iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 13/12/2024

i'm assembling a team

tweet from the new york post: "the shocking toll of getting just 6 hours of sleep per night revealed in horrifying images." three different image of the same hunched over balding long hair rendering with poor posture wearing a purple tank top and purple striped shorts

News story with the headline "Meet Graham, a 'human' designed to survive a car crash" and an image. ‘Graham’, an interactive lifelike sculpture demonstrating human vulnerability. Graham has been designed with physical features that might be present in humans if they had evolved to withstand the forces involved in crashes.

news story with headline: "tech neck and text claw - what humans could look like in the year 3000" and a 3d rendering of someone wearing a grey tanktop with hunched over posture, double eyelids and hands that have evolved to fit the shape of a phone in their grip

news article with the headline "life-sized model shows what office workers might look like in 20 years." with two photos of a long haired person with a very hunched neck wearing a navy dress.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 15/09/2026

So hey do you think we can officially elevate the phrase “no algorithms” to the status of AI tick?

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 07/09/2026

What in the AI-generated ad copy do words even mean anymore

instagram ad screenshot for inscramble.so: The product field holds exactly one thing:
the space, by the hour.
Equipment and props don't fit, so you
charge for them
on site and square the books later.
One rental, two checkouts.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 01/09/2026

I usually just ignore emails like this and move on but I chose to engage today.

screenshot of email:

Hi X, Some tough love here. You say yourself that you know I'm interested in humane, deliberate software, and yet you chose to let AI write this email instead of describing why this project is important to you in your own words. What's more, I don't even understand what those words mean! I encourage you to do the work of engaging with your own humanity rather than giving in to the temptation of efficiency. I think you will find it much more rewarding.

Best,
Elan

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 27/08/2026

Something funny/interesting/revealing that I have observed about vibe-coded websites is that their AI-generated text absolutely ~loves~ to brag about providing an algorithm-free experience. The word “algorithm” continues its never-ending march towards losing all meaning.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 24/08/2026

For just $14.99/month the app my 5 year old's school district uses to communicate with parents offers dystopian features like: • i can mark messages to teachers as more important than other parents' messages • read receipts when teachers read messages • more detailed progress reports about my child

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

“But the idea that there’s any kind of reward from the system for becoming a bestseller, I’m over it. There’s none. That’s not part of my calculus anymore. In that way, I guess it was a very worthy experiment in whether I care about external markers of success from the publishing industry.”

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Ann Friedman Had the Bestseller and the Followers. It Still Wasn’t Enough.

One editor said, “We would literally buy anything else from you.”

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 22/07/2026

A wonderfully honest conversation with @annfriedman.bsky.social about publishing a bestselling book, thinking it would lead to boundless creative freedom, only to encounter the same industry roadblocks. escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/ann-friedm...

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Ann Friedman Had the Bestseller and the Followers. It Still Wasn’t Enough.

One editor said, “We would literally buy anything else from you.”

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 14/07/2026

Posted a temporary software engineer position at The Marshall Project, averaging 100 applications per day, 95% of which are fake or completely AI generated. What’s that again about AI saving us all time?

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 10/06/2026

Beyond honored to be on the selection committee for the Tiny Awards — which celebrates the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web — together with the absolute best people in the game. Nominations are open! tinyawards.net/nominations/...

Screenshot of a website for Tiny Awards. It has a medieval aesthetic with arches displaying flowers, and a person pouring an urn into a well. Below the text reads "Nominate a Site for Tiny Awards 2026"

2026 Selection Committee
Selection Committee
Celine Nguyen
Elliott Cost
Elan Ullendorff
Pirijan Ketheswaran
Matt Prebeg
Marty Bell
Kristin Merrilees
Annie Rauwerda
Tiffany Ng
Chia Amisola
Andy Baio
Alex Dobrenko
Manuel Moreale
Elle
Jana Wiese
Nick Susi
Ruby Thelot
Rusty Foster

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 13/05/2026

For this month's issue of Anti-viral, a vulnerable conversation with @hrishikesh.co about releasing music when you’re better known for your podcasts, whether it’s scarier to be perceived or not to be perceived, and discovering music that moves you. escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/hrishikesh...

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Hrishikesh Hirway is Ready to be Heard

The creator of Song Exploder on releasing an album into the attention economy

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

Yvonne Lam @yvonnezlam.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Since I am trying to feel out the contours of my huge ambivalence about marketing/publicity/self-promotion, lots of things in Elan Ullendorff's interview with the artist Hallie Bateman resonate with me: escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/anti-viral...

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Anti-viral with Hallie Bateman

"People didn’t want the nicer thing. They wanted the $25 print they can tape to the wall."

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Presenting THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU, out in September from @herebelow.bsky.social, a new imprint doing awesome things. Here's the cover, a lil' excerpt, and the tagline of the press: "Books for the subversive work of being human." herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...

The cover of a book (my book): THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU.

Just one more byte

It’s possible that to store is entirely the wrong verb. Maybe it ought
to be to attend, to give our digital lives the same attention we are
called to give our physical ones. Attention, as a noun, comes to
us through Latin and French, and, from those languages, carries
the sense of to stretch toward, as though my brain, pinned behind
my skull, might reach out, feel the tight restriction of muscle as
it grasps at the world. But, by and large, attention words point in-
ward, not out. We attract it and call it. We can gather it like wheat
in a field or draw it up like water from a well. Always, though,
attention moves from the world into us—except when it’s to be
minted and spent. “Pay attention,” we say, as though it is a com-
modity, bought, sold, and traded by brokers.

The digital world both beleaguers and demands our attention.
The quality of our focus and the metaphors we surround it with
have diminished even as we’re asked to spend more of it. I’ve felt
it, lately, in the very medium of the book, which rests ever more
uneasily in my hands, though I’ve published two, including this
one. I’ve read, I would guess, a couple thousand books in my life.
It’s harder now, harder than ever. And as it’s grown harder, it’s
grown more meaningful, those acts of attentional resistance, as
straightforward as reading a book for pleasure—a refutation of
market logic, a proletarian revolution in even the word attention,
not something I pay for and sell on an open market but, instead,
something I stretch toward.

“Whole strata of reality are lost to us at the speed at which
we live, our ability to perceive them is lost,” Garth Greenwell
writes in his novel Small Rain, “and maybe that’s the value of
poetry, there are aspects of the world that are only visible at the
frequency of certain poems.” Greenwell advances an argument
best advanced in literature, in fiction or poetry, buttressed as it is
by the logic of allusion. This logic stands in stark contrast to the
totalizing, seductive logic of instrumentalism, which would have
us see everything, every act and artifact, as for something else.
Reading under instrumentalism is pointless at worst and a form
of self- betterment at best—merely a way to refill the coffers of
attention before spending it again. Greenwell argues for poetry,
for reading, for all those many varied noninstrumental activities
that demand this “unmixed attention,” to use the philosopher
Simone Weil’s language, which are a species of prayer. I mean
this in the same way Weil does—in the best and truest sense of
the word: prayer not as an attempt to change the world, but as a
chance to attune ourselves to a greater will, one that asks of us,
Be more human.

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

Everest Pipkin @everest.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

I couldn't be more excited to announce something I've been working on for a long time - Please welcome Belltower House Artist Residency, a multidisciplinary gift of time in my erstwhile home in southern New Mexico, now accepting applications for 2026. belltowerhouse.org

belltowerhouse.org

Belltower House Artist Residency

Belltower House Artist Residency is a gift of creative sanctuary in southern New Mexico.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 19/03/2026

The Student AI Trap escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/the-studen...

The students tremble-walk this curve like a tightrope, trying not to look down for fear that they will catch sight of the world they are setting aflame. Meanwhile, the university is erecting a 116,000-square-foot, six-story, energy-efficient building to further advancements in artificial intelligence. April was just declared AI Month.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 18/03/2026

in honor of Meta shutting down the metaverse, resharing this short strange piece I wrote as an homage to avatars gaining legs (legs legs legs) escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/the-day-th...

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

The day they gave us legs

The day they gave us legs was the day we danced.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 18/03/2026

I wrote about the mixed messages universities are sending about AI. escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/the-studen...

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

The Student AI Trap

Prompt if you're damned, do if you don't

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

nick andersen @nicktheandersen.com · 05/03/2026

the wonderful @halliebateman.bsky.social is an artist and a human being and following her work is a gift and a treasure, so this interview with her by @elan.place was appropriately also a gift and a treasure

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Anti-viral with Hallie Bateman

"People didn’t want the nicer thing. They wanted the $25 print they can tape to the wall."

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

The Marshall Project @themarshallproject.org · 04/03/2026

We’re launching Redemption Songs, a limited-run newsletter that spotlights one song each week by incarcerated artists. Starting March 22, we’ll tell the story of mass incarceration over almost a century, one song at a time. Sign up now to get a new song each Sunday afternoon over 25 weeks:

themarshallproject.org

Redemption Songs: A Limited-Run Newsletter

The story of mass incarceration, one song at a time.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 05/03/2026

A Google Sheet that is a six-week syllabus for getting you into Bad Bunny adding to my Doc Web repository docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

docs.google.com

Bad Bunny 101

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 05/03/2026

I spoke with @halliebateman.bsky.social about how the internet can trick you into being static, the miracle of anyone connecting with literally anything online, and why people don’t want to pay $75 for a museum-quality print from “commercial artists.” escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/anti-viral...

A screenshot of a colorful, quirky webshop

Hand-drawn figures walking in various directions on crayon-textured paths. In the center is the text "it's a miracle we ever met."

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 04/03/2026

Saw an Instagram reel in which the CEO of McDonalds answers the question "how do you use AI" by eagerly explaining that he no longer needs to get his family together to take holiday photos because he can just generate them instead.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 02/03/2026

My favorite annual tradition is taking my Escape the Algorithm students to a local zine library called The Soapbox to talk about radical publishing + expressive design. While we’re there, the students each pick a zine and recreate it as a website. This year’s web zines: leaflet.pub/aed57e9a-d7d...

Student looking at a zine called cyberpunk apocalypse with a grainy photo of shadowed people and recreating it as a website

Student on a computer next do a bunch of zines splayed on a table

Student looking at a zine in front of a shelf full of zines

Student drawing on a computer at a table with other students

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 22/01/2026

Thinking once again about this comment under a Simulacra and Simulation quote on Goodreads that’s the best illustration of a simulacrum I've ever seen.

“The media represents world that is more real than reality that we can experience. People lose the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. They also begin to engage with the fantasy without realizing what it really is. They seek happiness and fulfilment through the simulacra of reality, e.g. media and avoid the contact/interaction with the real world. (Note: This quote is fake and does not appear in Simulacra and Simulation. I tried to delete it, but the system doesn't allow that because this quote has "too many fans" lol.)”

— Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

"It’s hard to imagine getting back to a time [when] discoverability of people’s work and ideas was possible in a way that I don’t think it is anymore... I find more new stuff in actual magazines now... The internet is no longer a way for me to find new stuff, it’s just a place where stuff is."

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Anti-viral with Alicia Kennedy

"People just want you to talk about yourself"

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 02/12/2025

Today I’m excited to launch Anti-viral, a series where I talk to creatives about projects that struggle to find an audience—not to label these projects as failures, but to explore the meaningful, essential work our platforms and economies overlook. escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/anti-viral...

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Anti-viral with Alicia Kennedy

"People just want you to talk about yourself"

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 17/11/2025

Accepting "I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein." into the canon of captions that would work on any New Yorker cartoon.

Two snowmen wearing boxing gloves face off in a snowy ring, one of their heads lies knocked off on the ground.

A cartoon of Mr. Potato Head sitting on an exam table while a doctor reads from a clipboard.

A cartoon of the Grim Reaper playing an electric guitar in his apartment, while a neighbor leans out a nearby window watching.

A black-and-white cartoon illustration of a lively cocktail party. In the center, a smiling inflatable tube man — like the ones seen outside car dealerships — waves its arms cheerfully. Next to it, a man in a suit holding a drink gestures toward the tube man as if introducing it to the crowd.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 03/11/2025

teaching my escape the algorithm course again and it’s such a joy to be able to put such kind testimonials on the flyer 🥺

flyer for a course at penn called escape the algorithm. praise from past students:
"this class was unlike any other one i've taken. it felt real and personal."
"I'd enthusiastically recommend this course to anyone interested in platform design, media studies, or just figuring out how to move through the web more intentionally."
"Escape the Algorithm taught me how to unsee the internet I thought I knew, and begin imagining what a more human, slower, stranger digital future could look like."
"This class really reshaped how I think, create, and collaborate."
"This course has been one of the most creatively liberating and intellectually stimulating experiences I've had at Penn."

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 15/09/2025

I’m honored to have my essay The New Turing Test published in the Internet Phone Book, now in its second reprint through @metalabel.bsky.social Revenue is split between contributors and the Living Web Institute, which has the goal of cultivating a better web livingweb.metalabel.com/internetphon...

The Internet Phone book lying on a page being colored on by a child

Internet phone book carried in a pocketbook

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 11/09/2025

whoever said AI won’t create jobs can eat their hat now

Instagram screenshot, post by 404mediaco: freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

New_ Public @newpublic.org · 07/07/2025

Exploring the concept of gifting through experimental design — this is the beauty of the internet when it’s totally free from engagement-maxing algorithms and corporations. Highly recommend diving into this collection from @spencer.place and @elan.place's Gifting Interfaces class.

gifting-interfaces.pages.dev

Gifting Interfaces

A collection of gifts developed by students at the School for Poetic Computation's Gift Interfaces class in Winter 2025.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 02/07/2025

It was an honor to talk to Willa Paskin about artisanal white noise for @slate.com’s excellent Decoder Ring podcast slate.com/podcasts/dec...

slate.com

White Noise Has Become Part of Life’s Soundtrack. But Who’s Behind It?

From crickets to rain to cellphones vibrating, white noise keeps evolving.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 11/06/2025

In late March, @spencer.place and I wrapped up our Gift Interfaces class at @sfpc-study.bsky.social. On our last day, we threw a gift wrapping party. Then we opened them together. The resulting website represents the archive of our work together: gifting-interfaces.pages.dev

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katherine @kayserifserif.place · 02/04/2025

🌳 new work > Over the past couple of years, I’ve been marking the seasons by the inhale and exhale of this tree. tree.kayserifserif.place/

tree.kayserifserif.place

In the Year of a Tree

Snapshots throughout the seasons.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 27/03/2025

one day maybe i'll write my snarky hyperbolic essay about how substack is three different pyramid schemes in a trench coat, but in the meantime i'll just point out that this is the most tried and true way to get engagement in the app 🥲

substack post: i'm looking for non-viral substack essays. i keep seeing the same ones on my feed (and they're great!) but i want to read from smaller writers, the ones with fewer likes and views. so many people deserve to be read, but i feel like the algorithm is not vibing with me lately. anyway, drop your latest/favourite piece, and i'll read as many as i can:)

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 27/03/2025

teasing you with more from our gift interface but sorry you'll have to stay tuned to open them!!

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 21/03/2025

I talked to @dzkalman.bsky.social about our experiences of Shabbat, and why disconnection remains so elusive despite our societal obsession with it. escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/have-you-t...

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

Have you tried unplugging and plugging yourself back in again?

A conversation with David Zvi Kalman

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 11/03/2025

my take is that if you’re evaluating whether something is AI using methods that are tritely computable — for example, the presence or absence of em dashes — then you are engaging with it on its own terms, rather than human terms, and will lose.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 06/03/2025

Every semester I take my Escape the Algorithm students at Penn to the local zine library called The Soapbox to talk about radical publishing and expressive design. While we’re there, the students each pick a zine and recreate it as a website.

Two students sitting in a zine library. One is holding a zine. One is on a laptop.

Many students holding zines or browsing the stacks of a zine library

A hand holding up a zine called Razorcake with orange splats and a spiderweb. Next to the zine is a laptop displaying a website copy of the zine.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 05/03/2025

A real embarrassment of riches: postcards from Escape the Algorithm readers turned ᵐⁱᶜʳᵒsupporters!! 🥺🥺🥺

8 postcards spread out on the table. one has an illustration of the chicago bean, one has a comic, and one reads "Hi, Elan. Did you expect to get one from more than 6,000km away when you typed 'write me a thoughtful postcard?'"

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Reposted by Elan Ullendorff

spencer chang @spencer.place · 27/02/2025

Gather, the offline-first client for collecting, curating, and cultivating multimedia collections, is officially on the app stores! Start archiving daily moments like you would text a friend on gather.directory and cultivate your capacity to notice

gather.directory

Gather — a local-first collections client

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 26/02/2025

If you have questions that haven't been answered by this job posting or are wondering how our process works, we'll be hosting our second and final hiring office this Friday, February 28th at 12 PM ET. Registration info at the job link. (Audience members will remain anonymous to each other).

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 07/02/2025

My team @themarshallproject.org is hiring a Designer! You'll work on everything from interactive storytelling to improving our digital products, making complex issues in criminal justice more accessible and impactful. www.themarshallproject.org/jobs/designer A bit more about what we're looking for…

themarshallproject.org

The Marshall Project is Hiring a Designer

The Marshall Project seeks a Designer to join our product team. As a designer at The Marshall Project, you will work with the Director of Product to elevate our award-winning digital journalism throug...

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 20/02/2025

"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself" www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQYO...

youtube.com

ZipRecruiter - Severance Season 2

YouTube video by ZipRecruiter

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