Dehumanizing creep

We finally know what the new Apple emoji look like, and they are ... really bad! I speak specifically of the taco, which looks like no taco I've ever had. It's not just a design issue, though -- it speaks to a certain ignorance of cultural diversity. Like: Have you never eaten a taco that was NOT a Crunch Wrap Supreme?

1. The "black digital intelligentsia" goes way beyond Black Twitter: It's a social movement powered by a new generation of scholars, bloggers, activists and thinkers. Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown professor, argues that tweets and posts and podcasts are the new journals. They're not "approved" by the academy, necessarily, but they reach millions of people.

2. Don't fear technology; fear its "dehumanizing creep." As much as we make fun of "Luddites" and Olds, they may actually be onto something. Increasingly, we turn to tech to fill fundamentally human roles. Which is the first step "toward seeing the human as an empty container."

3. Why are there SO many cover songs on Spotify? Because you can make more money copying T. Swift than you would left up to your own devices.

Natural selection, do ya think?

Pocketable: People are really good at predicting the future of technology. But they're not so good -- and this is fascinating -- at predicting the future of culture.

Postscripts: Applecore. Cat jenga. Drunk nail art. Email is for lovers but parody's not for the faint of heart. The year the Internet ended. The year I really loved. (<-- This is the response to that "Victorian" piece that we were dreaming of.) Amazon just turned 20. Wi-Fi just turned 25. How to build a better Internet? Don't! Just let it die. :)

Until tomorrow!
@caitlindewey

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