Ian Bogost
speaker
439 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 7 Jul
Ian Bogost’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And when there's an example of something that's like very clearly doing it aggressively, like AI is, it's easy to point to it or smartphones and go, oh, that's the enemy.
Let's fight that enemy.
But it's really weirder.
And it's happened over a much longer period of time.
And it's kind of everywhere.
Like the faucets in the restroom have nothing to do with computers and AI, but they're part of the problem.
The difficulty you have opening doors in office buildings, which I also talk about, like that doesn't have anything to do with AI, but it's part of the problem.
And I think it's been a relief for me not to try to hang, well, not to try to hang the problem on myself, but also not to hang it on like one phenomenon in particular to understand that it's much more systemic.
I think that's right.
And then what I would add atop it is that at the same time that that whole thing was happening, which of course is since the industrial revolution at least, right?
We've also been persuaded that the only kind of contentment that's worthwhile is what we call happiness.
This sort of like big stuff accomplishments, not necessarily just that you would optimize for, but that you would value as the thing that you're actually after, the thing that gives your life purpose.
And I guess that's true at a certain level, but then you miss out on that specific experience, which is giving you a sense of pleasure by being directly connected with the world.
And we've also kind of, without meaning to, persuaded ourselves that that connection isn't important.
that we don't really need it.
We can get by in our heads and we can get by with like one or three or five important accomplishments over the course of a decade or maybe our whole adult lives.
And what a shame that is.
You know, for all the talk of like abundance,
The surplus that I'm after is the surplus of sensory encounter that's available all the time.
And so while it seems weird to like become friends with your water bottle, by doing that, I get like another little drip drip of pleasure into the cup, which is very different than like filling it up full blast with some big life accomplishment.
Showing 221–240 of 439 · page 12 of 22
← Previous
Next →