social media
When an entire population is addicted to the same thing, where does rehabilitation even start when every institution is a pusher and every person an enabler? The field of psychiatry has yet to formally diagnose "social media addiction", and when I searched for reasons why that is, the
romance
In a recent post, On the quiet power of becoming nobody I touched on how social media fragments our ability to connect with others in the real world, and what it means to finally find oneself outside of it. I'm going to extend those thoughts here. The longer
Musings
Stripped of "online presence", who are we? This question feels more urgent as personalized technology lulls us ever deeper into self-obsessive surrealities; social algorithms that trap us in feedback loops of self-worth, dealing just enough dopamine to keep us on the verge of feeling seen. I&
communications
Back in 2018 I shared a thought on Facebook about how social media was changing our perception of time. I had just wrapped up my first summer growing flowers for profit on a parched five acres in the prairies of Southern Alberta. Somehow, despite no working wells on the property
community radio
I've been trying to find a solution to the problem of social media. Over a year ago I designed a model I thought might work – a tiered networking platform that offered free functionality to individual users, paid profiles to businesses and institutions, and founder/investor shares to arts
cognitive care
About fifteen years ago I casually started warning my circles that once the speed of information outpaced our bureaucratic systems, society was likely to collapse. I remember mentioning it at a family dinner as we lightly engaged in "what's wrong with the world these days" conversation.
cognitive atrophy
Early adopters: I think we got cooked. Mass dementia might be the "rupture" Carney was referring to. Hear me out: This might be what Christina Lagarde meant at Davos when she said, (notes in my last post) "I'm not exactly on the same page as
user data
Viral pathogen genome researcher, Theo Sanderson, has created a map of 3million+ Bluesky users that visualizes simple, publicly available user data, and it's exquisite. What first stunned me was, that's the way I imagine data in my head. Though, in my head the data is dynamic
resistance
Over the past few weeks we've witnessed the greatest civil resistance movements of our time. Hundreds of thousands of everyday citizens are mobilized across American cities trying to protect their neighbours from being snatched off the streets, from their homes, out of their cars, from their workplaces... Minnesota
accelerationism
Technology has accelerated the widening chasm between clear information and muddied noise; social media and now LLMs have broadly eroded information literacy and sown chaos throughout most spheres of public discourse. Everyone is confused, most are angry, some were blissfully lobotomized by the algorithms long ago. But our online spaces
agency
"Freedom" has become a dirty word in many circles. Even writing the term here is giving me the icks, so before I dip into discussing the algorithmic traps of our online social spaces, I want to inspect why the word "freedom" feels so gross. My first
agency
As a "communications strategist" I understand the rules of online engagement intimately, so much so that when I realized the implications of marketers applying users' behavioural data at scale – feeding it back to us as we gaze glassy-eyed into the abyss, adoring our own reflections and