Sixian

Our relation to god games is like this: straddling between the wonderment of the small that makes us feel powerful and the knowledge that we do not (and might not want to) wield that power in the world outside the frame.

While the iPhone was always sexy as a black mirror, a smooth monolith on its exclusive pedestal, what’s interesting to me is that it’s now developed a kind of intimacy that it didn’t have before that emerges particularly with FaceID and Raise to Wake. I look at it, it looks at me, there is this slight microsecond of lag as it works to recognise me... See more

A radical manifesto for the transformation of post-pandemic politicsThe question of ownership is the critical fault line of our times, and during the pandemic this issue has only become more divisive. Since March 2020 we have witnessed the extraordinary growth of asset manager capitalism and the explosive concentration of wealth within the hands of... See more

Forgetting is a feature, not a bug. It makes us feel like we’re moving forward through time, rather than standing still or running in circles. My grandmother and her ancestors knew this all too well. Artful forgetting, editing, and curation allowed them to craft narratives that helped their children understand the past and orient towards the... See more

A simple interaction with a stranger at a cocktail party who doesn’t reciprocate our handshake can leave us sour all night. We may even respond with aggression when we are introduced to that person via email a week or two later.

The value of objects is not objective—it’s subjective. And that subjective value is determined mimetically, based on our relationships with others. We could say that value is intersubjective: we assign value to things (and therefore desire them) according to what other people want.  

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 in January 2020, Gibson attributes this loss of interest in the future to a loss of belief in it. Too burnt (out) by disappointment from both what is and what could be (which when given brief thought only appears to be no better than dealing with today), our lack of imagination (our lack of image-making, of boundary-drawing,... 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.