JAY OWENS
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    • Research writing
  • Dust
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    • Islay
  • Home
  • About + Contact
  • Writing
  • Work
    • Research writing
  • Dust
  • Talks
  • Reading
  • Blog
  • Photo essays
    • Islay
JAY OWENS
Design
Phone Sex -- an essay on desire, materiality and the iPhone, upcoming for Dirty Furniture
Review of Kyle Chayka's 'The Longing for Less' - Apollo 
Airbnb hasn’t lived up to its utopian claims - Guardian Opinion
Review of Keller Easterling’s ‘Extrastatecraft' - ICON magazine
Is Fashion Ready for a New Aesthetic?
 - Business of Fashion

Life online
Post-Authenticity and the Ironic Truths of Meme Culture - Medium feature story
  • Reactions & discussion at Metafilter; Design Observer podcast Episode 80: Age and Authenticity; Slate Money podcast 205 on brands, Airspace and authenticity; post of the month at Neil Perkin's adland blog.
  • Chapter in the book Post-Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production, eds. Alfie Bown & Dan Bristow, Punctum Books, 2019

My Friend, The Bot - Medium
  • Republished in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association

Technology
The tech giants dominated the decade. But there’s still time to rein them in - Guardian Opinion
  • Discussion on KGO 810 radio (San Francisco) 
Your mobile phone leaks - ICON magazine

Futures
Exploring the Future Beyond Cyberpunk - How We Get To Next
  • Republished at Quartz, Nine Sci Fi Subgenres to Help You Understand the Future, and The Big Smoke, Woke space opera, solarpunk and cli-fi: The new subsets of sci-fi taking root
  • Translated into Spanish for BBVA Open Mind, Una nueva ciencia ficción para entender lo que viene

Dust
Disturbances, an email newsletter on dust - Tinyletter
  • Disturbances profiled in WIRED: The Blissfully Slow World of Internet Newsletters, by Clive Thompson
  • #17 The Price of Perfection - republished as a Medium feature story
Ashes to Ashes - for Australian print magazine Smith Journal, 2019

Place writing
Atomic California - Roads & Kingdoms
The Ghost Grid of California City - Medium feature story

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Profiled
Interview in Issue N°3 – Permanence, The Alpine Review, with Igor Schwarzmann
Ethnographer's Reading List - Ethnomatters



Opinions
  • On a royal Instagram rivalry, in the New York Times - A Royal Instagram Mystery, Caity Weaver,
  • On media literacy (and the lack thereof), in The i - The Rishi Sunak Yorkshire tea debacle exposes abuse - and that no one understands sponsored content, Chris Stokel-Walker
  • On political shitposting, in the New Statesman - “They’re doing this badly on purpose”: Why the Tories’ latest online ads look so ugly, Chris Stokel-Walker
  • How media spreads, in WIRED - How a petition to revoke Article 50 blew up and broke the internet, Chris Stokel-Walker
  • On the future of advertising, in the Guardian - From WhatsApp to Alexa : why the ad-free era is over, Chris Stokel-Walker
  • Hopes & fears, in VICE Motherboard - We Asked 105 Experts What Worries Them Most About the Future, Becky Ferreira
  • On deepfake videos, in VICE Motherboard - We Are Truly Fucked: Everyone Is Making AI-Generated Fake Porn Now,  by Samantha Cole
  • On bitcoin as a status symbol, in VICE Garage - Bitcoin Is the New Birkin Bag, by Kyle Chayka
  • On CV Dazzle, in The Atlantic - Anti-Surveillance Camouflage for Your Face, by Robinson Meyer
  • On Google Glass, in WIRED - Fashion Insiders Weigh In: Can Your Style Survive Google Glass? by Tim Maly