This Sewing Machine Powers AI
Exploring an analog future in the age of AI. Collect the series to unlock every paid essay and get the digital or print edition.
Even Christopher Nolan prefers 70mm film
With all the technology in the world, sometimes the more beautiful thing is less of it.
This sewing machine powers AI
Meet the anti-AI AI.
Why do I romanticize 18th-century chores?
Was churning butter a beautiful way to spend the day or a chore to be automated away?
On the desire to live in a cabin in the woods
What does it say about modern life that I dream of escaping it?
If we fix the phone, we fix society
Here's how I would redesign devices for a more analog world.
MacKenzie Scott should have gotten Kindle in the divorce
But she can still build the e-book future we’ve been waiting for. Here's an open letter to the author.
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.”
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.
Elle Griffin
It will cost about $833 to make, $506 of it so far. It has earned $3,027. It stands at +$2,194.
Your copy contributes in profit.
