Sam Liebeskind

With a few exceptions, by far the most important component of successful speech communities is that its moderators have faces . A core feature of bulletin boards, comment threads on blogs, and publications is that the boundaries of acceptable speech are enforced not by tech executives, the farcical Facebook Supreme Court,[xii] or distant buildings... See more

So there is a way in which Shabbat is more philosophically important now than it has been in previous centuries. And of course, there’s also the secondary element, around 100 years old, of Shabbat being defined by the kinds of technologies that we do not engage in on that day, which was not something that Shabbat was designed for. Shabbat took on... See more

But even when AI becomes more sophisticated, it will still be backwards looking, relying on an analysis of things-already-done. There’s certainly some truth to the claim that ‘everything is remix’ (Harry Potter = Star Wars; Jaws = Beowulf). But only some. It’s perhaps more accurate to say that ‘everything is remix + experience’. Truly creative... See more

The original promise of personal computing was a new kind of clay—a malleable material that users could reshape at will. Instead, we got appliances: built far away, sealed, unchangeable. When your tools don’t work the way you need them to, you submit feedback and hope for the best. You’re forced to adapt your workflow to fit your software, when it... See more