This is precisely why I lost wave after wave of readers playing around with…you name it: Google Glass, NFTs, Midjourney, AI music videos, pick the latest moral panic.

But reporting from the frothy edge has always been my thing. Not as a tech reviews simp (read the Google Glass essay, for chrissake: michaelgarfield.substac…, or the one on deepfakes: bit.ly/end-of-reality) but as someone committed to thinking deeply on these topics.

I remember Jaron Lanier’s keynote at Moogfest 2016 when he said the history of technology is hammering bells into cannons and then back into bells. One of my favorite artists of all time is the guy who took people in the war-torn Global South and turned their guns into electric guitars. If we can’t figure out how to make instruments out of weapons we’re in trouble. The real issue here is whether we collectively forget how to play with full knowledge of consequence.