Sarah Owen

People understand things through narratives, including the future. Everyone is the science fiction writer of their own life. When hoping for a good life, and thinking about what might bring that about, we are utopian writers; when fearful that bad things will happen, we are dystopian writers.

The Hidden Cost of To-Do Lists: And yet, despite its theoretical rationality, even the most carefully captured, prioritized, and well-reviewed to-do list can’t always escape the scourge of unintended consequences. As soon as you put stuff on your to-do list, even a purely mental to-do list, you run the risk of awakening that inner coercion... See more

"frictionless experiences with technology mean that we notice less about the tools we’re using and what it is they actually do. This, he thinks, promotes a kind of self-absorption. We don’t see ourselves as being in conversation with our tools or the physical world; instead, we see ourselves as masters of our environment, with the expectation that... See more

A high-tech neighborhood that was slated to rise along Toronto’s waterfront, Quayside was the brainchild of Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation arm of Google parent company Alphabet. Projected to create 44,000 jobs and $14.2 billion annually in GDP for Canada, the interconnected smart city would’ve housed residents in 12 timber high-rises designed... See more

“Non-self-coercion” is the conceptual distillation of several converging threads of what you could call productivity criticism (if not outright backlash).

Census tracts are tiny, hyper-local designations, with populations between 1,200 and 8,000 each; mine is only 0.2 square miles in area.

The social app might position itself as the anti-Instagram, but it’s really just another avenue for us to pretend our lives are a highlight reel.