Top all-time · #1425
L. M. Sacasas
Personal blog · theconvivialsociety.substack.comphilosophyculturewriting
L. M. Sacasas writes The Convivial Society, a personal blog at theconvivialsociety.substack.com about philosophy, culture and writing. Since 2020, 52 different Hacker News readers have linked it 253 times, most often “Narrative Collapse”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Thinking about technology, culture, and the moral life. Click to read The Convivial Society, by L. M. Sacasas, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- Narrative Collapse5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-06-14
- /4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-03-17
- You Can’t Optimize for Rest4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-12-02
- Limits, Autonomy, Interdependence4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-08-27
- A World Ordered Only by Search4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-10-07
- Resistance Is Futile: The Myth of Tech Inevitability4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-04-22
- McLuhan on the Disorders of Our Collective Consciousness4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-01-01
- Impossible Silences4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-03-23
- The Paradox of Control3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-03-10
- What Do Human Beings Need?: Rethinking Technology and the Good Society3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-09-29
What Hacker News says?
-we should ask "what can I do that has a positive impact?"- That's part of the point of this essay that was on HN last year: "Fortnite and the Good Life," which seems relevant here. https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-convivial-soc...
Comment linking /p/the-convivial-society-no-15
on “Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior”Submitted A theory of Zoom fatigue as a story · 232 points
HN discussionI think there's something about the physical acts and moments of writing out or typing out the words, or doing the analysis, etc. Writing 'our', backspacing, then forward again. Writing out a word but skipping two letters ahead, crossing out, starting again. Stopping mid paragraph to have a sip of coffee. What Dutch OSINT Guy was saying here resonates with me for sure - the act of taking a blurry image into the phot…
Comment linking /
on “The slow collapse of critical thinking in OSINT due to AI”Submitted What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars? as a story · 198 points
HN discussionI think this is an important point. Recently I was reading a post that talked about how one belongs to a community. Which on one hand means you are accepted and identify with it, but also that the community has a claim back upon you. People within that community depend on each other and that dependencies offers opportunity to connect more deeply. In the article he blocks out a longer excerpt from O Pioneers! by Will…
Comment linking /p/the-convivial-society-no-4
on “Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]”Submitted If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You're Not Paying Attention as a story · 156 points
HN discussionRelevant recent post from the always delightful Convivial Society: https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/you-cant-optimize... Takeaway: There are two key points. First, our exhaustion—in its various material and immaterial dimensions—is a consequence of the part we play in a techno-social milieu whose rhythms, scale, pace, and demands are not conducive to our well-being, to say nothing of the well-being of othe…
Comment linking /p/you-cant-optimize-for-rest
on “How to rest well”Submitted Impoverished Emotional Lives as a story · 121 points
HN discussionThe situation with almost-no-appeal big tech platforms reminds me of an article titled “the human-built world is not build for humans”[0]. Related phenomenons keep coming up (cities for cars, ecosystems of tokens and identities dependent on remembering secret passkeys, and so on). Desires to profit and to not have to trust each other keeps motivating humans’ attempts to devise environments that are hostile to humans…
Comment linking /p/the-human-built-world-is-not-built
on “U.S. indicts two men for running a $20M YouTube content ID scam”Submitted Pathologies of the attention economy as a story · 99 points
HN discussionThe paper name-drops Ivan Illich and "Tools for Conviviality". If you are intrigued by his ideas, you might be interested in the blog by L. M. Sacasas, The Convivial Society. His writing holds plenty of insight on the intersection of technology and society. https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Bicycles for the mind have to be see-through [pdf]”Submitted The meta-positioning habit of mind as a story · 85 points
HN discussionI don't like this view that our attention is being "taken" from us, or that we're being "robbed" of our ability to focus and concentrate. Here are some other ways to think about attention: L.M. Sacasas: The language of attention seems particularly loaded with economic and value-oriented metaphors, such as when we speak of paying attention or imagine our attention as a scarce resource we must either waste or horde. H…
Comment linking /p/attending-to-the-world
on “Our attention span is being robbed”Submitted The Iowa Caucus, Pseudo-Events, and Hyperreality as a story · 48 points
HN discussionI think the article is both too simplistic and too outside HN's regular ideas regarding space, science and progress, which makes it easy to see how it was received as it was. As you say, there's a much more nuanced way of explaining the parallels between space colonization and mythology. Another common trope you can read in these discussions is the "myth of limitlessness": In this way, modern technology conveys an i…
Comment linking /p/the-convivial-society-no-27
on “It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth”Submitted The Limits of Optimization as a story · 44 points
HN discussionPeople interested in unschooling, may also be interested in the discourses of Ivan Illich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society L. M. Sacasas on his mailing list and podcast, 'The Convivial Society' recently interviewed one of Ivan's close friends, Gov. Jerry Brown. I've found the mailing list really worthwhile to read, and has surely affected the way I think about technology. https://theconvivialsociet…
Comment linking /p/remembering-illich-a-conversation
on “When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion”Submitted On Twitter, briefly as a story · 43 points
HN discussionEdit: and here's his musings on the OP article https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/impossible-silenc...
Comment linking /p/impossible-silences
on “Silence Is a Commons (1983)”Submitted The Digitized Culture Wars as a story · 41 points
HN discussionIf you don't listen to The Convivial Society already, it's a blog/podcast that deep dives into the themes of Illich and his contemporaries with plenty of musing of its own https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Silence Is a Commons (1983)”Submitted Narrative Collapse as a story · 41 points
HN discussionPhilosophize this is great. If you were a fan of McLuhan, you should read L.M. Sarcasas. His blog ( https://thefrailestthing.com/ ) was how I was introduced to McLuhan, Postman, and other philosophers of media and technology. He has unfortunately shuttered that blog, but he has a substack newsletter thing that talks about similar things: https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/people/1810437-l-m-...
Comment linking /people/1810437-l-m-sacasas
on “Decentralised content moderation”Submitted The Ambling Mind as a story · 39 points
HN discussionThe Orbital Index [ https://orbitalindex.com ] for space related stuff. The Prepared [ https://theprepared.org/ ] for engineering discussions. The Convivial Society [ https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com ] for discussions about technology and societies intersections, and the good life, with a focus on the works of Ivan Illich.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which mailing lists would you recommend to subscribe to?”Submitted Assuming Responsibility for Time as a story · 39 points
HN discussionHere's an essay reflecting on the value of having a shared experience of the world, cultural or otherwise: https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/common-worlds-com...
Comment linking /p/common-worlds-common-sense-and-the
on “Review: Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart”Submitted The Hermeneutical Imperative as a story · 30 points
HN discussionMoz://a has joined the moral authority camp for a long time now, consequently "this kind of crap" are considered by Moz://a as a moral obligation hence perfectly normal. [0]: https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-digitized-cul...
Comment linking /p/the-digitized-culture-wars
on “Mozilla sending political ads via Firefox push notification”Submitted The Insurrection Will Be Live Streamed: Notes Toward a Theory of Digitization as a story · 27 points
HN discussion
