We are in a period which I think is dominated by two great cultural signifiers. An analog system that belonged to our parents, which has been shot full of holes. It is the symbol of the ruined castle. "Gothic High-Tech." The ruins of the unsustainable. And the other symbol is the favela slum, "Favela Chic," the informalized, illegalized, heavily ne... See more

...if you dig a little deeper, the reason indie labels and direct distribution have gained a bit of share is related to the fact that as we spoke about earlier, we've seen the barrier to creating and distributing music collapse.

we play to continue the game rather than “win” the Internet on any given day, though that’s nice too.

It seems to me that, through the way Reddit and YouTube and social media work, there’s such an emphasis on creating distinctions and communities, and it’s just created an explosion of interest in ideological sub-groupings that had been completely forgotten. I started in politics in the early ‘00s, and it just didn’t have this flavor. If you were a ... See more

I am going to make the argument that the predominant form of the social web — that amalgam of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, forums, Reddit, Instagram — is an impoverished model for learning and research and that our survival as a species depends on us getting past the sweet, salty fat of “the web as conversation” and on to something more timeless, i... See more

When contemplating these questions, it’s easy to get carried away into a techno-utopian dream world where all wisdom is neatly catalogued into accessible bits, so any problem could be easily researched and overcome. While that vision may or may not be attainable, it does feel quite possible to imagine a world in which all people treat their own har... See more

Another unique thing about virality is that it comes and goes over time depending on the channels available. These viral channels are constantly in flux. Not true with network effects, which are more stable over time.

What's needed here is like a kind of atemporality that's like agnosticism. Just a calm, pragmatic, serene skepticism about the historical narratives.

Critically the world has ended many times to make room for whiteness – the world-performing imperative that enlists bodies of all kinds to perpetuate secure arrivals and safety. Even more critically, there isn’t one world – one dominant already-made world. The world has never been coherent or okay for many of us. And endings are plentiful – often h... See more