Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
The gig economy itself is an aestheticization of labor practices. Sure, what you’re doing may look a whole lot like what a pizza delivery guy did twenty years ago, but what you’re really doing is (according to ads looking to reel in new DoorDash drivers) being your own boss, exploring new parts of the city, paying for your wedding.
Adrian Daub • What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley (FSG Originals x Logic)
This is not to just be a “things were better in the old days” rant. But I do think in the era of growth teams running wild with machine learning algorithms, we accelerated distribution incentives to drive engagement before we really knew what incentives were being created in the internet economy. And now the larger social networks are grappling wit... See more
Eugene Wei • The Kids are Alright: An Interview with Eugene Wei and Julie Young (Gift Culture, Part 4)
The social scalability of an institutional technology depends on how that technology constrains or motivates participation in that institution. cultural and jurisdictional diversity of people who can beneficially participate in an institution is also often important, especially in the global Internet context. The more an institution depends on loca... See more
Richard Kim • From Nothing to Something with R.N.G.
It’s been endlessly argued that algorithms influence too much of what we watch, listen to, read, and even think. Personal taste erodes while decision-making is outsourced to the platform. This globalization, platform persuasion, and general apathy has spilled over into all types of homogenization: the look of our coffee shops, cars, architecture, l
... See moreAlthough digital platforms promise interpersonal connection and form the technical backbone of our online society, they are, first and foremost, spaces driven by capitalist logics of enclosure, control and profit-making. They are owned and operated by private corporations accountable to shareholders with voracious appetites for revenue. They have a... See more
Jennifer Cobbe • Rethinking Digital Platforms for the Post-COVID-19 Era
To broaden our view: we must look at image production (and cultural production in general) not just as a specific vocation, but as a novel consumer behavior. The popular Technology Adoption Life Cycle framework proposes that different psychographic consumer segments—early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard markets—can be penetrate... See more
Toby Shorin • Report: The Diminishing Marginal Value of Aesthetics
“What I’m interested in is deep aesthetics: the universal or near-universal forms that elicit deep, subconscious positive or negative emotional responses. These deep aesthetics are changing, too, but not nearly fast enough to keep pace with rapid technological, political, and social upheaval around us.”... See more
– Lane Rettig, on the importance of studying d