This sewing machine powers AI—my next pamphlet drop is here

An essay series and print pamphlet exploring how technology can create a more analog life, not a screen-addicted one.

I am very for technological progress societally—yes, let’s cure the diseases and automate the cars and advance scientific understanding. But I am extremely dissatisfied with it personally—I think it’s eroded social life with the social media and the scrolling and the phones on every table, eyes flicking across the screens like cigarettes we can’t quit.

Our technological innovation should get us a more beautiful offline life, not a screen-addicted online one.

It is this juxtaposition that I explore in my new essay series and print pamphlet, titled “This Sewing Machine Powers AI.”

Over the coming weeks, I’ll explore technology through the lens of my personal life:

• AI that is optimized for a good life, not just a good economy

• 18th-century chores and whether they were a beautiful way to spend the day or a chore to be automated away

• Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and the desire to “fuck off to the woods” as a response to modern life

• Utopian philosophy in Chinese fantasy television, and what we can learn from idealist fiction in a world of censorship

• Solarpunk philosophy in video games and how game designers use the medium to design a better future

• Less screens and more buttons—technologies should build for an offline world rather than an online one

• Aging in the time of Botox

The forward, as well as the first and sixth pieces in the series will be free for all subscribers. After that:

• Paid subscribers read the full series online and get the e-book version when it’s done.

• Collectors get all of the above and receive the print edition in the mail.

I’m grateful to the founding patron of this project, Mozilla Foundation, and their VP of Growth, Ziyaad Bhorat, who wrote the foreword to the series. The first piece, as well as one other, will be syndicated on their blog Nothing Personal. I am also grateful to Foresight Institute, who served as a patron with Beatrice Erkers penning a reflection for our digital and print pamphlet. A special thank you to Emiliano Raspante who designed our cover illustration and to Patricia Faggi who designed the print pamphlet. And my deep gratitude to Max Park, who served as my muse for this issue and designed the sewing machine that inspired my cover as well as the subject of my first essay.

And thank you, most of all, for reading and contributing to this media ecosystem imagining a better future.

Posts start next week,

Elle Griffin