The Medium Is The Message

Digital affordances seem to often constitute what Marshall McLuhan would call ‘hot media’ (1967), which require little active participation on the part of the audience, and are of highly predictable nature. Rosa would insist that to achieve resonance, we would want to cool media down to encourage active participation – a prerequisite for resonant... See more

the best software products aren’t just assemblages of functionality ,exposed by particular formal elements (links, buttons, icons, menus). Rather, they organize and shape how you think, and they create or sustain a particular lifestyle

At present, we seem to be suffering from a widespread failure of literary imagination. We have become worse at imagining the experiences of other people, less inclined to credit these experiences as being as valid and real as our own. Why is this? In part, I think, because of the methods by, and pace at which, we acquire our stories. After all,... See more

Similarly, I think people need to ask themselves – and it might be easier if we ask each other – What do you really want to be doing? How did you fall in love in the first place? People start optimizing for things like “hm, if I did this I would get 5% more traffic” or “I would get to the next follower milestone” I think because it’s visible, and... See more

Looking around, it’s easy to be disheartened about people and the state of the world, but on Reddit I have experienced the opposite: people naturally create community, and they are smarter, funnier, and more helpful and caring than I think we often give them credit for.

And this is not because our users are some special subset of humanity. They’re... See more