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The Convivial Society

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

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.

Essays / personalSociety / politics / economyTech news / industry

’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
200 from 10 Feb 2018 to 18 Aug 2026
Posting
monthly (12 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/feed

2026 10

  1. "Expect the end of the world. Laugh."
  2. What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars?
  3. A Note of Thanks
  4. Feeding on Illusions
  5. Friendship Suffices
  6. Your AI Is Not a Tool
  7. AI Is Not Conscious, But It Is Becoming Our Unconscious
  8. Do Not Resign From Life
  9. Owning Our Words: Sounding the Depths of Language
  10. Waiting Is a Revelation

2025 4

  1. Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage
  2. Out of the Wilderness
  3. The Waters of Lethe Flow From Our Digital Streams
  4. The Cat in the Tree: Why AI Content Leaves Us Cold

2024 19

  1. Life Cannot Be Delegated
  2. To Hell With Good Intentions, Silicon Valley Edition
  3. The Enclosure of the Human Psyche
  4. Amulets Against the Spirits of the Age
  5. If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You're Not Paying Attention
  6. Embracing Sub-Optimal Relationships
  7. Re-sourcing the Mind
  8. The Work of Art
  9. The Stuff of (a Well-Lived) Life
  10. The Ambling Mind
  11. Desire, Dopamine, and the Internet
  12. Audio Versions Are Back
  13. Secularization Comes For the Religion of Technology (Audio Version)
  14. Vision Con (Audio Version)
  15. Learning to Receive the Day (Audio Version)
  16. The Art of Living
  17. Secularization Comes for the Religion of Technology: Or, how to make sense of techno-optimist manifestos, the Open Ai/Altman affair, EA/e-acc movements, and the general sense of cultural stagnation
  18. Vision Con
  19. Learning to Receive the Day

2023 18

  1. The Thing That Is Silence
  2. A brief update
  3. Embrace Your Crookedness (Audio Version)
  4. Embrace Your Crookedness
  5. Render Unto the Machine
  6. Care, Not Control
  7. Eye to Eye
  8. The One Best Way Is a Trap
  9. Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On It
  10. Why An Easier Life Is Not Necessarily Happier
  11. Too Many Words, and Not Enough
  12. Chats, Notes, and Patrons
  13. Apocalyptic AI
  14. Whose Time? Which Temporality?
  15. Dots Will Be Connected
  16. The Prompt Box is a Minefield: AI Chatbots and Power of Language
  17. Language Under Digital Conditions: Power and Action
  18. Convivial Society Discussion Thread: Renewal and Rest

2022 36

  1. Year End Miscellany and "What You Get Is the World" (Audio Version)
  2. What You Get Is the World
  3. "Lonely Surfaces" (Audio Version)
  4. Lonely Surfaces: On AI-generated Images
  5. Reading As Counter-Practice
  6. On Two Ways of Relating to the World
  7. Antivirals
  8. "The Pathologies of the Attention Economy" (Audio), Links, Miscellany
  9. Impoverished Emotional Lives
  10. The Pathologies of the Attention Economy
  11. Taking Stock of Our Technological Liturgies
  12. What Is To Be Done? Audio Version
  13. What Is To Be Done? — A Discussion Thread
  14. What Is To Be Done? — Fragments
  15. A Convivial Society Discussion Thread with Jon Askonas
  16. A Convivial Society Discussion Thread With Jon Askonas
  17. The Stuff of Life: Materiality and the Self
  18. From Common Sense to Bespoke Realities
  19. Audio Version: "LaMDA, Lemoine, and the Allures of Digital Re-enchantment"
  20. LaMDA, Lemoine, and the Allures of Digital Re-enchantment
  21. Trading Solitude for Loneliness
  22. Readings and Resources
  23. We Are Not Living in a Simulation, We Are Living In the Past
  24. The Meta-Positioning Habit of Mind
  25. The Myth of the Machine
  26. Convivial Society Thread: Summer Reading
  27. On Twitter, Briefly
  28. "The Face Stares Back" Audio + Links and Resources
  29. The Face Stares Back
  30. The Uncanny Gaze of the Machine
  31. Laughter In Dark Times
  32. Attending to the World
  33. How to Make the Convivial Society More Social
  34. "Dream of Virtual Reality" Audio Version AND Some Links For Your Consideration
  35. The Dream of Virtual Reality
  36. Understanding McLuhan: A Conversation with Andrew McLuhan

2021 36

  1. Living In Expectation of the Unexpected Gift
  2. We Fray Into the Future
  3. You Can't Optimize For Rest
  4. Earth Alienation As A Service
  5. The Human-Built World Is Not Built For Humans
  6. Pity, Power, and Presence
  7. A World Ordered Only By Search
  8. Notes from the Metaverse (Audio Version)
  9. Discussion Thread: Robo-Umpires, Automation, and Outsourced Judgment
  10. Notes From the Metaverse
  11. Nice Image You've Got There. Shame If It Got Memed.
  12. Outsourcing Virtue
  13. A Brief Orientation to the Convivial Society
  14. Ill With Want (Audio Version)
  15. Ill With Want
  16. Thresholds of Artificiality
  17. The Limits of Optimization
  18. The Questions Concerning Technology
  19. Digital Inception
  20. Surviving the Show: Illich And The Case For An Askesis of Perception
  21. The Results are In
  22. Forgetting the Body
  23. The Answer Is Not More Information
  24. Resistance Is Futile: The Myth of Tech Inevitability
  25. Your Attention Is Not a Resource
  26. Impossible Silences
  27. Reading Illich: Ethics of the Gaze
  28. The Paradox of Control
  29. Reading Illich: "Rivers North" Synchronous Thread (1 p.m. EST)
  30. Remembering Illich: A Conversation with David Cayley
  31. Discussion Thread: Death and Digital Media
  32. The Hermeneutical Imperative
  33. What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars?
  34. Reading Illich: Rivers North of the Future
  35. The Insurrection Will Be Live Streamed: Notes Toward a Theory of Digitization
  36. A Note to Annual Subscribers About Auto-Renewals

2020 50

  1. The Disorders of our Collective Consciousness
  2. Desire Bends Time
  3. Old Voices Shed New Light
  4. Thinking About the Year Ahead for the Convivial Society
  5. When the Timeline Becomes Our Sidewalk
  6. Structurally Induced Acedia
  7. Common Worlds, Common Sense, and the Digital Realm
  8. Remembering Illich: A Conversation with Gov. Jerry Brown
  9. What Do Human Beings Need?: Rethinking Technology and the Good Society
  10. Remembering Illich: A Conversation with Gustavo Esteva
  11. Human Interests and Technological Systems
  12. Care, Friendship, Hospitality: Reflections on the Thought of Ivan Illich
  13. Reading Illich: In the Vineyard of the Text, Asynchronous Thread
  14. Reading Illich: In the Vineyard of the Text
  15. Deschooling Society: Synchronous Thread (2)
  16. Deschooling Society: Synchronous Thread
  17. Reading Illich: Synchronous Threads Tonight and Friday
  18. The Digitized Culture Wars
  19. Reading Illich: Deschooling Society, Asynchronous Thread
  20. The Material Sources of Free Speech Anxieties
  21. Children and Technology
  22. Reading Illich, Round Two
  23. Attention, Austerity, Freedom
  24. Reading Illich: Round One Debrief
  25. Reading Illich: Tools for Conviviality, Session 2
  26. Remembering Illich: A Conversation with Carl Mitcham
  27. Narrative Collapse: An Addendum
  28. Reading Illich: Tools For Conviviality, Session 1
  29. Narrative Collapse
  30. Reading Illich
  31. The Public That Cannot Mourn Does Not Exist
  32. Who Wants To Read Illich Together?
  33. Refugees That Never Left Home
  34. Pandemics, Power, and Freedom
  35. Baking Bread, Finding Meaning
  36. How Are We Doing?
  37. A Theory of Zoom Fatigue
  38. Assuming Responsibility for Time
  39. The Normal, the Ordinary, and the Common
  40. Quarantine Reading: "The Machine Stops"
  41. The Convivial Society: Vol. 1, No. 6
  42. The Convivial Society: Vol. 1, No 5
  43. Why the Virus Spooks Us: A Theory
  44. The Convivial Society: Vol. 1, No. 4
  45. The Convivial Society: Vol. 1, No. 3
  46. The Convivial Society: Dispatch, No. 2
  47. The Convivial Society: Vol. 1, No. 2
  48. The Convivial Society: Dispatch, No. 1
  49. The Convivial Society: Vol. 1, No. 1
  50. The Convivial Society in 2020

2019 19

  1. The Convivial Society, No. 27
  2. The Convivial Society, No. 26
  3. The Convivial Society, No. 25
  4. The Convivial Society, No. 24
  5. The Convivial Society, No 23
  6. The Convivial Society, No. 22
  7. The Convivial Society, No. 21
  8. The Convivial Society, No. 20
  9. The Convivial Society, No. 19
  10. The Convivial Society, No. 18
  11. The Convivial Society, No. 17
  12. The Convivial Society, No. 16
  13. The Convivial Society, No. 15
  14. The Convivial Society, No. 14
  15. The Convivial Society, No. 13
  16. The Convivial Society, No. 12
  17. The Convivial Society, No. 11
  18. The Convivial Society, No. 10
  19. The Convivial Society, No. 9

2018 8

  1. The Convivial Society, No. 8
  2. The Convivial Society, No. 7
  3. The Convivial Society, No. 6
  4. The Convivial Society, No. 5
  5. The Convivial Society, No. 4
  6. The Convivial Society, No. 3
  7. The Convivial Society, No. 2
  8. The Convivial Society, No. 1