Next month, it will be 15 years since Occupy Wall Street took over Lower Manhattan and other bits of the world. I was anxious to revisit it, but I ve really been appreciating this new podcast on the story from Future Hindsight: https://www.futurehindsight.com/occupy I also wrote a book on it:) https://nathanschneider.info/books/thank-you-anarchy/
The Conflict Systems zine, on designing online communities with conflict in mind, is NOW OUT. The digital version is here: https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/2026/08/12/conflict-systems And there are still a few print copies available here! https://cloud.medlab.host/apps/forms/s/4Ys2HkNo23WB9pBn2cX8kef7
Among my peers who study the cultures and economies surrounding technology, I often find myself more tech-positive than most. On the whole I like computers, like the internet, and like in general the emergent human creativity that these things have enabled and revealed. A source of my appreciation is that I expend a lot of [ ]
MEDLab s new Conflict Systems zine drops Wednesday—all about the need for building habits and tools for conflict into online spaces. Celebrate the launch: https://luma.com/vqlxb7dy Request a print copy: https://cloud.medlab.host/apps/forms/s/4Ys2HkNo23WB9pBn2cX8kef7
What comes after Luddism? In a special free issue of the mighty co-op Flaming Hydra, I probe the limits of centering resistence to big tech around the lore of the Luddites: https://flaminghydra.com/issue-617/#beyond-luddism
An app used to mean something. Whatever “app” meant—Mobile first? Interactive website? Anything that runs on a computer?—it was the coin of the digital realm. Apps were useful for doing things, even necessary, and not everyone could make one. A working app signified significant investment, effort, and expertise. If someone bothered to go through the [ ]
For the past two years, my lab has been exploring how to create online spaces designed for a basic human activity: conflict. See what we ve learned on August 12, when we release our new zine, Conflict Systems, at the Metagov Seminar: https://luma.com/vqlxb7dy
One thing I ve noticed among my students is the use of the word technology as a kind of god-like force. Firstly, they use this extremely broad term to refer to a rather specific set of phenomena—more or less, the things that happen on Internet-connected smartphones or laptops. Secondly, they attribute to it a sort of [ ]
Are you building a cooperative newsroom or media project? Apply to be part of Start.coop s Accelerator for Worker-Friendly Media, including financial and technical support, plus a week with my lab here in Boulder. Learn more here: https://www.start.coop/accelerator
I have had far too many conversations lately, and perhaps so have you, in which my interlocutor confidently or desperately attempts to assert what really, truly, and finally sets us humans apart from the increasingly clever and voluble machines. I’ve heard, for instance, that our value lies in our capacity for intention, or consciousness, or [ ]