Today’s links My McLuhan lecture on enshittification: Live from Berlin. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading My McLuhan lecture on enshittification (permalink) Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there’s a video that’ll be posted soon, they couldn’t get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held: https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024 The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you’ll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I’d post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you. I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event, and reiterate what a pleasure it was to meet John Horgan, Canada’s ambassador to Germany. And now, on to the talk! Last year, I coined the term ‘enshittification,’ to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I’m definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone). So what’s enshittification and why did it catch fire? It’s my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms,…Pluralistic: My McLuhan lecture on enshittification (30 Jan 2024)