Category
Technology & Society
How the tools and platforms we build reshape the way we think, decide and live - and the habits worth keeping as they change us back.
16 concepts
AI Slop
AI slop is low-quality content mass-produced by generative AI - made for clicks, not for you. How to spot it, and why it is everywhere.
Technology & SocietyAI Sycophancy
AI sycophancy is the habit AI assistants have of telling you what you want to hear rather than what is true - why it happens, and why it matters.
Technology & SocietyAutomation Bias
Automation bias is trusting a machine's judgement over our own - following its advice, or missing what it fails to flag, even when we could see better.
Technology & SocietyCognitive Offloading
Handing mental work to external tools - and the risk that the thinking we stop doing is the thinking we lose.
Technology & SocietyData Colonialism
The idea that tech firms extract data from human life the way old empires seized land, claiming our experience as territory to be owned and mined.
Technology & SocietyDead Internet Theory
Dead internet theory claims bots and AI now generate most of the internet, with humans at the margins. What is true in it, and what overreaches.
Technology & SocietyDeepfakes
A deepfake is AI-generated video, audio or imagery showing real people doing things they never did, and why it breaks our trust in recordings.
Technology & SocietyDigital Amnesia
Digital amnesia is forgetting what we let our devices remember for us. The 'Google effect', why it happens, and what it costs.
Technology & SocietyDoomscrolling
Doomscrolling is compulsively scrolling through bad news that leaves you worse off but unable to stop. Why we do it, and how feeds exploit it.
Technology & SocietyEnshittification
Enshittification is how online platforms decay - good to you at first, then squeezed for profit until barely usable. The pattern, and why it happens.
Technology & SocietyLiar's Dividend
The liar's dividend is the advantage liars gain once fakes are known to exist: they can wave away genuine, damaging recordings as just a deepfake.
Technology & SocietyParasocial Bonds
Parasocial bonds are the one-sided closeness we feel towards people who do not know we exist - and how platforms and AI now turn it into a product.
Technology & SocietyPlanned Obsolescence
Planned obsolescence is designing products to wear out or feel outdated, so you keep buying replacements. How it works, and why it shapes what you own.
Technology & SocietySurveillance Capitalism
The business model that turns your everyday behaviour into free raw material, then sells predictions about what you'll do next.
Technology & SocietyTechnofeudalism
The claim that big tech has replaced capitalism with a new feudal order, where we labour like serfs and pay rent to use digital land we never own.
Technology & SocietyThe ELIZA Effect
The ELIZA effect is our habit of reading real understanding, empathy or intelligence into a machine, simply because it answers us in fluent language.