Mark Fishman

Perhaps a great deal of television is not meant to absorb our attention, at all, but rather to dab away at it, to soak up tiny droplets of our sensory experience while our focus dances across other screens. You might even say that much television is not even made to be watched at all. It is made to flow. The play button is the point.

Whether the starting point is a student directory (Facebook), radio, or an AI image generator, the end point seems to be the same: a river of short-form video. In mathematics, the word “attractor” describes a state toward which a dynamic system tends to evolve. To take a classic example: Drop a marble into a bowl, and it will trace several loops... See more

If we take a step back for a second, the idea that if a political movement garners mass support, it can’t possibly be extremism, incompatible with democratic self-government, or beyond the pale in a broader cultural and societal sense is utterly implausible and historically illiterate

Lamott tells writers to begin with what she calls a shitty first draft. The first version is going to be messy, and precisely because it does not have to be perfect, you are allowed to begin. Improvement comes through iteration.

Cities are no different. We inherit the slow, messy evolution of streets, plazas, and neighborhoods. What we need is... See more

As young single men have dramatically increased their time alone and online, they’ve marinated in a unique attentional environment that is more charged with extremist ideas and emotional negativity. Political scientists have found that social isolation increases the risk that young men develop a “need for chaos,” and law enforcement officers have... See more

Because you can see, even more clearly with the distance, the theory of attention that underpinned the iPhone: that with these calm and capable devices in our pockets, we would ourselves become calmer and more capable. That we would master what cognitive scientists call executive functioning — the ability to mentally plan, organize our working... See more

Someone once asked me recently if I had any advice on how to predict the future when I wrote about social and technological trends. Sure , I said. My advice is that predicting the future is impossible, so the best thing you can do is try to describe the present accurately . Since most people live in the past, hanging onto stale narratives and... See more

There exists a popular sentiment that we can’t build as well as we used to and our best days are behind us. But when we choose to, we can still build beautiful and interesting developments. Here’s a tour of 10 new projects that are creating a better built environment. 🧵 https://t.co/k4iCNx4QtP