Technology
Latest articles
- A Search Box Should Not Pretend to Be an Answer
The convenience of a fluent reply comes with an obligation to show where its confidence ends. - The Family Photograph Should Outlive the Subscription
Digital convenience becomes a poor bargain when our memories depend on an account remaining in good standing.
New essays
- The Recommendation That Made the World Smaller
When a system learns our taste, it may become very good at protecting us from the experience that would change it.
New essays
- The Map That Forgets the Neighbourhood
A useful route can become a poor description of the place it carries us through. - The Photograph That Arrives Before the Memory
Automatic recollection can decide which parts of a life receive a second visit. - The Password to an Ordinary Life
When access depends on successful verification, recovery becomes part of the service itself.
New essays
- The Last Person Who Knows How
Automation can save effort while dismantling the capacity to act without it. - The Disappearing Human Address
A service can offer endless contact while making responsibility almost impossible to locate. - The Cost of a Convincing Answer
Fluent language changes the burden of checking because uncertainty becomes harder to see. - A Childhood That Cannot Be Recalled
The person sharing a child's story is rarely the person who must live with its permanence. - When the Update Changes the Bargain
A product can remain in your possession while the terms of using it move beyond your control.
Essays on digital convenience, attention, memory and choice. Explore how interfaces and everyday habits influence our freedom to act, to pause and to leave.
Essays
- The Minute Before We Reach for the Phone
A reflection on smartphone habits, digital convenience and the unfilled moments in which we might notice the world around us.
- The Menu That Decides the Question
An interface shapes a choice before anyone selects an answer.
- A Memory That Never Softens
Digital permanence can preserve facts while freezing their meaning.
- The Automation of a Bad Question
Speed cannot repair a mistaken premise.
- The Disappearing Exit
A service can make joining easy while making leaving an obstacle course.
- The Person beyond the Profile
Prediction is useful until it becomes a limit on discovery.
Short notes
- The Right to Remain Unoptimised
Some experiences lose something when they become performance measures.
- The Default Is a Recommendation
A preselected option carries an argument without stating it.
- The Notification That Borrowed a Minute
A small interruption arrives with a claim on somebody else's attention.
- A Download Is Not a Departure
Taking your information away should leave it usable.
- The Small Freedom of an Undo Button
Reversibility allows people to act without demanding perfect foresight.
- When a Number Becomes a Name
A score should not replace the question it was designed to answer.
A little room for longer thinking, every week
One thoughtful email each week: an illustrated essay, a reading recommendation and a question worth considering.