You’re a person—I hope this is obvious to you. It’s not obvious to tech companies. No, tech companies see you as a number.I used to work inside a tech company that was obsessed with metrics—design decisions were evaluated based on whether they made the right numbers go up. This philosophy, taken to its extreme, can […]
Author: Justin Pot
the future of mindless scrolling
What is social media for? I would argue, perhaps naively, that social media is a tool we can use to connect with each other. The companies that run social media networks, meanwhile, mostly see social networks as a tool for capturing as much attention as possible. I can think of no better illustration of this […]
The internet doesn’t have to feel like this
Living online can feel…numbing. Bo Burnham perhaps captured that best with That Funny Feeling, a song made up of various unrelated phrases that simulate the feeling of scrolling. deadpool’s self-awareness/loving parents/harmless fun/the backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun On and on it goes, and on and on you scroll, until your thumbs (and soul) […]
Find small ways to feel like yourself
I’ve been freelancing as a journalist full time for two and a half years now, which feels great. I am occasionally exhausted, and sometimes miss the camaraderie of being on a team, but on the other hand I am no longer miserable. Pros and cons. There are all kinds of reasons I was unhappy working […]
You’re doing great.
I want to talk to you, yes you, about any lingering sense of guilt you might have. Let it go. You’re doing fine. Better than fine: you’re thriving.
Tech is cool; business is boring.
AI isn’t a solution looking for a problem—it’s a market strategy made by people who aren’t even thinking about problems.
Watch me be in three meetings at once
You can be forgiven if you have the impression that I hate AI. I do have profound concerns with the ways the technology is being rolled out, sure, but I’m still an enthusiast at heart and I love playing around with this stuff. This week I wrote about a free transcription application that took a half-hour episode […]
Garbage in garbage out
Google put a box of AI-generated text at the top of their search results. If you don’t know what that means, I’m talking about the slow-loading colorful text box you’re seeing lately—it’s Google’s first step toward destroying the internet entirely (as I predicted last summer). I am yet to meet anyone who is excited about […]
“Number go up” isn’t everything
I have no idea how many people read my articles. I love it. This hasn’t always been true. When I worked at a culty tech company, I was forced to obsess over metrics. I was told I’m not data-driven enough, that I needed to improve. My manager set up a dashboard I was supposed to check […]
The life changing magic of shutting up
Here’s a secret the people who run social media networks don’t want you to know—the one thing you can do to mess up their entire plan. You can, if you want to, shut the fuck up. It turns out, when something big happens in the news, you don’t have to react to it. You are […]