Drowning By Design - Introduction

‘May you live in interesting times' - often misattributed as an ancient Chinese curse.

To state that we are living in “interesting times” is a dramatic understatement. While many previous generations also navigated tumultuous times and survived, I believe our generation is now living through one of the most interesting, volatile and destructive times in centuries.

On one hand, society has never had such raw opportunity and potential abundance as now. On the other, such power and wealth on a global scale has never rested in the hands of so few. And hands that, through ego, unprocessed trauma and messianic complexes, believe they are the chosen “invisible hands" of previous economic models.

We are living through the upheaval, destruction and restructuring of multiple societal systems; financial, labor, capitalism, information, education, communications, political, class and environmental— all of these systems are undergoing a metamorphosis with unclear outcomes and influence from those “chosen hands”. Acceleration of the destruction in all of these categories creates cracks that turn into chasms, shedding light on the true problems causing each system to collapse and, hopefully, transform.

What happens when such massive upheaval occurs within a collective environment of thriving disinformation and no record of truth or fact in the collapse of local media? How can we come together in community to address these systemic collapses when algorithms have delivered separation through myths and distortions of reality that drive clicks and platform revenue? How do we remove a separation planted deep within the roots of our communities?

Our current information systems reveal the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism as it has evolved into its current state of being. A capitalism that has undergone a multitude of transformations since its inception and currently reflects a mutation of many economic theories detrimental to our communities and our planet.

A capitalism based, in large part, on surveillance technology lock in within our information delivery systems. A capitalism where a multitude of power actors control the flow of information at various levels of consumption and impacting our local communities in detrimental ways as we collectively hurl towards systemic breakdowns.

A majority of the population consumes the illusion of “news” through social networks with opaque, centralized and opinionated algorithms, created in the shadows and hidden from public scrutiny. A public that now must surrender to the algorithm itself in the throws of a breaking news event in a desperate attempt to find information to protect life and community. Algorithms that have sacrificed unbiased information delivery mechanisms for efficiency, profit and/or power.

While we may relish the algorithms that connect us with consumables to improve our lives in some way, that same delivery method can and does create a barrier between us and the hyperlocal information we need to protect ourselves during a catastrophe. As we now cycle through multiple environmental disasters and systemic breakdowns of the natural and manmade systems we’ve come to depend upon as a collective, we must re-evaluate the necessity of hyperlocal information networks and protect them from the inherent biases and agendas baked in to most of the modern social networks that deliver information to a community.

During the LA fires in January of 2025, just nine days or so into the New Year, I was struck by the rapid deterioration of the algorithmic functionality on Twitter for breaking news delivery from a hyperlocal perspective and how information morphed as it reached a tipping point of consumption that expanded beyond the geographic location where the news occurred.

Let’s break down the following areas of emphasis, which transcend a specific event, but are reoccurring trends on Twitter (and other social networks):

1. The expedited collapse of information cohesion and delivery that impacts lives on the ground in a breaking news situation.
2. The bias of the algorithm and what agendas it now promotes at scale, by design.
3. The tsunami of AI now locked in to the information delivery systems and how that fundamentally alters the physical nature of the information AND how our intellect perceives that information. Is it real? Who would alter this narrative and why? Am I crazy or just a nihilist?
4. How the centralization of the algorithm directly impacts the lives within a community and why decentralized-- unopionated-- technology is absolutely necessary for the survival of our children's communities. Cults, gurus and charismatic leaders thrive in a perfect storm of fear, social disruption and disinformation; when people can no longer process the deterioration of the systems they live within, cults and authoritarian leaders provide a sense of belonging and false security for the willfully ignorant.

These essays will be part academic thesis, part anecdotal, part opinion and free from AI influence in the original writing. I will use AI to create “research rabbit holes” for readers to begin doing their own research. This work is a culmination of decades of observations, academic studies, professional technology work, documentary work and simply spending decades in Third Places as I wander the planet documenting the various threads of our collective humanity.

Take it for what it is, my observations through the lenses of my own interpretations of the brilliant media, academic and anthropological minds that traveled before me and left a trail of valuable research, mentorship and stories for me to pick up and make my own. I hope you do the same with this body of work.

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