("JP")

There’s an old story about Octavia Butler that I often return to: A young man once asked the visionary science fiction novelist the answer to ending all the suffering in the world. “There isn't one,” Butler replied. “So we’re doomed?” he asked, confused. “No,” said Butler. Then she delivered the words that would remake my understanding of the... See more

The first is this idea of a post-true-self era. The real disease of the Western world is the idea of the true self. The true self is the idea that is foundational to the current consumerist economy we're in. It's the carrot on the end of the stick that we endlessly chase. As soon as we consume something, it gets us slightly closer to the idea of... See more

The practice of software begins to resemble closely the practice of memoria and, specifically, the memory theatres of Camillo, which constitute memory as a public space; a kind of virtual architecture for an incomplete image of the world. Software begins to look like the closest medium to memory itself we have produced .

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES

In the ever present Twitter meme of “the same people that pivoted to web3 are now pivoting to AI” — I find it quite dangerous that folks don’t genuinely hold on to a few core questions that fulfill them. Instead it seems that many of us are willing to blow wherever the clout winds might most accumulate to our sails.

Now, the... See more

Alexander is inspired by how design occurs in the natural world. "Things that are good have a certain kind of structure," he told me. "You can't get that structure except dynamically. Period. In nature you've got continuous very-small-feedback-loop adaptation going on, which is why things get to be harmonious. That's why they have the qualities

... See more

The insincerity, the rampant performativity, the illusion of urgency, the obsession with constructing futures at the expense of the present – for better or worse, these are all things I associate with being a technologist. And when I speak to my technologist friends, most of them share the same inkling that something is amiss .

Far too many of us... See more

I realized that the craftsmen of yore had elevated weaponry, a category of merely utilitarian objects, into some of the most exquisite things I had ever seen. They had taken objects of ubiquitous, vital importance in their respective eras and made them beautiful. My initial aesthetic shock was quickly replaced by jealousy — no one was lifting the... See more