Is this anything? | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 3, No. 16 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 3, No. 12 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 3, No. 11 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 3, No. 9 | Continue reading
Listen now (13 min) | The Convivial Society: Vol. 3, No. 8 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 3, No. 6 | Continue reading
Listen now | The Convivial Society: Vol. 3, No. 4 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 3, No. 2 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 22 | Continue reading
Listen now | The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 21 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 19 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 20 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 18 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 17 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 16 | Continue reading
On images, pseudo-events, and digital media. | Continue reading
The dream of systems so perfect no one will need to be good remains explicitly compelling in many quarters. It is also tacitly embedded in the practices fostered by many of our devices, tools, and institutions. So it’s worth thinking about how this dream manifests itself today an … | Continue reading
Endless wanting will wreck us and also the world that is our home. By contrast, our economic order and the ostensible health of our society is premised on the generation of insatiable desires, chiefly for consumer goods and services. There is a better way. | Continue reading
The story of a human retreat from this world, either to the stars above or the virtual realm within, can mask a disregard for or resignation about what is done with the world we do have, both in terms of the structures of human societies and the non-human world within which they … | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 12 | Baseball analytics offer an interesting vantage point from which to consider the nature of data-driven optimization that now structures so much of contemporary society. | Continue reading
A set of 41 questions drafted with a view to helping us draw out the moral or ethical implications of our tools. | Continue reading
It’s a dangerous business going online. You step into the Database, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 9 | Continue reading
My point turns out to be relatively straightforward: may be you and I don’t need more information. And, if we think that the key to navigating uncertainty and mitigating anxiety is simply more information, then we are probably going to make matters worse for ourselves. | Continue reading
This time around I’m passing along a slightly expanded version of a short talk I had the pleasure of giving at a virtual event hosted by the Future Narratives Lab based in the UK. The theme of the event was “the narratives behind Big Tech,” and in my contribution I revisited some … | Continue reading
Here is a proposition for you to consider: you and I have exactly as much attention as we need. In fact, I’d invite you to do more than consider it. Take it out for a spin in the world. See if proceeding on this assumption doesn’t change how you experience life, maybe not radica … | Continue reading
In this installment, I reflect on the challenge of speaking online in the absence of meaningful silences. The point is not, in this case, to complain about social media but rather to speak a good word for silence and its place in human communication. | Continue reading
Exploring the paradox of control, which is the subject of German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s recent book, The Uncontrollability of the World. It’s a short book, coming in at just over 100 pages, but it develops what is, in my view, an essential insight into one of the key assumpti … | Continue reading
Consider this another Convivial Society experiment: an open discussion thread. I’ll introduce a topic and the thread is open for anyone who want… | Continue reading
Just as for Peter Berger the sociological structures of modern society generated the heretical imperative, so, too, I would like to propose, the technological structures of digital media generate the hermeneutical imperative. | Continue reading
Starlink is a point of departure to consider the costs of the unrelenting drive toward artificial illumination, a technological development most of us now take for granted. | Continue reading
It’s hard to know where to begin, of course; the situation has many interlocking layers. The most notable and disturbing elements have been well covered, and we continue to learn more about the event each day. The picture, it seems, only grows darker. For my part, I’ve been espec … | Continue reading
“Existence in a society that has become a system finds the senses useless precisely because of the very instruments designed for their extension. One is prevented from touching and embracing reality. Further, one is programmed for interactive communication, one's whole being is s … | Continue reading
From the time we were children, we knew that our experience of time could shift. We knew that time would pass much more slowly during certain periods: a long, uninteresting stretch of the school day as we awaited recess or the days leading up to a birthday or Christmas. | Continue reading
“All technical progress exacts a price. We cannot believe that Technique brings us nothing; but we must not think that what it brings it brings free of charge.”— Jacques Ellul | Continue reading
Reflections on Jane Jacobs, sidewalks, digital media, and our common civic life. | Continue reading
Tending to our information ecosystem, if we attempt it at all, requires a striking degree of vigilance and discipline. There is no given balance between place and speed, no natural context of relative meaningfulness to regulate the pace and quality of information for us. It’s on … | Continue reading
“I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality— recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand — on the other hand radiating out fo … | Continue reading
Listen now | Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime friend of Ivan Illich's and student of his work sat down to talk to me about his friendship with Illich and the value of his work. | Continue reading
We have an opportunity to examine more carefully some of the assumptions that have informed the way we think about the nature of a good life. And I would suggest that we do well to start, as Simone Weil did, with a consideration of the full range of human needs, clarified by Ivan … | Continue reading
When a system becomes sufficiently complex, the human element more often than not becomes a problem to be solved. The solution is to either remove the human element or otherwise re-train the person to conform and recalibrate their behavior to the specifications of the machine. | Continue reading
Over the past couple of months, believing that Ivan Illich’s thought indeed spoke with renewed urgency to our moment, I’ve revisited two of his earliest and best known books, Tools for Conviviality and Deschooling Society. Three key themes caught my attention this time around and … | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Vol. 1, No. 13: The advent of digital media has been to the culture wars what the advent of industrialized weaponry was to conventional warfare. | Continue reading
Deschooling Society | Continue reading
The Convivial Society: Dispatch, No. 8 | Continue reading
The Convivial Society, Dispatch No. 8 | Continue reading
Does it feel to you as if you are free in the deployment of your attention throughout any given day? Allow me here to speak out of my own experience: I know that it often doesn’t feel that way to me. | Continue reading