networked worlds

In Mythologies , Roland Barthes discusses how wrestling (and now, politics) uses kayfabe, the convention of presenting staged narratives and spectacles as real to capture attention and elicit a desired response from an audience.

Unfortunately, advertising has been ingrained into the internet as the basic model for so long and to such an extent that it’s hard to envision online life without the systematic manipulation of attention and all its evils. So we’re bound to wind up here, at the bitter end of “content.” Which is a good excuse to withdraw deeper into books, movies,... 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... See more

Systems Ultra goes beyond narratives of technological exceptionalism to explore how we experience the complex systems which influence our lives, how to understand them more clearly, and, perhaps, how to change them.

What if an economic diagram can treat economic units as permeable membranes instead of enclosed boxes? What if it portrays the economy as a more interdependent, rhizomatic web of connections? What if a line can be used not as a border, but more as an entanglement like that of a cat playing with yarns?