January recap

January 31, 2019 (2445 words) :: A summary of the last 30 posts, and a glimpse of topics I'll be writing about next month.
Tags: recap

This post is day 31 of a personal challenge to write every day in 2019. See the other fragments, or sign up for my weekly newsletter.


At the end of each month, I’m going to recap the previous posts in that month and also try to pull out the main themes that have emerged.

This month’s posts

For each post: a short summary, plus follow-up news & links to relevant things I’ve read since the post was created.

Major themes

What’s coming

I’m starting to realise that writing a 1-2k word blog post every day is really difficult. Even though there are still lots of things I want to write about, I’ve exhausted lots of the low-hanging fruit (stuff I already had tons of notes on, and felt was ready for consumption). I’m also starting to fall prey to conceptual laziness, where I’ll go through my list of potential topics and pass on them because I don’t want to have to fill in the theoretical gaps or do extra research. That’s not good.

Future posts will be less ambitious, I think. Shorter, more focused, more pop culture stuff (book/film/TV reviews). The reviews will include stuff I love (the show Man in the High Castle, Nick Dyer-Witheford’s book Cyber-Proletariat) as well as stuff I used to love but now see more critically (Neal Stephenson’s books).

Topic-wise: I want to write more on startups and the effects they can have on the real world, through the lens of particular startups as well as through the persepective of venture capitalists (blog posts, reports, talks, etc). I want to write more on advertising, on the cultural aspects as well as the political/economic implications, with a focus on Silicon Valley companies. I’d also like to think more about automation/operationalisation, and who gets to control it - could tech workers act in the service of the working class as a whole, rather than serving capital? On days when I’m feeling especially lazy/uninspired, I might just post a photo I’ve taken while walking around SF, along with some witty caption about the neoliberal hellscape that is Silicon Valley.

As always, if you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me! If you have suggestions for things I should write about, let me know.


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