that... See more

Reality as we understand it is a phenomenon of social structures, language, and shared processes for engaging with the world. Digital media is remaking all of these in such a way that media consumption more and more resembles the act of playing an alternate reality game.

As your cyberfeminist cyber-guide, I am taking you through the digital wilderness, through the spectral, weird and eerie, the ultra-smooth and the extra murky. As a promise of an odyssey lures me into the digital ether once again. For today, I want us to notice the landscapes of the digital ether, hop on my rickety rowboat, look into its skies, for... See more

Le Guin and Butler use the world-building capacities of the speculative and science fictions as a cypher into the complex social, cultural, and ecological conditions of life here on Spaceship Earth[2]. In their work, Butler and Le Guin established a more empathetic kind of world-building, using the genres as a way to think critically about society ... See more

or an entire generation, the imagination of people making the web has been hemmed in by the control of a handful of giant companies that have had enormous control over things like search results, or app stores, or ad platforms, or payment systems. Going back to the more free-for-all nature of the Nineties internet could mean we see a proliferation ... See more

In its most popular use, worldbuilding refers to a practice derived from fantasy or science fiction, where systems, characters, and mechanics assemble to satisfy the expectation that a fictional world should be convincing and complete. More broadly, it should be stated, worldbuilding is simply part of writing fiction: Sally Rooney does worldbuildin... See more

As calculators shifted math from rote computation to conceptual exploration, AI nudges creativity towards the uniquely human - the emotional, the ethical, the culturally resonant. It’s not a duel at dawn with paintbrushes or pianos but a partnership, with AI as the trusty sidekick, expanding the canvas of human expression.

For creatives, it’s import... See more

But what if there is no underlying logic? Or, more to the point, what if the logic shifts based on the platform's priorities? If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you'll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket.

The first recorded use of ‘worldbuilding’ was in an issue of the Edinburgh Review , December 1820.