Satisfaction is Always Available

Shoreham’s looking festive tonight.

A tall Christmas tree decorated with white lights and topped with a star is displayed on a street with people gathered around it at night.

I back the Contract for the Web because the vast potential of it for humanity is being undermined by corporate greed and irresponsibility, political inaction and personal negligence. It’s time to reclaim digital from the bad actors.

Join me to build the #WebWeWant.

Abstaining From Social Media Doesn’t Improve Well-Being, Experimental Study Finds - a relief for those of us who have to use it professionally.

Spam of the Beast

An email inbox shows 364 unread emails and 666 unread junk emails.

Now, that was a tiring couple of days.

Canary Wharf was starting to look festive earlier.

A bustling urban plaza at dusk features outdoor dining areas, tall office buildings with illuminated windows, and people walking along wet pavement.

The mere existence of deepfakes is eroding our sense of shared reality - even if we’ve never encountered one in the wild.

The need for deliberative digital spaces

Digital democracy will face its greatest test in 2020 - Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Guardian:

Facebook, Twitter and Google are designed to motivate people to do things like shop or vote. They undermine efforts to deliberate or think deeply about problems. Democracies need both motivation and deliberation.

Social media has become an almost deliberation-free space.

(Country) walking to grow your subscriptions, radicalised on Reddit, and more good reads from the audience engagement mines.