things

s11extra01 · 18 March 2022 · supporters

Things That Caught My Attention, Volume 1

This collection gathers essays from the newsletter's first 50 episodes, examining how technology shapes contemporary life across domains like social media, data collection, wearables, and digital infrastructure. The pieces share a critical sensibility toward tech industry narratives, questioning assumptions about progress, user needs, and the hidden systems that structure daily experience. Throughout, the author investigates tensions between technological capability and human consequence—how surveillance operates, how attention gets monetized, how innovation gets measured, and what gets lost when complex systems get reduced to metrics and silos.

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It's here, it's here!

Thanks for being a paid subscriber/supporter to Things That Caught My Attention! Volume 1 has just gone live.

Get your free copy now at this link, or by using the code "supporter" at checkout.

You'll get a DRM-free epub, .PDF and .mobi of the ebook ready to sideload to Kindle

This is the first edition of the ebook. It's pretty much certain that it could be improved, at the very least because epubs are blobs of HTML, and we all know how well that's gone.

If you find any mistakes, bugs, or anything else, please do email me at newsletter@danhon.com.

And if you love it, feel free to tell me that, too.

The Customary Tell Your Friends Code

At your complete discretion (I know you are very discreet) you can tell all your friends about how fantastic the book is and give them the code "bffs" for 20% off, or send them the link https://verylittlegravitas.gumroad.com/l/ThingsVol1/bffs.

Here's what's in the book

Essays from the best parts of the first 50 episodes of Things That Caught My Attention, exploring technology, society, products and services, and being a person.

The full episodes are available online, free, at https://newsletter.danhon.com

Contents

Episodes 1-10

  • Introduction

  • Newsletters are the new... what?

  • Better Living Through Data

  • Any Sufficiently Advanced Economy

  • Wearables, Wearables, Wearables

  • Everything In Silos, Forever and Ever, Amen

  • Followers and Friends

Episodes 11-20

  • Introduction

  • Jean Michel Jarre Reckons How Much Your Innovation Is Worth

  • Oh, Attention

  • Learning to Code

  • Algorithmically Induced Sadness

  • The Job To Be Done

  • The Ethics Board

  • Not Trying Is A Signal

  • EasyHard

  • Presence

Episodes 21-30

  • Introduction

  • Infrastructure

  • Tango Down

  • Hyperland

  • Where Did All The Agents Go?

  • Brittle

  • The Scale of Things

  • Washing

  • From The Users Backward

  • The Real Computer Revolution

  • Only Connect

  • They Stole Our Revolution

  • Policy as Code, Continued

Episodes 31-40

  • Introduction

  • How The World Works

  • Advances in Quantification

  • BBC Heaven

  • Why You Shouldn't Embrace Surveillance

  • But What Is The User Need?

  • Universal Service Obligations

Episodes 41-50

  • Introduction

  • When You're Part Of A Team

  • Wearable Reckons

  • danah boyd

  • Facebook and Oculus Rift

  • Computers, AMIRITE?

  • Video is a content-type

  • You Can Blame The Tools

  • Mobile

  • Fantasy Acquisitions

  • Living In An Immaterial World

  • Cities

  • More Television

All right, that's it. Scram!