Archive - The Unraveling

"The Anxious Generation" and the false comfort of easy diagnoses

Content warning here: this post talks a lot about mental health and has a reference to self-harm. If you are struggling with this, please know you…

Apr 12 •

February 2024

Begun, the Twitter clone wars have

Threads has garnered a big user base and Mastodon chugs along. Now Bluesky is officially open to all. Finally some real competition for Twitter…

Feb 16 •

January 2024

From the unpublished files: "Declaring Independence"

Happy New Year! The turn to 2024 has brought the awful slog of having to clean out my Google Drive. Google ended its free storage offering to…

Jan 4 •

October 2023

Elon's Twitter is failing its first major stress test

Sorry not sorry, but I'm not calling it X. But the violence in Israel and Gaza give us a better idea of how Elon's changes to Twitter have made the…

Oct 20, 2023 •

August 2023

Me in a long-form podcast interview, talking about AI (this is not a DALL-E 2 query)

After four weeks off, I am back. More writing coming your way soon, but I wanted to share something that I hope is worth your time. I did a long-form…

Aug 14, 2023 •

July 2023

A glimpse of an AI future

AP's deal with OpenAI underlines the value of good journalism, and offers possibilities for a sustainable news model.

Jul 14, 2023 •

THREADS: What is it good for?

Absolutely something. But even if it fails, it wins. Here's a theory why Threads exists, and why it doesn't matter that the app doesn't seem ready for…

Jul 6, 2023 •

The State of the Twitter alts

Elon bought the Birdsite and it sent people to the exits, but is a fracture social media experience really our future?

Jul 5, 2023 •

June 2023

You don't owe anyone a debate

The marketplace of ideas loses its effectiveness when we have debates in media formats that invite vapid exchanges and superficial understanding of…

Jun 20, 2023 •

Sharing some writing, and extra thoughts

I published a piece in Slate this afternoon on the heels of Apple announcing its new Vision Pro AR/VR headset (“Apple Is Ignoring Something Big About…

Jun 8, 2023 •

May 2023

Landing the plane for a special set of graduates

Somewhat personal post today. Yesterday was our annual commencement at Lehigh. We had C.J. McCollum back to address our graduates. You may know him as…

May 22, 2023 •

Am (A)I My Brother's Keeper?

Forget the nightmare scenarios about killer robots and AI that self-drives us off a cliff because we were mean to it. The AI question worrying me is…

May 9, 2023 •

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