Sixian

Looking toward a post-pandemic politics, the problem of over-individuation within the systems we use to model ourselves is compounded by the physical isolation each of us experiences in extended rhythms of lockdown. The situation has brought new cultural and interpersonal realities, many of them unfamiliar and uncomfortable, such as the tense... See more

The Hidden Price Ceiling of Specializing Good specializing is hard, because if you don’t do it well, you can end up trapping yourself. By creating a narrow positioning or specialization you make yourself more legible and understandable - you’re essentially optimizing for well-defined work. And well-defined work is less senior, less well paid and... See more

Li: ...I think the internet uniquely unlocks this opportunity for the next generation and all subsequent generations.  This is different from just “be your own boss.” You can do that in the gig economy. But with a gig, you’re doing really rote commoditized, kind of repetitive work, where the platform is telling you exactly what to do.  Whereas in... See more

Just as the goal of desire is to extinguish itself, audiophilia’s object is a kind of intimacy and immediacy that can be achieved only when one purchases a technology sophisticated enough to disappear itself, allowing creators and listeners to comingle in its transparency. 

Arman: Prior to this industry, prior to 2000, when Napster and the ripping services emerged, it was an interesting model for this business. You had a few dominant, large labels that controlled every aspect of music from the discovery of the talent, to the producing of the songs, to the recording of the songs, because they own the studios because it... See more

What we build is defined and controlled by its unresolvable conflicts. In responsive design, it’s the text and image conundrum I showed earlier. In other, more grand arenas, there is capital versus labor, or collective control versus anarchic individualism. In technology, I believe it comes down to the power dynamics of convenience. To create... See more

At the end of a scientifically rigorous exercise, knowledge is how we meet the world and how the world meets us in return.

It kind of romanticizes the Indigenous, and this is why, you know, sometimes I find that in the recent upheavals and desire to center Indigenous realities, there is a romanticization of those Indigenous technologies that kind of instrumentalized them for modern anxieties, like, grabs them by the scruff of their necks and says, “here's climate... See more

The sweet spot is probably some sort of middle-class position, with relatively secure and easy kind of work. Like say being a government employee in a sleepy department, or a tenured professor. You’re not so far ahead that you have to work harder than average to generate the collective slipstream potential, but you’re not so far back that all the... See more