iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 05/10/2026

Deveillance just released Kalypta, an app that blocks AI notetakers

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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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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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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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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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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 · 11/03/2025

there’s nothing more telling than the fact that a platform like grammarly is both a tool for creating slop and for detecting it. like, the buttons are quite literally right next to each other. you’re participating in an arms race against an industry that is already both sides of the arms race

three buttons in grammarly's interface: 1) review suggestions, 2) write with generative AI, 3) check for AI text & plagiarism

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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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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 13/02/2025

FlappyFavi is a flappy bird clone that lives in your favicon mewtru.com/flappyfavi (by tru narla)

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

📍 Location: anywhere 💲 Salary: $95-110k ✊ Represented by The Marshall Project Guild 🍃 Benefits: attached

Compensation and Benefits
This job is full-time, with a competitive salary and benefits including:

100% employer-paid medical, employer-subsidized vision and dental insurance; matching traditional and Roth 401k (immediate vesting). Voluntary benefits include: Health and Dependent Care FSA, commuter benefits, pet insurance, short and long-term disability insurance, employee and dependent life insurance, AFLAC accident, hospital indemnity, and critical illness coverage, legal benefits, personal excess liability insurance, and employee discount marketplace. We also observe 17 days of paid time off each year (in addition to office closure between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2), and provide 20 weeks of paid parental leave.

Annual Salary Range: $95–$110k

The Marshall Project has office space in New York, but this job can be filled remotely.

This job is represented by the Marshall Project Guild.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 05/02/2025

your subscribers are sending you $10/month. my subscribers are sending me jars of homemade pepper jelly. we are not the same.

Comment from Tom Pendergast: "How do you feel about homemade pepper jelly?"

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 04/02/2025

Every generation gets a Tronc

It would allow us to create a new social media-like interface for journalism. Where we could reclaim the word ‘Fact’, and separate research and journalistic work from everyday opinions. Where short content links through to longer articles, where local news comes first, and where revenue is shared.

We believe it’s a vision worth fighting for, and we’ve started bringing it to life under the name “niooze” (pronounced like ‘news’).

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 03/02/2025

This is the policy/rubric for using generative AI in my Escape the Algorithm classroom:

Expressiveness

I am a real-life human bringing my full messy self to this classroom. I ask that you bring your full self as well. You will never hear me accuse you of cheating with generative AI. However, you will likely hear me tell you that I want to see even more of you in your work (whether or not you used AI). Generative AI will have limited use in acting expressively. If you do find uses for it in your work, be open about it and share. It’s less important to me that your work is perfectly polished, or that it reaches some [non-existent] objective aesthetic ideal. I want to see work that an AI wouldn’t have known how to make. Or forget about AI: I want to see work that is so you that nobody else could have made it.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 30/01/2025

"[This] connects me to the long history of queerness... Anonymous, often scared people saying 'I was here. No matter what they told you, I was here.' Queer people will never be erased. Trans people will never be erased. We were here. We are here. You are living history that deserves to be saved."

In light of all the chaos in the United States, I was thinking about archives, about how information is preserved when so many want to destroy it. I was thinking especially about queerness and how often regimes try to erase our history, our art, our lives. And so I started thinking about what I want to save. Not just of myself, but the digital artifacts I've collected over the years of our vibrant community. So I opened a web browser to search. I followed a link. I found the Zine Bakery's zine about web archiving. I followed more links. I found stickers from Molly White that say "I'm not hording I'm archiving". I followed her website to Maxwell Neely-Cohen's essay "Century-Scale Storage". I scrolled through his Bluesky. He mentioned an essay called "The Doc Web" by Elan Ullendorff. On his Bluesky account I found this link. This link and this story remind me of my early days on the internet, where looking for answers often led you someplace unexpected. Sometimes that place was personal or public or personally public in the ways only the internet can be. Sharing in these spaces, being visible, connects us even in times of disconnect. And for me, right now, in a tiny way it connects me to the long history of queerness that's come before. Anonymous, often scared people saying "I was here. No matter what they told you, I was here". Queer people will never be erased. Trans people will never be erased. We were here. We are here. You are living history that deserves to be saved.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 26/01/2025

collecting anecdotes of how it felt to use the early internet. this one from gary wolfe in a 1994 issue of wired is hitting me as simultaneously familiar and foreign

Upon entering the page, I was immediately distracted by another link, a quiet alcove halfway down that read "poetry archive". I wanted to see the poetry archive. I clicked. "Unable to connect to remote host," Mosaic responded. I was peeved. The door was locked! I clicked a link at the bottom of the screen, where the name of the author of the page was listed: Paul Mende. After a minute of waiting (not unusual), Mende's picture appeared. He was smiling and young, with bushy brown hair and a large mustache. His page listed his research interests: "String Theory, Quantum Chromdynamics." Then came a section called Odds and Ends, under which were listed New Fiction and Readings, Benjamin's Home Page, and "local docs." What were the local docs? Who was Benjamin?

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Before finding out, I glanced at the rest of the document, and it was then that I began to experience the vertigo of Net travel. On the lower parts of the page were abstracts of Paul's scientific papers, some co-authored with Benjamin Grinstein. "High energy string collisions in a compact space," was one of the titles. This meant nothing to me, of course. But, having sought a respite in poetry, it was dizzying to have wandered into the company of a physicist.

It was a type of voyeurism, yes, but it was less like peeking into a person's window and more like dropping in on a small seminar with a cloak of invisibility.

One thing it was not like: it was not like being in a library. The whole experience gave an intense illusion, not of information, but of personality. I had been treating the ether as a kind of data repository, and I suddenly found myself in the confines of a scientist's study, complete with family pictures.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 24/01/2025

"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself"

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 23/01/2025

the tediousness of synthesizing and summarizing [in this case, public meetings] is a feature, not a bug (by @biancawylie.com) biancawylie.medium.com/automating-s...

That’s the impact on me on the inputs process. Then comes the summation, the work and skill required to try to figure out how to properly summarize what happened in a room, what happened on the worksheets. When I see AI being suggested as a summarizing agent, I’m not only concerned about the accuracy of what is created through the use of automation, but moreso the absence or loss of what does not get done — what is inefficient and what is dull. I’m concerned because in the time-pressured world we live in, where efficiency is a constant measure of our professional capacity, there is every incentive to rid ourselves of this type of work if and where we can.

Then comes the difference between what a machine can summarize of words and what it cannot even consider because of how something was said. We’ve all been in a meeting where the delivery of a remark was much more important than the words used to say it. That is something that I’ve learned how to translate into my reporting. I’m pretty confident this skill is hard to pull off in any automated way.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 22/01/2025

i've spent months searching for a definition of "algorithm" that feels alive to the agency of both practitioners and users, and looks beyond the codebase to inputs and outputs in the broadest, societal sense. stumbling upon @nickseaver.website's work feels like homecoming.

We need to examine the logic that guides the hands, picking certain
algorithms rather than others, choosing particular representations of data, and
translating ideas into code.

when our object of interest is the algorithmic system, “cultural” details are technical details — the tendencies of an engineering team are as significant as the tendencies of a sorting algorithm

We can call this the algorithms as culture position:
algorithms are not technical rocks in a cultural stream,
but are rather just more water. Like other aspects of
culture, algorithms are enacted by practices which do
not heed a strong distinction between technical and
non-technical concerns, but rather blend them together.
In this view, algorithms are not singular technical
objects that enter into many different cultural interactions, but are rather unstable objects, culturally enacted
by the practices people use to engage with them.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 16/01/2025

building algorithmic attunement and agency (for @are.na editorial) www.are.na/editorial/so...

If the most common metaphor for algorithms is following a recipe, then the goal shouldn’t be to stop making food, but to become so attuned to the shape of cooking that we can make substitutions and eventually, our own recipes. If we’re bold enough to question the maps we've been given, we may discover a world richer, stranger, and more alive than anything an algorithm could drop at our feet.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 16/01/2025

it makes me incredibly sad that it's become cool to brag about how little time and care was put into building something

Screenshot of a website with the text: Came up with the idea after getting tired of making boring weekly research presentations. Built the app in 1.5 days, and whipped up this landing page in 40 min

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 07/01/2025

Honored that read.cv named howdidyoufind.me one of the best projects of 2024!

CycleMarks by Jon-Kyle Mohr
The only circling back you should be doing this year. This fun new spin on bookmarking rounds up links for you to revisit over time!

Homes + Studios by Isabel Münter and Rachael Yaeger
This must be the place... I got plenty of time to explore this archive of artists’ homes and studios around the world, and it is where I want to be.

howdidyoufind.me by Elan Ullendorff
Nothing to track here — just stories about the site that give you a little more to chew on than cookies usually do. A real treat to read through!

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 02/01/2025

is the cure to the loneliness epidemic aimlessly searching the word “penpal” and stumbling upon the tale of someone receiving a postcard with a url written on it that leads to a website that tells the story of how people found it?

It is 1:11 AM. I am in bed, anxious about work resuming in the morning after a week off for xmas. I type "penpal" as a search word on Bluesky. Your post is one of the results, and has a link. Curiosity won.

A wonderful penpal sent me the link written on a postcard

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 19/12/2024

Google Analytics could never (2) howdidyoufind.me

screenshot with a modal that reads: "I'm here because the plans my dad and I had didn't happen because he fell ill with shingles. He adopted me just a few months ago and I knew him before he adopted me, I haven't seen him in about sixteen years now. I miss him so much. I may be able to see him next year. If your dad is there with you please give him a hug since I never have been able to hug my dad."

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 08/12/2024

someone wrote the url of howdidyoufind.me on a postcard and put it in the mail, and i truly cannot think of a higher/more perfect honor for my little web project 🥹

screenshot of a website with a modal expanded that reads: “A wonderful penpal sent me the link written on a postcard”

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 04/12/2024

nothing encapsulates the current state of facebook quite like seeing spammy AI weight loss bait posted on the account of the dead grandfather of someone i haven't spoken to since college

facebook post: "so I no longer need to deliberately keep the shape of the body. After half a month, I changed from 190 pounds to 140 pounds! (Check the comment section)" Then two photos of a white AI woman with curly red hair, noticeably skinnier in the second photo. then two comments from two different people. the first reads "no comments yet!?" and the second reads "Where is this from? [redacted] sadly passed away several years ago."

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 13/11/2024

someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying

product listing for 55 gallons of organic madagascar vanilla bean paste — $5,744.00

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 12/11/2024

Spencer (@spencerchang.me) and I are teaching a new class online at School for Poetic computation called Gift Interfaces. We'll nerd out about cultures of giving, and more importantly, we'll design and give lots of gifts. Join us! Applications close this weekend. sfpc.study/sessions/win...

Gift Interfaces
Spencer Chang, Elan Ullendorff
Date
Section 1: January 15, 2025 to March 26, 2025
Section 2: January 15, 2025 to March 26, 2025
(10 classes)
Time
Section 1: Wednesdays, 1pm-3pm ET
Section 2: Wednesdays, 7:30pm-9:30pm ET

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 26/10/2023

was an honor to have @chia.bsky.social visit my Escape the Algorithm class at Penn. always so generative to hear from someone who uses different words to talk about such similar obsessions.

a person with long hair standing in front of a projector screen with a website open that reads: can creation become synonymous with liberation?

a bunch of cute icons surround it

a classroom full of students with a teacher gesturing at a screen with a very old childhood website

a projector screen with a ton of browser windows open at various sizes and positions with different images

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 26/06/2023

this week's Escape the Algorithm is a tribute to Miranda July’s experimental email newsletter on the occasion of its 10 year anniversary it also includes a prompt to try it out yourself: comment or forward what you find to hi@elan.place escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/t…

Escape prompt Strategies for redirecting attention WETHINKALONE Find an email in your archives that conforms to one of the following themes: • An Email With I Love You In It • An Email About The Body • An Email That Gives Advice Tell me what you found! Reply, comment, or forward an email to hi@elan.place: I may feature it in a future post.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 15/05/2023

my latest piece about subversive google doc publishing includes this wonderful curated list of public google docs deeep.substack.com/p/the-doc-web

Axiom 5: A doc is a distinct, shareable object

A doc teaches you how to get into competitive Pokemon. A doc helps you determine whether you are lesbian. A doc exhaustively screenshots and analyzes food in the 2019 TV series Ming Dynasty. A doc walks you through the steps to rip a CD. A doc is a list of galleries representing only white artists. A doc is a room you need to escape. A doc is a recipe book shared between friends. A doc is a log of dose trips. A doc is the salaries of TV writers. A doc tracks the points awarded on every season of Drag Race. A doc chronicles the activities of an internet account called "Dad." A doc indexes the lore of Starset albums. A doc is a syllabus for decentering whiteness in design history. A doc asks what we should do before January. A doc is a love letter to a friendship. A doc is a toolkit for getting through the pandemic. A doc is a map. A doc is a playlist of experimental films and videos. A doc offers ideas for how to teach ceramics making virt

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 11/05/2023

guess we're doing CEO gender reveals now

tweet from elon musk: Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!

My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 05/05/2023

this is where i skeet from

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 04/05/2023

apparently a skeet is just when you lowercase a tweet and append "get this:" and tell people it's free

Tweet by The Washington Post:
The same Texas billionaire who treated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to lavish vacations paid private boarding school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, a boy the justice has said he raised as a son, according to a new report which said Thomas did not disclose the payments. https://wapo.st/44ueMV1

Bluesky post from The Washington Post:
get this: the same billionaire who treated justice clarence thomas to fancy vacations paid private boarding school tuition for thomas’s grandnephew, who the justice has said he raised as a son, according to a new report. read for free:

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 04/05/2023

just some spammy text message poetry i got today: “that, if you like,' said the silence. At last the Dodo said,”

screenshot of spam text message about bitcoin that includes an invitation to join “bitcoin of america” and also the text “that, if you like,' said the
silence. At last the Dodo said,”

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Elan Ullendorff @elan.place · 03/05/2023

excited to be teaching a design class called "escape the algorithm" in the fall at Penn! we'll be designing experiences and tools for navigating the web in surprising/human ways.

a poster for a class called escape the algorithm on a black grid containing sticky notes and screenshots of websites and videos with multiplayer mouse overlays.

Escape the Algorithm | IPD 5900
Elan Kiderman Ullendorff
Mondays 1:45–4:45
How do the business models and algorithmic logic of apps like TikTok, Instagram, Wikipedia, and Google Maps dictate what we do and don’t see online?
In this design course, we'll curate collections, circulate PR campaigns, create web experiences, and craft tools that wrestle back agency from platforms and allow us to see the internet and the world in new and exciting ways.

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