Sam Liebeskind

The engineer who truly understands the problem often finds that the elegant solution is simpler than anyone expected.

The engineer who starts with a solution tends to build complexity in search of a justification.

Living among different people also deepens empathy. If you grew up alongside refugees, it is harder to fear them. If you recognize the face of the unhoused person on your block, it is harder to dismiss them. Familiarity makes humanity harder to ignore.

The new public square is not centred on a stable set of shared sources; instead it is structured by a small number of competing, for-profit platform companies bundling a bewildering array of stuff for different people in different ways through various ranking and recommendation algorithms.

Audiences and advertisers seem to prefer this new reality,... See more

What are the practices and mindsets that can be helpful to navigate loss, grief, change and transitions? And what does it mean to make good compost as we close ideas, forms, collective creations that no longer serve us?

The resulting problems are not primarily problems of disinformation, though disinformation plays some role. They are the problems you get when large swathes of the public sphere are exclusively owned by wannabe God-Emperors. Elon Musk owns X/Twitter outright. Mark Zuckerberg controls Meta through a system in which he is CEO, chairman and effective... See more