digitalculture
-
Synthetic Data: What Happens When AI Runs Out of Human Writing and Starts Eating Its Own Homework?
For the past few years, artificial intelligence companies have been acting like college students pulling an all-nighter before a final exam. They scraped the entire internet (every Wikipedia article, every Reddit thread, every blog post, every digitized book, and every angry product review ever written by a person) to train their large language models. They… Read more
-
Why Does Every Website Look Like the Exact Same Minimalist Template Now?
Open five different tabs on your phone right now. Pick a mobile banking app, an artisanal coffee roaster in Cape Town, a corporate insurance company, a local clothing label, and a software consultancy. Now, lean back from your screen, squint your eyes, and look at the layout. You haven’t visited five different websites. You have… Read more
-
Why Does Every App Want to Be a Social Network?
The other day, I opened my banking app to check if my account balance was high enough to justify ordering takeout, or if I needed to make peace with Maggie’s two-minute noodles. Instead, I was greeted with a home screen that looked less like a financial institution and more like a bustling digital shopping mall… Read more
-
A Eulogy for the Bookmark Bar: We Used You Once, Then Forgot
We are gathered here todayto remember a quiet hero of the internet that we never thanked properly:the bookmark bar. You sat there, right under our omnibar, ever hopeful.You were once full of promise, links we swore we’d visit again, recipes we meant to make, articles we were absolutely going to read later. And then… silence.… Read more
-
The Art of Lying About Articles We Only Skimmed
There’s a sacred moment that happens right after someone mentions an article you’ve definitely not finished.You lock eyes, nod with the confidence of a well-read philosopher, and say:“Oh yeah, I saw that one!” You didn’t. You saw the headline, maybe the subheading, possibly the first paragraph if your coffee hadn’t cooled yet.But you felt informed,… Read more
