Audio Version: "What connects crypto and 'Love is Blind'?"
🎧 Listen now (11 mins)
Hi there, and welcome back to Untangled, a newsletter and podcast about technology, people, and power. This is the audio version of my latest essay, “What connects crypto and ‘Love is Blind’?” Don’t worry, the audio does not include any ‘After the Altar’ spoilers 😉.
Before you click ‘play,’ though, I have a few things to say. Writing this newsletter brings me a lot of joy. But it’s also a rather solitary experience — I write a thing and then Substack tells me that 60% of you read it. Which is cool! But also, I’d like to make the process more interactive and cultivate a community.
📢Two announcements in this spirit!
First, if you recently published an essay on an Untangled-y topic or are about to speak at an event, send that information my way, and I’ll do my best to feature it in an upcoming newsletter. Here are a few examples from the Untangled community that I came across just last week:
Reboot, which runs a great newsletter I’ve long recommended, recently published the second edition of Kernel, its print magazine. I’ve read a few of the articles, which thoughtfully grapple with the complicated and often fraught role technology plays in systems change.
David Robinson, visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Social Science Matrix, just published “Voices in the Code,” which draws upon a rich story about kidney transplants to distill important lessons for how we govern algorithmic systems. Want to learn more? Not a problem, David is speaking about the book at an event tomorrow.
Nathan Schneider, who you might remember from the first-ever episode of the Untangled podcast, recently co-authored a paper that imagines an alternative to social media by contrasting systems designed for scale with those that prioritize restorative and transformative justice approaches to harm. It’s worth a read!
Second, I want to share what I’m reading and hear what you’re reading. My list will likely double as a sneak peek into future essays (I don’t read much non-Untangled content in my free time 🙈). Without further adieu:
I’m writing an essay on the social implications of classification systems and identity, and how they might look different in crypto, so I’ve been re-reading two books - Sorting Things Out by Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star and We Are Data by John Cheney-Lippold, and a few essays, including “Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul.”
To prep for a podcast episode with — 🚨spoiler alert🚨— Brandon Silverman, co-founder and CEO of CrowdTangle, I revisited a few of my favorite papers on the limits of transparency, and excellent syntheses of what we know (and don’t!) about algorithmic auditing.
📚 What are you reading these days?
Lastly, please make my Sunday a lil’ extra smiley by re-tweeting this thread. Or pop on over to LinkedIn and re-share this post with your professional community.
Until next time,
Charley
Credits:
Track: The Perpetual Ticking of Time — Artificial.Music [Audio Library Release]
Music provided by Audio Library Plus