This week I presented at the 2026 Surveillance Studies Network conference in Lille, and I am still processing how good it was. Three days of genuinely sharp, wide-ranging work on planetary surveillance from Gaza and the US-Mexico border to corporate platforms and the intimate devices we keep in our homes. Plenty of ideas I will [ ]
Last week, a Twitch streamer named Kenneth went viral for catching his girlfriend cheating — not through a private investigator, not through a tip from a friend, but through the camera embedded in their $900 smart litter box. The Litter-Robot 5 Pro, marketed as a premium solution to the indignities of cat ownership, has a [ ]
Some goodbyes arrive quietly. On January 6, 2026, First Monday announced it would cease publication following its May 2026 issue. For those of us who have followed, read, cited, and published in the journal over the decades, the news landed with a particular weight. First Monday wasn’t just a venue. It was, for many of us, a [ ]
Remember the first time you realized your smart speaker was always listening? Or when you discovered your fitness tracker was mapping every step you took? Maybe you felt a little creeped out. But if you’re like most people, that feeling didn’t last long. Welcome to surveillance numbing. The term comes from psychologist Robert Jay Lifton’s [ ]
We’re living through something strange. Every day, millions of us willingly wire our homes with cameras, strap tracking devices to our wrists, and carry computers that log our every movement. We know these technologies watch us. We just… don’t really think about it anymore. The sociologist Langdon Winner called this “technological somnambulism”; we sleepwalk through [ ]
In a moment of synchronicity, I was quoting Orwell in a text I was writing when I read about a recent incident on the New York City subway that offers a troubling glimpse into our surveillance-saturated future, and our ability to resist it. A woman broke a man’s Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses after he wore them on [ ]
We’ve all seen that painting, or one like it. A mother slumped in exhaustion beside her child’s bed, fighting to keep her eyes open through another endless night. Christian Krohg’s 1883 masterpiece captures something timeless about parenthood: that bone-deep fatigue that comes from caring for someone who cannot care for themselves. Today, we have a [ ]
I’ve spent years collecting quotes about writing, first in notebooks, then scattered across devices and margins of books. Recently, while procrastinating on revisions (a writer’s most creative form of avoidance), I found myself hunting through this digital and analog archive for a half-remembered line. The search took longer than it should have. But sometimes procrastination [ ]
We often use technology to bridge the distances we find ourselves faced with. If we cannot be together, we send a text, call, or video message to each other. Before these digital mediations, we would maybe use a landline or send a letter. On June 16, 1593, Henry IV of France wrote to his mistress [ ]
Despite not being a big fan of biographies, I am very much enjoying The Ministry of Truth: A biography of George Orwell s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey, which, with its focus on the book, tells the story of Orwell in a fascinating new (to me) light. It s also a great way of talking about the impact of the world [ ]