Essays from a critical technologist, told through the interpretative lens of Black Studies and conceptual art.
Latest
15
Jun
Fifteenth #19: On water
London is a city of forgotten streams and lost rivers; of sedimented layers encasing ancient waterways that have long since
9 min read
01
Jun
First # 19: Natural Connection
Technology is manufactured — chemically intensive and extractive processes are deployed to transform raw materials into sophisticated digital devices. Technology demands
13 min read
15
May
Fifteenth #18: On the slopcore aesthetic
There is a strange glaze mediating your perception of the synthetic images in your feed. At first glance, you sense
14 min read
01
May
First #18: Enshittification
If you are steeped in internet culture, this is a word that you might have encountered sometime in the last
16 min read
15
Apr
Fifteenth #17: On unlearning
Why do we do research? This might seem like an insultingly simple question, yet perhaps we have never paused to
15 min read
01
Apr
First #17: Research for People Who Think They Would Rather Create
Research for People Who Think They Would Rather Create is a slender manual written by Dirk Vis — a Dutch lecturer
13 min read
15
Mar
Fifteenth #16: On the Men (and sometimes Women) Who Corrupted Hadleyburg
In 1899, Mark Twain published the short story The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg. Written towards the end of his two-
10 min read
01
Mar
First #16: The AI Con
The AI Con, as its name misleadingly suggests, is not solely about AI; rather, it is an assiduous exercise in
11 min read
01
Jan
Reintroducing First and Fifteenth
First and Fifteenth is a newsletter by me, Michael Kibedi. I am a design researcher and critical technologist, and I