One woman described the world today as “scam or be scammed” — a phrase that got murmurs of agreement. As people talked about their jobs, school, AI, and clout-chasing, the scam or be scammed idea kept returning
A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the majority of respondents would prefer to live in a world where TikTok and Instagram did not exist!
But the bigger loss of human agency comes from the billions of people that use these apps. These deep learning AIs are designed to maximize the time we all spend on these apps. While you are reading this memo, you are probably jonesing to switch over to Instagram or TikTok. It turns out when an app company doesn't care about content and asks an AI... See more
The news stories and journalism that break through aren’t the most important stories, but rather the stories that can be shaped into SNARF.
Sometime since the rise of recommendation algorithms, social media became a little... cacophonous. Every page refresh serves you new and personalised content on a silver platter, just for you. Although, many people seem to be growing tired of this constant flow of information. In 2024, I began a video series, Corners of the Internet, sharing... See more
I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have... See more
The Sunlight caressed my skin, sending goosebumps all over. I love the Sun, but the colour I couldn’t stand. The yellow of hay, the red of wine, the dreamy white that reminded me of paper. I tend to look at the Sun through some sort of filters: camera lenses, windowpanes, leaves, as it stretched the street, flirted with the flowers, bathed the... See more
The widespread TikTok-ification of all social apps is quite striking (and sad!) Literally, all apps (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc) have become one click away to an infinite stream of viral videos, playing non-stop.
The ratio of mindless consumption to building something meaningful on computing devices now... See more