Essays

Dragoncatcher the blog

Robin Sloan's lab notebook, about media and technology, creative computing, AI aesthetics, & more.

Amelia Wattenberger

I create things on the web, explore novel interfaces, turn data into meaning, and empower devs with AI.

Augment

A collection of essays on the future of personal computing — specifically, on the kind we’d like to see more of in the future, and the ideas that might help us get there.

Optimistic Computing

I recently made two new friends: Abhinav Omprakash and Dawn Walker. Abhinav said I’m an optimist and I should write about it. Dawn said I shouldn’t try to coin any new terms. I should know better, but this essay follows Abhinav’s recommendation — and credits Dawn, in the very likely event I should have followed her advice instead. I have been alive for approximately four decades. Each of those decades was witness to its own fun brand of computering.

Write Games, Not Engines

Blog of Agatha Mallett: This is a mirroring of "Write Games, Not Engines" by Josh Petrie.

Nadia Eghbal, Re: Writing Hypertext

My digichat with @nayafia---an essential writer (*imho*) of texts, notes and wonderful roundups.

The Past and Present of Computer-Augmented Hypothesis Generation

Don Swanson’s career started on a path familiar to many who read this blog.

Kyle Booten

Noöhacking1 is the title of my current research program. I use this term for ways that artists and everyday digital media users build and repurpose algorithmic tools in order to take care of their own minds/spirits, an especially challenging and important task amidst a digital milieu that seems designed to make us alienated, unintelligent, and miserable.

Anshul Kundaje on Twitter / X

Brainstorming with frontier AI models in more open ended domains (like bio that do not have closed verifiable loops) that you have deep expertise in, really showcases the pretense of understanding that they display. 1/— Anshul Kundaje (@anshulkundaje) September 25, 2026

No apps no masters

Posted on Friday 9 Aug 2024. 1,415 words, 11 links. By Matt Webb.

Alexander Obenauer

Exploring new and renewed ideas for how personal computing and the interfaces we think with can better serve people’s lives – expanding opportunity, agency, curiosity, and creativity.

Mor Naaman (@informor.bsky.social)

Cornell Tech professor (information science, AI-mediated Communication, trustworthiness of our information ecosystem). New York City. Taller in person. Opinions my own. mornaaman.com

I’ll write romance novels if AI solves all maths, Chinese Fields winner jokes

As AI models prove they can push the boundaries, mathematicians are grappling with the threat that they could become obsolete.

Import AI 463: Self-improving robots; a 10k Chinese GPU cluster; and an elegiac essay for the human era

What eras bookend our interregnum?

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure 𝐴𝐼 𝐷𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑜𝑛 Games

Neural networks like GPT-3 power text adventure games where you can do anything; but they are too expensive. I propose that if we turn them into Choose Your Own Adventure hypertext games, they become feasible and enable new gameplay.