When I lived in NYC, I was impelled to understand the functioning of the culture industry and what attracted people to immaterial social forms like brands and lifestyles. My most well-known essay, Life After Lifestyle, is my final word on this topic. In Moral Ecosystems I summarize the trajectory of my thinking through this period.

• 2018
  After Authenticity  ✴(favorite)

  Under authenticity, the value of a thing decreases as more and more people like it. This is clearly no longer the case.
• 2018
  The Diminishing Marginal Value of Aesthetics  ✴(favorite)

  Aggregation theory, network topology, and the limits of aesthetic novelty. This piece has been included in many design school syllabi.
• 2022
  Life After Lifestyle  ✴(favorite)

  After everything has become a lifestyle brand, the frontier of cultural creation is now faith itself.
• 2024
  Moral Ecosystems: My Big Idea

At Other Internet my colleagues and I went inside DAOs to investigate whether crypto networks could turn “headless brands” and decentralized culture into lasting institutions. Our late work mounted a challenge to Vitalik Buterin's decentralized proceduralism, asking “what is the public for whom we coordinate?” and “what is the good life these procedures serve?”

• 2019
  Headless Brands  Other Internet  ✴(favorite)

  A decentralized brand is a meme. It belongs to no one, and can be remixed by anyone.
• 2020
  Squad Wealth  Other Internet  ✴(favorite)

  Today people are born as individuals, and have to find their squad.
• 2024
  Crypto's Three-Body Problem  Other Internet  ✴(favorite)

  Protocol design choices, and specifically governance models, directly impact a headless brand's coherence.

Movements that form around mental health, wellness, and spirituality are organic replies to the crises of our time. In 2023 I began investigating emerging health movements and documenting their beliefs and social forms. This work is ongoing and has recently started to take a new direction as I engage more directly with the spiritual challenge posed by AI.

• 2024
  The Loneliness Apparatus  ✴(favorite)

  The notion of "loneliness" is playing an increasingly prominent role in public health discussions around the world. What will happen when the loneliness propaganda is fully internalized?
• 2025
  Prototyping Social Forms of Care

  Social innovators are experimenting with new social forms of care: centers, campuses, parlors, and practices.
• 2026
  Theory of Social Forms

  Social forms are the templates for ordered, formal, rule-based, and productive spaces of social practice.
• 2026
  Body Futurism  ✴(favorite)

  As society turns toward the body, a new politics of the flesh is on the brink of eruption.

Who gets to participate in knowledge production, and who decides what counts as true? While this has never been the main theme of my work, it's a perennial interest that I have written about and built tools for.

• 2020
  Introducing Quotebacks

  A tool for networked writing.
• 2020
  Towards a Blogger Peer Review

  Who gets to participate in knowledge production?
• 2024
  Unprotocolized Knowledge  Summer of Protocols

  This essay examines how protocol thinking might help expand who gets to participate in knowledge production, and increase the speed and certainty of developments in science.