Signals #006: The Floor and the Ceiling

As AI lowers the floor of access to design, taste, and creative work, the question of what mastery actually consists of becomes newly visible.

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Technology and Power

Every technological cycle is a cycle of power. The promise of empowerment is part of how the cycle works.

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Signals #005: Where the Seams Are

A quiet shift is underway in the writing about AI. Several writers — designers, researchers, librarians, a critic of computers — are converging on the same observation: that the work of designing well with AI is the work of putting boundaries back in.

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Keep the Thinking

Every technological advance should be measured not by the measure of intellectual property it absorbs — how much it can do without us — but by how much intellectual investment is worth sowing in it.

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Signals #004: What Doesn't Compress

As AI compresses the work of production, the work of deciding what should exist becomes the differentiator.

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Signals #003: Courtesy, Character, and the Collapse of Distinction

When everything becomes the same, what do our habits preserve? This week's articles explore how small repeated behaviors—politeness to machines, performative identity, brand signaling, algorithmic mimicry—either maintain meaningful distinctions or accelerate their collapse.

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Closer, Not Higher

The conventional wisdom says design leaders graduate from the details — but I think AI is about to prove the opposite: the work, increasingly, is to get closer.

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An Old, Restless Wish

Prediction has become the dominant register of the modern internet, but the appetite that drives it is older than the platforms.

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Signals #002: The Frame vs. The Framer

As machines master every frame we give them, what remains irreducibly human?

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Cynicism is a luxury; hope is a necessity.

One’s ability to ignore politics is a product of functional system that shares your worldview.

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Signals #001: The Politics of Naming

When we name something, we claim power over it. This week's articles explore how labels—from aesthetic categories to font choices to compression artifacts—don't just describe culture, they actively shape it, often serving political ends while pretending neutrality.

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Red-lining AI

Why blanket AI bans mistake the tool for the problem, and how thoughtful integration of automation, ethics, and creative work offers a better path forward.

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Earning Attention

Most designers spend 80% of their effort crafting a message and 20% earning it attention. That's backward.

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Craft is Untouchable

AI doesn't threaten craft—the temptation to skip iteration does.

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Local AI and Single-Function Devices

What if AI follows the path of music recording technology?

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Making and Machines

Craft provides an education that cannot be shortcut by even the best technology.

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Is there an AI garage startup path?

Foundation models are becoming infrastructure—and that changes everything about who can compete and how.

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Modern wealth is a parlour game played by the well fed

Market crashes aren't accidents—they're board-clearing strategies that consolidate power while the rest of us lose everything.

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Link – Second Story

Second Story was an interactive studio founded in 1994, since acquired by Razorfish. This is a snapshot of their site from 2013.

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Machine

"Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories." — Laurie Anderson

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Recycle Bin

upside down, glitch text, faces underneath it all. (18 Images)

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The Productive Afterward

JA Westenberg's essay on the merits of optimism is a helpful reminder.

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In But Not Of

On isolation as vantage point, witness as purpose, and making a home at the edges. What I've learned to recognize and accept as a designer and technologist thanks to science fiction.

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Consistency is Primitive

When AI becomes infrastructure and software becomes bespoke, the economic imperative for standardization disappears.

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Catching Up

Process, process, and process some more. Then print it out. (30 Images)

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Biggest Website Update in Years

Updated design, entirely new theme, hopefully better.

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Progress Without Disruption

There's nothing about progress that inherently requires disruption — except our inability to cooperate for stability.

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The Decision Before the Work

What happens when the most consequential design decision is made before you even get started?

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Replication Is Not Innovation

AI's efficiency gains don't justify trillion-dollar valuations.

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Fifteen Clocks

On clocks as interfaces to time, and a decade measured in rotations of a single hand.

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Disruption, or Theft?

We consented to Uber's terms and conditions. When did we consent to AI?

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