Sixian

If the hero’s journey is descended from the campfire brag, and the carrier bag novel from workplace gossip, blogging is descended from trolling.

This was unexpected – because phones are such deeply tactile things. I pick up my iPhone X forty-five times a day, Apple Screen Time informs me: no wonder irreverent UK tech site The Register has christened phones ‘fondle slabs’. Our phones are not simply media devices or transparent conduits for the vast amount and variety of information that... See more

The middle class and poor too, have exit options. To the extent it is real, the “Great Resignation” (and the similar “laying flat” trend in China) is something like an exit from formation flight.

We’re building edgeless environments of divergency. Things are added in chaos, then if successful, they expanded further and further out until they collapse and rearrange. This is probably why responsive design feels so relevant, maddening, and divisive: its patterns mimic the larger patterns of technology itself.

One human question, in particular, haunts me: What effect will Twitter’s decision to ban Trump have on the mimetic escalation of desire? On the desire to use violence in other to vanquish the “Other”? The most eye-opening and throat-swallowing part of that first hour after the ban was hearing how many thoughtful people on both sides had a shiver go... See more

But that’s the crux of fidelity angst: if we take the promise of media immersion with the seriousness that technology companies encourage, we can’t help but break the spell by wondering if this is really it. The promise of immersion is thus self-negating.

If the container is what allows things to move from land to sea to land, and the pallet is what allows products to be moved from warehouses to containers to trucks to distribution centers, then stretch wrap is what allows diverse products to be bundled together and made anew as palletized cargo.