Social Mania and Civilisational Maturity (or, why are all the cults American?)
Does the framework of ‘Europe did class war, America does social justice’ help us understand the difference between these two parts of the world?
Empowered Belonging
Writing about the intersection of technology and culture.
Dormant Last read · last published · next check
Read 8 hours ago and current, but nothing has been published for 18 months.
Latest posts
I turn into a large language model when I'm asleep
And I make some great shows.
Mapping out the online communities you didn't realise could change the world
Those who can harness the latent power of communities with existing roots have a better chance of changing our world. Build where passion already exists, and is latent, waiting to be awakened.
Latent Communities in an Artificial Internet
Those who can harness the latent power of communities which already have strong roots have a better chance of changing our world.
There's no such thing as family on the internet
By tying ourselves to our ancestors, names have helped society understand who we are for thousands of years. Pursuing distinctiveness, internet culture has abandoned those ties, choosing names that help people remember we exist, but not who we are.
René Girard, mimetic desire, and society's biggest rat race
The French polymath had an original perspective on why we want what we want, and thus what really moves the world.
Museums of Passion Projects, Talent, Economics, and Politics
Why do people bother to try and change the world?
The Village that Broke Free
Starting your own project is all the rage, but there are other ways to change the world.
Technology creates a thousand futures, Culture determines which one we take
Plotting the steps from technology to change.
Takeaways from TED 2023: why the future is better than you think
Plus thoughts on what the future will look like, across tech and culture