Intro to my thoughts on Research & Academic Fashion on Substack
I write for a general-intellectual audience on Substack; thinking in progress, grounded in the theoretical frameworks from my research but written for readers outside academia. Recent posts explore AI, creativity, ownership, and the commons in fashion and beyond.
We're choosing an AI landscape, whether we notice or not
9 September
Drawing on Elinor Ostrom's work on commons governance, I look at how Wikipedia became possible only because the free software movement built the infrastructure first, and ask what it would take to build similar groundwork for AI in the creative industries, where that infrastructure doesn't yet exist.
Placing creativity in the centre? I so wished!
9 September
A reflection on Nordstrom's push to rebuild its tailoring pipeline, and what it reveals about scarcity and value as generative AI reshapes knowledge work. I ask whether the slow, embodied disciplines, craft, care, tacit skill, are finally being recognised as the moat they always were, in fashion and beyond.
The internet already ran this experiment. We know how it ends.
9 September
Looking back at the mid-90s debate between an open, collectively governed internet and the platform capitalism that ultimately won out, and what that history suggests about whether AI's future is any more settled.
What happens to creativity when infinite is on the table?
8 September
For most of design history, originality was shaped by scarcity, the time and skill it took to make or even copy something well. I ask what happens to that definition of creativity once generative AI removes the friction entirely.
On Amodei's call to slow the pace of AI
13 September
A response to the Guardian's coverage of Dario Amodei's essay calling for the AI industry to slow down, arguing that "pacing the frontier" is really a question about how fast institutions, workplaces, and creative practices can adapt, not just how fast models improve.
