For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the…
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the…
Culture & truth : the remaking of social analysis
xii, 253 pages ; 22 cm; Argues for a new approach to thinking and writing about culture. Exposing old conceptions, the book argues that new ethnographic writing must come to terms with the dynamic nature of social reality - with history, spontaneity, and human emotions; Originally published: Boston: Beacon, 1989; Includes index; Self-Renewing 2017; Includes index
The Shared Patterns of Indigenous Culture, Permaculture and Digital Commons | David Bollier
Rarely have I read an essay that knits together some very different commons with such wisdom and depth. Joline Blais' 2006 essay, “Indigenous Domain: Pilgrims, Permaculture and Perl,” is a wonderfully insightful analysis that reveals the underlying unity and logic of commons principles. Her piece appeared in Intelligent Agent (vol. 6, no. 2), published by the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts.
Sayaka Murata’s Alien Eye
The author of “Convenience Store Woman” has gained a cult following by seeing the ordinary world as science fiction.
Reflections on Anthropic and EA
Personal reflections I've been sitting on lately.
From information free-riding to information sharing: how have humans solved the cooperative dilemma at the heart of cumulative cultural evolution?
Abstract. Cumulative cultural evolution, where populations accumulate ever-improving knowledge, technologies and social customs, is arguably a unique featu
The Case for User Agent Extremism - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
Everyone is a Strategist and No One is a Writer
From politics to culture, we face a crisis of cleverness and a society addicted to marketing
Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us
A reflection on the reading life. What formed it, what threatens it, and what remains.
Expecting researcher taste and judgement to become increasingly valuable (this is from Anthropic's Opus 5.5 system card) anthropic.com/claude-opus-5-5-system-card
