Gift interfaces, an interview, and how you found me
Some updates on things that have happened and that are coming in the escape the algorithm cinematic universe:
I’ll be co-teaching a virtual class called Gift Interfaces this winter at School for Poetic Computation with the wonderful
(who you may remember from his guest essay on tiny tools, and also for his ceramic web objects):In this class, we’ll immerse ourselves in gift-giving cultures and practices to imagine design beyond scale. We’ll question the norms of what shape a gift can take, partake in existing folk gifting practices, design gifting rituals and interfaces, and explore how a gifting ecosystem begets interdependence. Most importantly, we will give and receive—to and from each other, our loved ones, and our communities. As the audience for our gifting grows, we’ll explore how personalized design might extend to a group of people and a network of communities. How can we defy the norms of “design” to attend to care at scale?
Applications are closing very soon!
Relatedly I’ll be teaching another semester of my Escape the Algorithm course at UPenn starting in January. Tell all of the cool/thoughtful Penn students you know to register.
I spoke to ’s about the method to my madness.
I am helplessly addicted just like anyone else, and I spend time on the same platforms that make everyone depressed and they also make me depressed. There's a lot of discourse now about platforms making our kids anxious, and I think there's nothing inherently anxiety-inducing about the internet. Like when I'm doing my Escape The Algorithm work, and I'm doing that very active work of trying to see all these possibilities on this platform, and finding surprising, interesting things, that is really invigorating to me. That feels like a completely separate thing from mindless scrolling down my Twitter feed. I definitely pay attention to movements to this app or abstain from using this app, but as far as my Escape The Algorithm project, I'm less interested in abstinence. I don't think it's ultimately possible, even if I delete my TikTok account, I'm still living in a world that's supremely influenced by TikTok. Yeah. So I'm more interested in algorithmic agency and intentionality.
Read more here:
Howdidyoufind.me, my website that tells the story of how people found the website, continues to bloom. I’m enjoying watching the shape of the submissions slowly mutate as as the website spreads — from newsletters, to mastodon, to discord, to are.na — like watching the tides. They give me a sense of humanity that Google Analytics would never be able to replicate. This one gave me chills:
🏃 Escape attempts
Acts of algorithmic resistance
Deletions lets you wave goodbye to deleted Bluesky posts before they’re gone forever (also hi I’m on Bluesky now).
Daily Random is a Spotify playlist that updates daily with 30 random songs from across the platform.
A Realistic Day in my Life Living in NYC is a piece of art by Maya Man that runs every hour on the hour on the Whitney Museum website. It excerpts text mentioning specific hours of the day from publicly posted “day in my life” TikTok videos.
eink.cam is an experimental digital camera with a color e-ink display.
Redact-A-Chat is an online chat platform where every word can only be used once a day.
The Golden Dryer Sheet is an award granted to great journalism published on days when the world was preoccupied, judged by
.Cherished Files is a collection of files that hold particular meaning to Irawo Ajasin.
📜 Finite scroll
Ripples beneath the interface
Uber and Lyft are stealing from drivers. Google is stealing from Reddit (consensually). Synagogue music is being stolen from the synagogue. Geopolitical transformation is stealing from domain name owners.
The internet loves to hate women, loves to appear in novels, and loves to love restaurants in Austin that don’t actually exist.
🌸 Screenshot garden
Souvenirs from my internet travels, presented without context
I'll be thinking about that post on howdidyoufind.me for awhile.