Interesting stuff
It's been a while
Dear reader,
Or should that be ‘Hello stranger!’
It’s been a very long while since I posted to this Substack, so apologies for that.
When I started this Substack back in… [wrinkles brow and counts on fingers] early 2024 I was on fire for it to be a companion-blog to accompany a book I planned to write about my struggles with technology, the effect that was having on my professional creative practice, and the mixed feelings I was developing about the digital world.
“Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” - John Lennon
Life happened to me in a very big (and messy) way and pretty much squelched those other plans to write that book. At least for now.
Unfortunately, while I continue to recover from what did happen to me (an incremental process) I won’t have a lot of time to write articles for Interesting Times. But as part of my planning to write that book I did collect a lot of great articles, so I thought I might share something with you.
So this week here’s a few good pieces about social media and algorithms. Click on the titles to read:
The year that cost us everything | Carolyn Watson
“With no rising tide to lift all boats, every business is an island. The cost of market entry has never been lower (you don’t need institutional backing to be taken seriously), but the cost of building trust has never been higher. The attention mechanism still works. But the currency (trust) it used to generate has never been harder to earn. Trust is the greatest underlying asset your business can possess; and you can’t manufacture it quickly or at scale.”
Meta and Google just lost a landmark social media addiction case. A tech law expert explains the fallout. | The Conversation
“The jury heard that Meta’s internal communications compared the platform’s effects to pushing drugs and gambling. The jury found this internal awareness was the kind of corporate knowledge that supports liability.”
Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us? | The Guardian
“We found extensive evidence that social media is less like a neutral reflection of society and more like a funhouse mirror. It amplifies the loudest and most extreme voices while muting the moderate, the nuanced and the boringly reasonable.”
Coming up soon.
5 May 2026, online or face-to-face in Brussels.
And finishing with something lovely.
Technological wizardry of yore.